57% of online retailers plan to spend more on e-commerce technology in 2010, including 49% whose investment priorities cover new or upgraded e-commerce technology platforms, Forrester Research Inc. says in the study, “2010 U.S. Online Retail Technology Investment Outlook.” The report is based on a survey of 291 online retailers in the fourth quarter of 2009. Other popular areas of technology investment this year include content management tools, multichannel order management integration, system security and mobile commerce. Among the goals underlying many investment plans this year are improved marketing capabilities, including a strong focus on social marketing as well as search and other forms of online marketing, the study says. See the summary report here.

Dixon Jones, founding director of Receptional Internet Marketing, writes in SES magazine that the most successful companies…”use web architectures that do not make themselves inadvertently blind to the search engines. They build sites that can develop over time to feed a search engine rather than starve it of the thing it craves most – data, information, and knowledge.” He talks about shifting resources to influencing non-monetized traffic to your site. Read the print article here.

As online retail sales perked up in the fourth quarter of 2009, many leading e-retailers did a better job of making their web sites easy to shop and responding promptly to consumer inquiries, retail consultancy The E-tailing Group Inc. found in its 12th Annual Mystery Shopping Study. “Throughout our review we observed merchants being attentive to efficiencies for ease of use, differentiators to drive conversion and involvers to engage customers,” the firm says in the study. The report notes, for example, that retailers such as Blue Nile and REI responded to customer e-mails in less than 30 minutes, and that most of the retailers in its E-tailing Group 100 study group let shoppers sort site search results by price, category and brand. Most also link to social networking sites. Other features are still less common, such as sorting site search results by top sellers and product style and fit. See the results here.

Judith Lewis, search director at i-level, Europe’s largest digital communications agency, discusses SEM in this article for SES Magazine. She notes that “Search engine marketing, while a complex discipline, is part math, part psychology, part marketing, and part creativity” It really isn’t a black art, although some would say that it is an occult science.

Check out the print article here.

Ralph Tegtmeier, co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com: “We have been in the Internet business since 1999. You do tend to get a bit jaded after all that time spent in pursuing countless fads, the dotcom bubble, the incessant hype over IT, and lots more. The Twitter experience, however, has effectively managed to revert all of this – not the least because it’s so eminently profitable if you do it right.

So, what’s involved in ‘doing it right’? Ralph outlines in this article the tact to take when automating your twitter campaign. The biggest challenge is figuring out how to engage followers. He counters the contention that “Twitter is an utter waste of time…you can’t make any money with Twitter”

Read the print article here

Bill Siwicki, editor of Mobile Commerce Report, put together an interesting piece for Intenet Retailer Magazine discussing the pros and cons of mobile sites and mobile apps. He contrasts sites (which have a large reach) with apps (which provide a better user experience). In addition to the clearing up some of the confusion regarding the 2 marketing channels, he discusses why one would go in one direction or the other. For example, an app would potentially have access to the address on someone’s smartphone, where a site would not. Conversely, a site would be available to far more users without the overhead of having to download and install an app.

Read article on Internet Retailer here

Read print article here

Keith Peterson, the senior vice president of the data division of Experian Marketing Services writes this piece for Target Marketing outlining strategies for reactivating stagnant customers. This can be some of the most rewarding ‘cold-calling’ one can do. These folks have bought from you before and just need a little nudge to bring them back into the fold. Today, this nudge can take many different forms (perhaps more than one), given the new social media explosion.

Read the print article here

Access the TM article online here

Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally-recognized business strategist and enterprise architect who has worked for 20 years to bring innovative solutions to clients in the Global 2000, federal government, and Internet startup community. He tackles the question “What is Web 2.0?” in this article on AIIM.org. AIIM was founded in 1943 as the National Microfilm Association and later became the Association for Information and Image Management.

For some time I had assumed that web 2.0 was a technology, like xhtml or perhaps a wider browser layout. As Dion describes in this article, it is really more about a collaborative, distributive approach to the handling of data. If you’re not on board, Web 2.0′s time is here and now.

Read the print article here

See the online version here

The shift is on from reputation-based deliverability toward engagement-based factors for bulk emailers. Reputation-based strategies are no longer enough; one must get readers to actually engage one’s email, by either clicking “this is not spam”, or otherwise interacting with an email. Some of the major webmail players are now taking into account how well a marketer engages the reader. Read Michelle Eichner’s account:

online, here

in print, here

Internet Retailer reports that two studies, one by Ecoconsultancy.com and the other by NetElixir suggest that SEM marketing is on the rise as the economy improves. Conversion rates and average order values are on the rise. However, this news must be tempered with the fact that CPC is on the rise.

Read the print article here

Read online here