Gmail

Last week, Google launched Priority Inbox, a new tool for Gmail that determines which emails are the most important for the user.  To start, Priority Inbox is a good way to improve productivity, since highlighting the most important emails allows us to spend less time on those that aren’t so important.

There have been some applications that have filled a similar function, but Priority Inbox makes the choice more automatic (although at the end of the day it is up to the user to decide which emails are really the most important).

This new development by Gmail will have an immediate effect on the world of digital marketing: email marketing companies that send mass emails (not spam but opt-in emails) must figure out a way for customers to not consider their emails less relevant and not relegate them to the dark “not important” box.

The Internet: Where The Consumers Are

A recently released report by Borrell Associates predicts what many of us have been working towards for the past decade: online advertising will grow at a faster pace in 2011 than overall advertising. That report predicts that online ad spending may reach $52B and indicates that total online ad spending (including mobile) will grow almost 14%, from $45.6 billion in 2010, to $51.9 billion in 2011.

And all of this with advertisers increasing their spending next year by a meager 5% above this year’s projections. This means online advertising should represent approximately 22% of total ad spending. That is a very good thing for the online advertising industry but also for general advertisers and their agencies as well. Why? Well, if for no other reason, online advertising in its various forms is largely more versatile, can be more nimbly managed, offers more efficiency in deployment and, last but certainly not least, affords a much higher degree of measurement and accountability than virtually all other form of advertising.

Here are some of the more important aspects as they break down:

The SEO Puzzle

SEO is one of the latest additions to the marketing mix, and as the internet revolution and the online universe continue expanding, a marketing plan that doesn’t take into account this essential marketing component would be a chronicle of a death foretold. Of course, depending on the nature of the product or service in question, the online aspect will have a large or small role.

SEO involves several aspects of the marketing mix working synergistically, such as the maintenance of a web site.  As a web site is more frequently updated and adds more content of better quality, search engines give higher priority to the page. In addition to maintaing and giving continual attention to the site, one most also keep in mind the use of tags, or search keywords.

This all means, of course, understanding how the big search engines work (Google, Yahoo, Bing).  They prioritize several things, such as the context around keywords and the number of links to the page that are most relevant to the searcher.

Thinking of Hispanics, I reflect on some other questions, like: where are we in terms of SEO in Spanish? What understanding do we have of the psychology of the Hispanic consumer in terms of his or her use of search engines?

We know that Hispanics are increasing their presence online, as well as their use of the internet as a tool to improve the quality of life of their families. Finding a partner to develop this online presence is and will be important to achieve a real connection with the largest and fastest growing market in the United States.

Illegal Immigration Slowing

On the heels of a study by the San Francisco Reserve highlighting the positive impact of immigration on the economy comes information from Pew Hispanic highlighting the decline in unauthorized immigration into the U.S.

According to the report, the annual inflow of unauthorized immigrants to the U.S. was nearly two-thirds smaller in the March 2007 to March 2009 period than it had been from March 2000 to March 2005. This decline contributed to an overall 8% reduction in the unauthorized immigrant population, which fell to 11.1 million in 2009 from 12 million in 2007. By region of origin, the population of unauthorized immigrants from Latin American countries other than Mexico has declined the most markedly. By U.S. region, the decrease in the unauthorized immigrant population has been especially notable along the nation’s Southeast Coast and in its Mountain West.

Cenote in Yucatán, Mexico

The Mexico Tourism Board has initiated an ad campaign in the United States and Canada to inspire visitors from those countries to explore the great diversity within Mexico, the number one foreign destination for North American tourists.

The campaign’s slogan is “Mexico, The Place You Thought You Knew”, and seeks to awaken curiosity in travelers, showing not only the typical beach destinations, but also the natural beauty, cultural heritage and “chic” destinations.

The campaign is being run in print media and television (maybe they should take anote from companies like Volaris that use the internet as their main advertising medium). Investment in the campaign from the Tourism Board is higher than 30% of the ad budget in 2008.  Study showed that the best audience for the campaign is people from 35 to 65 years old, with annual income above $75,000.

If the Shoes Fits...

People may be growing somewhat accustomed to being tracked online and shown ads for products similar to others they have shown interest in. At first it may seem like a “coincidence” and then you catch on. Wow! These computer guys are pretty crafty. Hmmm…

More and more, however, the ads tailored to the specific viewer are for specific products that they have looked at online. How can that happen? The New York Times recently described the phenomenon. Where are they getting that information on me? It is that Big Brother thing, isn’t it? Not really. But it is close. And it is only the beginning- therein lies the debate. Where are the lines to be drawn between smart, highly efficient marketing and intrusive abuse of personal information? The answer to that question, while not necessarily new, is still in its infancy, even while the techniques and the technologies that allow for personalized retargeting to be used in marketing mature and evolve exponentially.

In the online advertising business, personalized marketing is being hailed as a breakthrough, because it tries to show consumers the right ad at the right time: more appropriate for the consumer and more efficient for the advertiser. But there are reservations too. Many fear that it increases the concern that there may be unnecessary surveillance going on, and perhaps represents an infringement of privacy.  There are various proposals to regulate it. But the debate will continue to rage.

Big Brother Knows What You're Buying Online

Retargeting is not new. Programs for retargeting use small text files or “cookies” that are exchanged when a Web browser visits a site. This process is used by virtually all commercial web sites’ loyalty programs and in aiding in the customization of content. What IS new is its increasing use and the dramatic and quick application of retargeting by many mainstream sites like Zappos, Amazon and others. The question that will be delicate to answer for those in marketing and online advertising may be when and when not to use it. And, of course, how the shoe fits the occasion.

Immigrant Labor Helps the Economy: Study

Giovanni Peri, a researcher at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, recently published a study showing that immigrants, rather than taking jobs from American workers, “expand the U.S. economy’s productive capacity, stimulate investment, and promote specialization that in the long run boosts productivity”.  The San Francisco Business Times first reported on the release of this study on Monday, August 30th.

This study is significant for several reasons.  First of all, opponents of any sort of immigration reform would be hard-pressed to criticize a source as fair-minded and non-biased as the Federal Reserve, which is hardly known for left-wing bias (or any bias, for that matter).  The study was based on a comparison of data from states with a high percentage of immigrant workers and states with a low percentage of immigrant workers.  Looking at the immigration debate from a purely economic standpoint and leaving behind politics, we can see that, whether they are highly skilled workers from Western Europe and East Asia or laborers from Central American and the Caribbean, immigrants fill gaps in the economy that American workers cannot fill.  The issue of bringing more highly skilled engineers and computer scientists to Silicon Valley from abroad has long been a hot topic.  And farm owners from Watsonville to the Yakima Valley to Yuma know that their fields would lie fallow if not for the cheap and ready labor of immigrant workers (whether legal or illegal).  In this still-recovering economy, let’s not use as a punching bag the workers who are increasing our productive capacity.

Qué Rica Vida - General Mills

In the battle for the hearts and minds of the Hispanic market, the CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies are reaching out to the community with content-driven initiatives. A recent MediaPost article by Joe Kutchera equates online content as the new brand marketing.

The article discusses the efforts of General Mills, SC Johnson, Kraft and other CPG companies’ content initiatives. While more detail about their efforts is available in the article, here is a quick breakdown of some of the sites being developed by major brands that are much more than just a landing page- they are information resources for the Hispanic community.

Comida Kraft (Kraft Foods)
Right @ Home (SC Johnson)
Pampers Village (Procter & Gamble)
Vive Mejor (Uniliever)

Social Media

The online world, which has reinvented the marcom mix to consumers and between businesses (B2B), has also awoken a very interesting phenomenon in social media. The million dollar question now is: what is the role and fundamental objective of social media in the marketing mix?

After attending the “Search Engine Strategies” SES Conference in San Francisco, where I was exposed to various sessions where online marketing experts offered their various points of view, and specifically on social networks, I’ve come to the conclusion that, although all of us who work in digital marketing are up to date on its potential and obvious growth, no one has been able to truly measure, rationalize or identify its best use from a conceptual point of view, within the overall marketing mix.

If we look at social networking at its most basic, what is it: “Social network, added value for consumers in providing a space for open dialogue among friends to socialize, establish a relationship.” It’s almost a cybnernetic extension of ourselves.

Looking at it from this angle, we can see that social networks do fulfill an essential role within digital marketing, whenever one’s objectives are to build an organic relationship with consumers and an identification with brands, so that within the marketing mix, social networks serve to redirect consumers towards that next step, closer to an ROI.

It’s clear for me that all aspects of marketing (Display Networking, SEO/SEM, E-mail, DR, Social Media, etc…) fulfill a specific and synergistic function among each other; in this case, directing consumers to identify with brands.