Youtube announced two recent innovations designed to strengthen advertising revenues and enable marketers to take advantage of the site’s popularity.

Participatory Video Ads (PVA’s) – user-initiated commercials. Imagine if you got to choose what commercials you watched on TV? Only the really funny, really informative and really engaging ones would get airtime. That’s the idea behind PVA’s, with the added bonus that advertisers get to participate in community discussions about the creative. 

Brand Channels: It’s a Youtube channel, skinned to reflect the look and feel of your brand, showcasing your best video content. And readers can ‘subscribe’. That’s right, permission video marketing.

Video and social marketing are the hottest things on the Internet today. And for good reason, together they put the buying power back in consumer’s hands. Marketer’s who embrace this new world will benefit – users may soon find it harder to distinguish between advertising and information. (See our post “in marketing news this week”). Look out for a new Kinetix service coming soon to clients near you!

Get the full story right from the horses mouth, by clicking here.

1. Advertising Age: eTailers trade consumer reviews for traffic
2. Boston Globe: Consumers unaware when blogs used to pitch products
3. Click Weekly: Bad news for mobile, business users just want to make a phone call
4. Clickz: Tabbed browsers change surfing styles

The other day I wrote about the increasing importance of alt tags for email marketers. Today, some tips on how to write an alt tag that sells your offer.

Newsletter headers and section titles – repeat the text of the image and consider adding a teaser that adds interest to that section of the newsletter. (Toolbox: How to write a great alt tag)

Charts and Graphs - identify what the image is, and the value of the content. (Chart: Average Clickthrough by List Size)

Promotional Offers - state the offer clearly and be sure to communicate the full value, especially if your promotional email is primarily image based. The objective of your alt tag here is to generate a click through. (50% off all girls back to school fashions)

Product Photos – if your email contains images of your products, describe them clearly, briefly. Would you rather see a “red sweater sku 8887676” or a “lush angora crewneck in wild cherry”?

Template elements – these are the images that solidify your brand – your logo and header images. Be as brief as possible but stay true to your positioning. Include the name of your newsletter or your company and the key subject of the message. (Pacific National Exhibition – Your Prize Home Virtual Tour)

Newsletters: For logos, headers, section titles and other uses of images, describe the logo and image, but as appropriate consider adding a brief teaser that explains that section of the newsletter further. For example: “Optimization - Strategies for improving email marketing performance.”

Much like your subject line, today’s alt tags must be as compelling as the best envelope copy you’ve ever written!

If you’re a B2B marketer, you’ve almost certainly run smack into the brick wall of Lotus Notes. Many larger businesses continue to use older versions of Lotus Notes (older than R5) within their enterprise email platform – and that can make life very interesting for email marketers.

What’s the problem with older versions of Lotus Notes? Simply put, the Domino server used in a Lotus Notes environment tends to reformat HTML before passing it through to your readers and the results can be disastrous. The specific issues depend on the configuration. Anyone using Lotus Notes older than R5 will convert your beautiful HMTL to Lotus Notes Rich Text format and won’t recognize multipart messages (HTML and text together in a single message). Even when Lotus Notes is R5 or newer, if it is used with older version of Domino server software, Domino will mangle the HTML and your emails won’t display correctly.

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Dear Aunt May,

Lately, my email newsletter seems – well – flat. And my readers aren’t responding to sales offers the way they used to. I don’t understand it! What can I do to rekindle the spark in our relationship?

- High Expectations, North Vancouver, BC

Dear Expectations,

You’re not alone. Lots of once great relationships fizzle out over time – usually because someone isn’t working hard enough to keep the home fires burning. Let me ask you a question. Are you putting less effort into the relationship than you used to? Sending newsletters that are 75% promotion and 25% information.

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