When WebMarketCentral was first launched, the plan was to offer an associated newsletter. After careful consideration, this ain't gonna happen. E-newsletters were, not so many years ago, a clever and unique idea (good newsletters anyway). Just a few short years later, email newsletters are beyond ubiquitous. Even the most laggard of sites offer one. People are sick of them. Email in-boxes are overflowing, few people are signing up, and fewer still are actually opening the newsletters they do receive. Suzanne Falter-Barns does a great job addressing the issue of blogs vs. e-newsletters here . Blogs are more immediate, faster, easier, less formal, and with comments, more interactive. In the case of WebMarketCentral, I thought about what my newsletter would include if I wrote one: a link to my latest blog posting, e-commerce news and Web marketing news headlines, a sponsor or two, and some humor. Since pretty much all of that is already available on the site -- generally with ...

Got marketing research to do? Want to stay current on a topic, industry or company? Here are a couple of sites that can help. One that's probably familiar is Individual.com . This is a free customized news service that enables you to choose topics you'd like to track -- news, trends and analysis on your competitors, customers and target markets -- and then scans and delivers this content to you via email and the Web. While it includes ads, and doesn't have the wide breadth of sources of a fee-based service like Moreover , it does a reasonably good job of keeping you informed about the topic(s) of interest to you on a budget. A second helpful tool, one that I hadn't heard of until recently, is BPubs.com . This is a search engine that searches only business publications. If you're looking for information on a specific company or industry and are overwhelmed by the worthless crap turned up by standard search engines, BPubs.com can help by narrowing your search to ...

It’s not the most elegant of acronyms, but it is a solid approach to new marketing campaigns or roles. I was recently pointed to a report from Spencer Stuart titled “A Blueprint for Top Marketers’ First 100 Days.” It’s short and worth a read, but I was expecting more of a detailed roadmap. What their advice comes down to is: talk to lots of people in your new company, establish relationships, and get them on board with your plans. That advice is solid and useful, but hardly profound. So, here’s the roadmap I would propose, based on the acronym RAPIMMR: R: Research. Jumping in right away with a “master plan” based on your past experience, but with no input or buy-in from your new co-workers, is a recipe for disaster. Ask lots of questions, of lots of people. What’s been done in the past? What’s worked, and what hasn’t? What’s been considered, but not tried? Ask about marketing programs, key messages, competition, and objectives. Do this both to gain knowledge as well as establish r...

I was honored this week to speak with author, blogger and expert on smart marketing to women online, Yvonne DiVita. Her book Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online is raising eyebrows and helping smart marketers improve their results, and her witty and widely-read blog was honored as one of the Best Blogs of 2005 by Marketing Sherpa. WebMarketCentral (WMC): What did you do before Windsor Media Enterprises? What’s your background? Yvonne DiVita (YD): I've been a writer for my entire life. In fact, I got myself in trouble in 2nd grade because all I did was write (and illustrate -- boy those pics should be worth $$) stories about kids and pets. My teacher called my mother. Together, they tried to convince me I needed to do things like math and science, too. Guess I buckled -- I made it into the third grade and beyond. So, writing is in my blood. From thereon, I spent the majority of my time writing and reading. In high school I was the one everyone came to for help ...