Wow.  It's been a while since I posted last.  Nice long one week trip to Germany and Austria.  Very overdue.  You just know that I was over there checking out all the hiking and climbing shops to see the unique brands ( in addition to hitting the beer gardens). Plus I drove like a old man on the Autobahn as I was not used to driving at 140mph.  Serious.  You go over there thinking you can handle it and Ferrari's, S4's, S500's are all passing you so fast your car shakes.   Blinker....right lane for me.

Back to the outdoor biz. Tons of calls this week and I thought it would be good to maybe make a Top 3 list of common questions I get from outdoor companies who are just now starting to try and understand online media. 

The above pdf I posted it what I spend most of my day reviewing.  Very simple.  Just like there is Nielsen for TV ratings on audience counts, there is comScore for ratings on websites.  So when I tell an outdoor brand that I have 1.2 million enthusiasts under our umbrella of outdoor sites....tis very true and we're measuring it every day.  Scouts honor.

Now the above is for our full network of company owned sites, so I guess I'll start there for the Top 3:

Q:  What is the Outdoor Enthusiast Channel?

We are a collection of private web sites owned by one company called NameMedia.  The outdoor channel is just one of our 5 channels, the others being Consumer Technology, Home & Garden, Automotive and Entertainment.

Q:  Where will my ad be seen?

Anywhere you want across our collection of outdoor sites:

Rockclimbing.com, Biking.com, Cycling.com, Dropzone.com, flyfish.com, boating.com...etc..etc.  We also have an extended pocket of sites for the ski / alpine / surf crowd ( Alpinist.com, Surfline.com, Tetongravity.com...etc..etc.)

Imagine the power of making one ad, making one purchase order and sending one file and having your ad show in Biking, Rock & Ice, Alpinist, Outside, Field & Stream.  All at the same time. 

Q: How do I know which site is best?

A: You can pick them based off your super cool marketing research or we can do it for you.  Every week we get a report of where your ads were shown, broken out by state, zip...whatever you need.  And then we start to "optimize" the campaign by turning off spots that are not performing well ( wasting your money ) and re-allocate these advertisements to areas that are performing well ( doubling down ).

There are more questions out there so maybe in another post I'll group some more together.  I know they are coming since I had a call yesterday with a super traditional brand that I thought would never ever never ever want to try online media.  100% stoked that they have seen the light.

I'm pretty impressed with a recent survey Gore-Tex put through on our network and I thought I'd share the link.

Basically, they are shaving off R&D time by using this survey to determine key product directions.  Amazing.  I bet all of the cool stuff in this survey is on the design table, and GORE is using the survey to see which one has more legs to it.

Take the survey and let me know what you think:

Gore-Tex Survey 2009

Remember the Blair Witch Project?  How everyone was running around saying, "...it's real...you have to see this....I'm so scared!!!"  It was fake, and the agency knew it.  But it made a TON of money.

Fast forward 10 years ( yes, its been that long) and now we have the low budget Paranormal Activity.  Paramount was sitting on a $15K total cost blockbuster and they took the road less traveled when it came to distribution.

If you've been reading my blog long, you know I love to call it out how top line media outlets trickle down cool ideas on how outdoor brands can reach customers.  In this case, its all about geo-targeting a gold mine.

Instead of blowing all sorts of money on pre-screenings, trailers....events, etc..etc...in order to make the most from the film Paramount used a little social media to get the word out.  They tested a few midnight screenings, and then leveraged a social media web site where Joe Public could hit a button to make a "request" to have a screening in his area. 

BINGO.  Use social media to help guage your roll out especially when you are sitting on gold mine with zero budget.  Control the risk.  Paramount screened the movie in the exact locations where the demand was the strongest.  And now for the outdoor spin.

Brands still don't realize this, but when our Outdoor Channel serves up ads...we know exactly where the person lives who clicked on it and what site they were visiting when they saw the ad.  We have 1.4 million users in our system.  This is like taking a print ad and getting a report back from the publisher saying which outdoor fans liked your ad by state.

To take this one step further, maybe you are sitting on a product that needs to get better traction inside the retail channel.  How to find the right reps?  Where?  How about running your ad, a general one, across our network and then getting a report by state showing who was the most interested.  Then....you can target the states for retail open orders based on where you "see" the consumers having the most interest. 

Our reports can show demo info by state, zip code, country, time of day....you name it.  Curious if you have any interest in the UK?  Got it.  Curious if your paid print campaign last summer in the southeast did anything for your brand?  Got it.

You get the point.  With everyone talking about limited dollars to allocate towards marketing, it sure helps to know where you should advertise ahead of time.

I'm trying to think back in my marketing days when the whole idea behind capturing consumer emails and then creating an uber cool template to mail them out was all the rage.  It still is, but the consumer has kept pace and it now takes a lot more effort to keep those open rates where they need to be.

Interesting read from MediaPost on the trend of email open rates notes that for the last quarter it was 5.9% on average. 

One of our clients in the outdoor space has done an amazing amount of business with us this year.  And a by-product of their ad spend has been 1,000's of emails  captured from our user base via an opt-in trigger.  We capture the emails and then at the end of the month we email the file to the client.

Just this week I asked how things were going, and they were clear in that they really had little frame of reference for what a "good" open rate would be.  I told them anywhere north of 8% was outstanding.  Their reply? 

.8% opt outs
27.2% opens
33.2% clicks

Almost 4x the average open rate.  Amazing as well to me since they manage this program in house and do not use an agency.  So what is the deal?

While I would like to take credit for all of this I'll only take half.....I must say that the marketing team with this outdoor brand is one of the most passionate I have come across.  They have a clear idea of who their customer is, what message is appropriate and most importantly, they do not put any "fluff" in their marketing communications.

The key part of their email list is that it was generated from our outdoor network.  Passionate consumers, in this case from climbers, who knew the brand and had good experiences with it.  I would say "trust" would be a good word to describe the relationship. 

Our members spend on average 2x more on outdoor gear than any Joe Public you can buy from a list broker off the street.  And they probably cost less as well.

By targeting the email communications with enthusiasts in the climbing space, this company is just killing it when it comes to stealing market share from the big players.  It amazes me that up and coming brands can still do this in such a saturated market.

I'll try to dig up some more stats on what this open rate is doing for their paid search and brand awareness as well.  It doesn't end with the email open rate.  The company will now start to rank higher on Google as more consumers try to engage the brand, search for the brand products and also search for the items in their brand category.