More RSS Feeds Posted On The MineThatData Blog

When I asked for feedback about this blog, I learned that this blog was used as a homepage (by the way, I've awarded the free book, thanks for all of the feedback!).

So I've expanded the number of RSS feeds featured on the right side of the page. Each day, you'll be able to enjoy content from many different sources in the direct marketing industry, including the following:

• DMNews, Multichannel Merchant, Catalog Success, Direct Magazine, Seth Godin, Marketing Sherpa, Forrester Research, Shop.org, Marketing Profs Daily Fix, Avinash Kaushik, Alan Rimm-Kaufman, Jim Novo, David Raab, Tamara Gielen, Juice Analytics, LunaMetrics, Becky Carroll, James Taylor, Adelino de Almeida, Sandro Saitta, Jeff Larche, Suzanne Obermire, Chris Baggott, Alison Bolen, Customer U Blog, Michael Fassnacht, Sandeep Giri, Rick Whittington, Anthony Power, Gretchen Scheiman, Pat LaPointe, Dean Abbott, Sarah Clelland / Snow Patrol, Mark Brownlow, Mack Collier, Grant Johnson / Johnson Direct, Manuel Lima / Visual Complexity, Ted Grigg, Harry Joiner, F. Curtis Barry, Bob Bly, Charlene Li, John Hagel, Varien's e-Commerce Cache Blog.

Some "Friends of MineThatData" had invalid RSS feeds, and therefore, weren't included. If you think your blog should be included in this list, send me an e-mail, and I'll review the content to see if it is appropriate.


You might be wondering about some of the comments folks offered for this blog. Here's a sampling of comments:

• More discussions about retailers.
• Shorter posts.
• More discussions about analytics, and show the actual solutions.
• More free spreadsheets (mentioned often).
  
• Re-define what a "catalog customer" is.
• Impact of price of oil on direct merchants.
• Diminishing returns of increased advertising.
• More on time series modeling.
• More on business applications of data mining (mentioned often).
  
• Make big ideas implementable for small businesses.
• More B2B ideas and discussions.
• Talk more about measuring campaigns across channels.
• Keep the list of posts broad, not narrow in scope.
• Talk more about ROI.

A Veritable Harvest Of Information

For your weekend reading pleasure:

Chad White covers the e-mail campaigns of the top one hundred retailers, so that you don't have to. Here is a summary from the past few days.

Mark Brownlow shares places to get good ideas for e-mail campaigns.

From Johnson Direct, a brief discussion about handwritten thank you cards.

Marketing Sherpa ... how to get your business book published!

Forrester Research continues to dive head-first into Facebook issues and privacy.

Tamara Gielen talks about competition in E-Newsletter Ads. Her e-mail blog is one of my favorites for reasonably unbiased information.

David Raab knows how to review software. Here's a discussion about SAS real-time decisioning.

Avinash Kaushik shares six recommendations for measuring blog success. By the way, his book on Web Analytics is a HUGE success, with proceeds donated to charity.

The Rimm-Kaufman Group has an excellent post on paid search for companies just starting out in the world of paid search.

Here's a story about the Seven Perils of Segmentation from the esteemed Jim Novo.

An oldie but a goodie from Jim Fulton on hiring, training and nurturing Database Marketers.

The folks at Juice Analytics tell us how to optimize a low traffic site.

Ron Shevlin vents about the content at conferences.

Enterprise decision management cult icon James Taylor talks about the revival of personalization.

Adelino de Almeida shares his thoughts about Starbucks and their television marketing strategy.

Sandro Saitta reviews the book, Web Dragons, a book about search marketing.

Targeted B2B marketing is one of the topics that Jeff Larche discusses this month.

RRW Consulting shares a retention case study that's worth reading.

Alison Bolen shares a few comments from a recent interview that SAS founder Jim Goodnight gave.

Customer U talks about no-cost customer research tools.

Michael Fassnacht writes about a presentation he watched on the "Read/Write" culture (I also watched this presentation, it's a good use of 20 minutes).

Sandeep Giri talks about the polarization of business intelligence solutions.

Jonathan Starets co-created a campaign that was a top three finisher for DMA Marketer of the Year.

Rick Whittington has a series on Holiday Shopping Tips. Here's tip number one, put best selling items on the homepage.

Anthony Power mentions that last month's DMA conference lacked buzz.

Gretchen Scheiman links to an article that discusses the history of e-mail.

Pat LaPointe doesn't think Google is about to dominate marketing dashboards.

UK-based Catalogue/E-Business allows readers to ask questions of direct marketing experts.

On the F. Curtis Barry blog, there's a discussion about how contact centers handle e-mail.

Harry Joiner talks about resume spam.

Ann Handley at Marketing Profs now offers snack-sized newsletters.

Mack Collier offers his readers a veritable plethora of link love to his Marketing Top 25.

Damien Francois writes about intelligent machines over at his blog.

Don Libey shares his thoughts about mergers and acquisitions with DMNews.

Friends Of MineThatData, May 27, 2007

Here are the top ten blogs in the Friends of MineThatData for May 2007. Please take a look at the content these authors are writing.

1 = Occam's Razor, 7.0
2 = Customers Rock!, 4.7
3 = Juice Analytics, 3.8
4 = Rimm-Kaufman Group, 3.2
5 = Marketing ROI, 2.9
6 = Sports Marketing 2.0, 2.7
7 = Marketing Productivity Blog, 2.6
8 = Luna Metrics, 2.5 (was 4.8 prior to new URL).
9 = Profitable Marketing, 1.8
10 = Data Mining Research, 1.6
10 = Digital Solid 1.6

Friends Of MineThatData: April 28, 2007

We'll watch with excitement as LunaMetrics drops like a rock, due to a migration from Blogger to a new URL. Blog ratings tools don't like change, and as a result, are penalizing LunaMetrics.

Here's the Top Ten:

1 = Occam's Razor at a BlogJuice ranking of 6.7 (that's good, FYI).
2 = Customers Rock!, 4.6
3 = Juice Analytics, 3.8
4 = Rimm-Kaufman Group, 3.2
5 = Sports Marketing 2.0, 2.5
6 = Marketing ROI, 2.3 (this site improved since last month)
7 = Jim Novo, 2.1
8 = Profitable Marketing, 1.8 (this site also improved since last month)
9 = Luna Metrics, 1.6 (was 4.8 prior to the URL change, let's watch this site climb the charts).
10 = SASCOM Magazine Blog (Alison Bolen, welcome!), 1.5
10 = Data Mining Research, 1.5

Friends of MineThatData: March 30, 2007

Congrats to Luna Metrics and Ron Shevlin's Marketing ROI for making upward progress in this month's Friends of MineThatData rankings.

To be included in the Friends of MineThatData rankings, send me your blog, and I'll take a peek at it over the course of a few weeks. I typically include blogs that focus on Customers, Database Marketing, Marketing Analytics, Web Analytics and Direct Marketing.

Once included, I run the "BlogJuice" score for each blog --- a formula that balances RSS subscribers (via Bloglines), actual visitors (via Alexa), and links (via Technorati).


The Top Ten for March.

1 = Occam's Razor, 6.7
2 = Luna Metrics, 4.8
3 = Customers Rock!, 4.6
4 = Juice Analytics, 3.8
5 = Rimm-Kaufman Group, 3.1
6 = Sports Marketing 2.0, 2.5
7 = Jim Novo's Marketing Productivity Blog, 2.3
8 = Ron Shevlin's Marketing ROI, 2.1
9 = Profitable Marketing, 1.7
10 = Business Enterprise Management, 1.5
10 = Data Mining Research, 1.5

Digital Solid and the Customer Experience Matrix continue to bubble just under the top ten.

Friends of MineThatData: February 24, 2007

Most sites in this month's Friends of MineThatData rankings improved their metrics, building audience and community during the month of February. Good job!

The three big movers this week are Customers Rock!, Jim Novo's Marketing Productivity Blog ,and Ron Shevlin's Marketing ROI blog. Congrats to all three authors for building an audience.

You, too, can be included in the Friends of MineThatData rankings by doing the following:

• Host a blog that focuses on Database Marketing, ROI, Web Analytics, Direct Marketing or Customer Behavior.
• Focus on writing content that is largely positive.

If you feel your blog meets the criteria mentioned above, send me an e-mail with a hyperlink to your blog.

Here are the top ten blogs --- see the right sidebar for all Friends of MineThatData.

1st Place = Occam's Razor, 6.7
2nd Place = Customer's Rock, 4.6
3rd Place = LunaMetrics, 4.5
4th Place = Juice Analytics, 3.8
5th Place = Rimm-Kaufman Group, 3.0
6th Place = Sports Marketing 2.0, 2.6
7th Place = Jim Novo's Marketing Productivity Blog, 2.2
8th Place = Profitable Marketing, 1.7
8th Place = Marketing ROI, 1.7
10th Place = Business Enterprise Management, 1.5
10th Place = Data Mining Research, 1.5

Top Four Articles For December

Here's the content you enjoyed the most during the month of December. Not counting today, you participated in a twenty percent increase in traffic over November, so thank you!

Three sites tied for the fourth most popular post of December.

Fully Understanding The Traffic Your Site Truly Generates was written late in the month, yet is tied for fourth place. Readers enjoyed the comparison of traffic, links and RSS feeds. Surprisingly, tied for fourth was Kasey Casem's American Top 40. Readers apparently enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane. Finally, American Girl And Molly's Blog tied for fourth place. This was a discussion of the blog on the American Girl website.

Third place goes to our monthly review of Friends of MineThatData, a ranking of direct marketing, database marketing and analytics blogs.

Second place was a brief article that linked to LunaMetrics, titled Do You Like Your Web Analytics Software Package?

First place goes to Coldwater Creek, The Little Engine That Could, a discussion of the evolution of the Coldwater Creek business model from a catalog-centric business to a retail-centric business supported by a website.

The top four posts clearly represent the diversity of the audience. Multichannel topics, web analytics, blogging, peer sites, and an obscure reference to Casey Kasem generally reflect the mix of readers and topics on this blog.

Friends of MineThatData: December 22, 2006

Here are the top ten Friends of MineThatData for December 22, 2006. Blogs that focus on Web Analytics, Direct Marketing, Database Marketing or Analysis, with a focus on helping others, are eligible for inclusion in this list. If you believe your blog should be included, leave a comment, and I will visit your site for potential inclusion.

1. Occam's Razor = 6.7
2. Juice Analytics = 4.0
3. LunaMetrics = 3.6
4. Rimm-Kaufman Group = 2.3
5. Sports Marketing 2.0 = 1.7
6. Business Enterprise Management = 1.5
7. Digital Solid = 1.3
8. Acxiom Direct = 1.2
9. Marketing Measurement Today = 1.1
10. Tie: Marketing Geek and Customer Experience Matrix = 1.0

Juice Analytics made a nice move this month, as did Sports Marketing 2.0 and Digital Solid. All members of the Friends of MineThatData scored nice increases in their audience, as measured by BlogJuice.

Friends of MineThatData: November 19, 2006

Here are a few good articles from the Friends of MineThatData.

Occam's Razor: A good discussion about measuring the "real" conversion rate.

Luna Metrics: Twelve highly-detailed suggestions on improving blog conversion.

Rimm-Kaufman Group: A discussion with catalog expert John Lenser.

Digital Solid is hosting this week's Carnival of Marketing.