We teamed up with our friends at Bayou Rebirth to help plant palmetto and cypress trees in the Bonnet Carré Spillway on March 6^th in a park that the Wetland Warriors are building to help save the wetlands.

We took to the latest volunteer activity like a fish to water, or in our case like mudbugs to mud.

Saturday morning’s weather was perfect – bright and sunny without a cloud in the sky. Emily and I piled into my car, and set out on a journey to the spillway, just past the New Orleans airport. After missing a couple of highway exits, asking for directions, and passing a refinery, we turned onto a dirt road that would lead us to the coastline we would be restoring.

I couldn’t help but think while I was guiding my ancient Volvo down what was little more than a footpath that the ride was surprisingly smoother than any drive down St. Charles Avenue. Could filling potholes be our next community service activity please?

Four miles down the road, and 20 minutes later, the road opened up to a magnificent view of Lake Pontchartrain. As one of our volunteers remarked later in the day, “It’s the best view from a port o’ potty I’ve ever seen!”

The wetland park is sort of the brainchild of Wetland Warrior Milton Cambre, who in the 1950’s had the foresight to begin conservation work on the coastline. Milton explained the merit of preserving the wetlands, not just for aesthetics but because they act as a natural barrier against storms and hurricanes.

After our orientation, we rolled up our sleeves and put on what I lovingly and incorrectly referred to as “shrimpin boots.” We spent much of the morning and afternoon planting cypress and palmetto trees. Some of us were even lucky enough to be assigned the task of moving mud, which, believe it or not, was awesome!

Check out some more pictures of Mudbugs hard at work.

A good time was had by all, and when we finally collapsed into the car, sunburned and sore, we felt as if we really did do something to help save the wetlands.  Every tree counts, and we must have planted dozens of them.

To learn more about how you can volunteer, click here.

That’s where analytics come in.  Functioning like an online inventory system, analytics programs allow to you gather a wide range of information on every visitor to your site.  And since the majority of analytics programs are free and open to the public, there’s no reason why every website today shouldn’t employ some sort of analytical tracking method.

Here are the five most important tools that I use on a daily basis to track websites for our clients:

1. Google Analytics – A free service, Google Analytics is the real workhorse of analytics tools.  By far the most commonly used service, Google Analytics gives you click data on basic metrics – page views, unique viewers, and referral information.  It organizes it all in a layered fashion – you start with top-level dimensions and you can dig down according to whatever metrics you want to look at.  It also creates charts and graphs automatically and integrates easily with Google AdWords accounts for streamlined administration of your online marketing tactics.
2. Mint – While Google Analytics is based on dimensions such as pages, locations and referrals; Mint is real-time tracking – the Twitter of analytics.  Mint offers “Peppers,” plugins that allow you to really customize the way you track things on your site.  Google Analytics has an API, however useful plugins and third party apps are somewhat lacking at this point besides JuiceAnalytics.

AWStats – Free, open-source tool installed on our server that analyzes data based on the server log files.  Since AWStats is installed on the server level, it automatically tracks any websites operating off of that server, making it more reliable than Google Analytics, which is based on a JavaScript tracker that sends information based on user interaction.  While Google Analytics offers more robust information, AWStats offers reliable data to compare GA against.

Google Webmaster Tools- Much like we use AWStats to bounce numbers off of to get the most accurate information possible, Google Webmaster Tools helps us more faithfully understand traffic sources and other important data about the site.  These tools allow you to look at:

• Search engine data – where did your site show up on the search results page, and is it worth it to pursue SEO if you’re already getting plenty of clicks in the fifth position front page?
• Traffic sources – which pages have the most inbound links?
• Most common keywords – what is Google currently associating your site with?
• Page Load Time (part of the experimental “Labs” section) – how quickly/slowly the site is loading.  Are slow loading times becoming a problem?  This will become a bigger issue as Google begins to roll out their algorithm that uses page load time to determine placement.

My Brain – All of these tools are great and useful, but you need to be able to take a step back, analyze all the data and make an executive decision about how you want to proceed. A computer that can spot the most essential data for your particular set of needs and goals or personalize the overall image and usability of your site using analytic data hasn’t been invented. For that, you need your brain.

But email marketing is both a standout and a risk for marketers and there are right and wrong ways to approach email marketing campaigns.  Through email, Internet service providers and marketers have tested, measured and learned through trial and error what works and what doesn’t, ultimately creating best practices and laws that govern email marketing today.

The key to online marketing success is creating relevance for the recipient or viewer. In the case of email marketing, that means getting explicit permission from the email recipients before sending them email marketing messages, and personalizing the offers as much as possible.

Spreading the News

Email Newsletters are sent on a consistent basis to subscribed customers interested in timely information about your business.  One-off email campaigns are also useful but are generally built around one time offers or targeted email as part of a larger marketing campaign effort.

Mass email sent to your customers should be treated the same as if you are sending one email to one customer.  Mass email marketing campaigns should ideally drive traffic to your website to create more business opportunities and therefore make you or your company more money.

Email deliverability isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s a must have

In the late 90s and the early part of the 21st century, email messages were deployed with little to no concern about whether they were actually delivered.  In its relative infancy email marketing was more about getting the message out the door than it was about worrying if the email made it to the desired recipients.

Email deliverability is one of the most important aspects of email marketing. Not only do we now know that email messages cannot be acted upon if they aren’t delivered and read, but we also know that a company’s online reputation is the foremost reason why email messages are delivered or not.  And, perhaps more importantly, a company’s online reputation is heavily weighted by how email subscribers do or do not interact with its email messages.

Measure the results, not just the indicators

The primary objective in most businesses is generating qualified sales leads.  The ability to measure the number of opened email messages and clicks shows an automatic conversion. For several years, many marketing professionals still used those same metrics to determine the success or failure of their email marketing campaigns.

But time and technology have shown us that open and click-through rates, while valuable, are really just indicators. They highlight important information such as whether an email subject line or offer was appealing, and if a list is growing stale.

But what they do not tell us, in most cases, is if an email marketing campaign generated results against a defined objective.

Smaller marketing budget = more email reliance

Email customer acquisition is generally the top priority when companies come to us asking for help with email marketing.  Acquisition should always be part of the mix but more balance between acquisition and retention is now a requirement given today’s real-time social Web.  Being mindful of this balance can enable very powerful word-of-mouth, and loyalty results in a return on your investment.

Email ROI is measured not in opens and clicks but in conversions.  You can look at a list of customers who opened your email and clicked on a link, but then what?  What does that tell you?  Analysis of this behavior can mean the difference between a bounce and a sale.   Finding the answers to these questions can make dynamic content and personalization possible for future emails.  That means retention of email customers, repeat business and ROI.

Email marketing campaigns can get the word out about your product, service or business while collecting valuable information about your customer base and what parts of your message aren’t working.  But you really shouldn’t stop there.  In order to get a return on your investment of time, effort and money, the information gleaned from the email campaign needs to be analyzed and put to good use.

Otherwise you’re really just sending out SPAM.

Over the weekend, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch finally responded, committing to improve performance, while Flash engineer Tinic Uro blogged about the improved performance of an upcoming version of Flash that addresses some of the myriad problems and drawbacks that inspired the “lazy” comment.

I think Jobs’s persistent trashing of Flash and refusal to allow it anywhere near Apple mobile products has finally hit home, but I don’t think there’s much Adobe can do about it.

Mobile Problems

I liked Flash in its earlier years as an accessory to the web. But as the web moves forward and becomes ever more mobile, Flash’s performance, cost, and proprietary nature creates a recipe for disaster as it nears ubiquity.

Open a Flash-heavy site on your laptop and you can literally watch the temperature shoot up to 180 degrees, the fans ramp up to maximum speed and your battery life plummet.

These responses rule out opening that site on your iPhone or iPad as it would quickly crash your device.  The future of the internet fits inside your pocket or in the bag across your shoulder, so as long as Flash remains as cumbersome as it is today it will necessarily get left behind.

Not Dead Yet

Flash still has some advantages.  Ninety percent of web development time is spent making sure the site is compatible with all versions of Internet Explorer, the most widely used web browser out there right now.

Since Flash looks the same on every site, except for mobile devices, it’s seen as a shortcut to instant compatibility.  But the overall drawbacks are beginning to drag down any site that relies too heavily on Flash to get by.

Other Options

We’re still years away from Flash’s demise, but in the meantime, I think there are a few different options out there right now that are faster, easier to work with and ultimately much better than Flash will ever be.

Flash is used for a lot of web interactivity, but things like jQuery are replacing that now.  Creating a site from scratch in good ol’ HTML and jQuery may require more work, but the site will load faster, run faster, use less power on laptops, look the same on mobile devices, and remain easier to maintain over the years. It also won’t cost you hundreds of dollars to get started.

YouTube has been the number one Flash user for years, but Youtube and Vimeo each recently launched HTML5 versions, giving that comparatively new video platform a serious foothold in the market.

As more developers see the advantages of ditching Flash, I think Adobe will have its hands full playing catch up to try to keep Flash viable, but I think we’ll see a Flash-free internet within 10 years… apart from Adobe’s home page.

Keeping in mind that many of our clients don’t live in New Orleans and aren’t lucky enough to be here right now, I thought it would be a good idea to let you know that we’ll be closed on Lundi Gras and Fat Tuesday.

For most people outside of New Orleans, Lundi Gras and Fat Tuesday are simply February 15th and 16th.  For all of us in New Orleans, Mardi Gras one of our most cherished holidays and one of the many reasons why most New Orleanians choose to live here.  In addition to being the day the big Fat Tuesday celebration starts early, Lundi Gras is also President’s Day this year, and both are excellent reasons for a day off.

So while you’re at your desk trying to meet the next deadline or planning your next meeting, we will be on St. Charles Avenue catching some beads and having some fun with our families and friends.

If you have an emergency, and you really need to speak to somebody, I’m always available by cell phone.  I’m not going to post my number here – after all, I’m a Web developer and know how foolish that would be.  But my cell phone number is in the signature of every e-mail I send, so feel free to give me a call if you need me.

Just be prepared for a lot of background noise.

But this year Pepsi has left conventional logic on the ground wondering why it didn’t retire last year (…oh no wait that was Bret Farve after the Saints were done with him) by abandoning television commercials during the big game for a $20 million Pepsi Refresh Project online marketing campaign.

Check out the Pepsi Refresh Project here.

The big question is will this gamble pay off?  Will Pepsi, which at one time spent millions on Super Bowl commercials featuring big name celebrities like Cindy Crawford and Britney Spears, see this year’s unconventional jump to online marketing generate more revenue than the cost of a Super Bowl ad campaign?

People are certainly talking about Pepsi right now.  You can read articles about their gamble here.

What do you think?  Does this move help or hurt Pepsi?  Or is this much ado about nothing, like the Pepsi Clear debacle?

Oh, and Pepsi awarded New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees a $100,000 grant The American Cancer Society Patrick F. Taylor Hope Lodge this afternoon, so they’ve certainly got the Who Dat vote…not that any of us are actually going to watch the commercials this year.

On February 7, 2010, we’re hoping and praying (and knocking wood and …) that the Saints will be winning another game in Miami.

The Indianapolis chapter of the Susan G. Komen Foundation has challenged the New Orleans chapter to a fundraising competition to see which city can raise more money for breast cancer research before the big game. You can read more about it – and the 2009 Honorary Race Chair, Rita Benson LeBlanc – at the Komen website.

It’s short notice, but the call has gone out for enough local donations to knock Indianapolis out of this game too.  If we can top their donation total by February 7, the New Orleans chapter will send a Saints jersey and a king cake to Indianapolis for taunting and consoling purposes.

In the spirit of superstitious sports behavior and a dedication to Good Deeds, we’re asking every member of the Who Dat Nation to donate whatever they can.

Please go to this site to make your donation today.

Not only will it help establish our dominance over Indianapolis as a city, but every dollar raised will go to advancing breast cancer research.

Everyone wins…except the Colts.

(Apologies to Archie Manning. I’ve cheered those nice Manning boys through some Super Sundays – one of them during the Bacchus ball. It’s our turn, honey. You understand.)

The Saints mean a lot to our city for so many different reasons.  Here’s what last night meant to some of the Mudbug faithful.

Vasu Tummala, Interactive Media Specialist

I watched the game at Ryan’s Irish Pub on Decatur and Iberville.  My hair became something of a celebratory thing.  There was this one rabid, vocal fan who’d run over to me and give my hair a good tussle every time the Saints did anything positive…at all.  By the end of the game, my hair had doubled in size.

Since I was already in the Quarter, as soon as the hugging and high-fiving with strangers was over with at Ryan’s, we ran down Iberville to Bourbon and hopped into the second line.

Vanessa Hebert, Graphic Designer

I was in the warehouse district at the Rusty Nail, started at about 1:00 in the afternoon and went to bed at about 12:15 a.m.  My throat hurts from screaming and my hand is sore from all the high-fiving complete strangers.  One thing that stood out to me is that, during the game, no matter what neighborhood you are from, everyone got along.  Very cool.

Clovis Mello, Programming Manager

Watched it from home.  When Brett Favre threw his first interception, I said a few things I’m not proud of, and I was glad my 3 year old was in bed asleep.  I figured earlier in the game if we won, I was going to go running out in the street yelling and screaming.  When Hartley hit the field goal, however, all I could do was to kind of flop down and stay there for a minute or two in stunned silence. Been a fan since ‘88 and never really thought we’d get there.    Just soaking it in right now.

Chris Cook, Media Strategist

After the game I went outside and listened to all the horns honking down North Broad.   I might have called a few people.   Then I cried like a baby.   In the end, I think it all frightened my dog.

Theresa Fischbach, Graphic Designer

I am a Saints season ticket holder and I have known the ups and downs (mostly downs) of being a Saints fan.  I have NEVER heard the dome as loud as it was last night.  There were no petty squabbles between fans.  No one was upset that people were standing up and yelling and cursing and crying and taking shots, every reaction was accepted. There was a sense of camaraderie that I really can’t explain or put into words.

My section is a tight section.  We know and love each other.  We have our group cheers and chants.  For the four hours we are inside the dome, these people are my family. That is my favorite part of being a Saints fan, along with the electric feeling in the city when we win.  Even the days before the games, the excitement is tangible.  I am just glad that I can say I was there, that I saw it, felt it, heard it, tasted it.  I will never forget that feeling.

Ashley Segari, Senior Designer

I was at my Dad’s house in Kenner and everyone was huddled around the TV.  When the kick was good everyone screamed in disbelief that the Saints actually did it after all of these years.  I immediately went outside and heard people celebrating in the streets, fireworks and car horn honking.

I was happy for my Dad and my uncle for finally witnessing the Saints on their way to the Super Bowl for the first time.  My dad went to the first ever Saints game at Tulane stadium in 1967 when he was 15 years old.  He took the bus by himself and paid $5 to see the Saints play the Los Angeles Rams.  He was very excited to finally see this happen.

Valerie Boulmay, Senior Designer

I was at my house watching the game with family. Towards the end I was on my knees praying. I knew that the City of New Orleans needed this win – that it was for all the people who needed some hope. My husband had given up hope and I kept saying, “have a little faith,” while my 2 year old sang, “Farve’s on the ground, Farve’s on the ground!” Sure enough they won and seeing and hearing the crowd and all the confetti was the most memorable moment for me.

The rest of the products spread out into infinity away from the spiked cluster of big-ticket items as popularity decreases, creating what we call a Long Tail. The Long Tail is really a retailing concept that abandons the traditional merchandising methods in favor of the equalizing power of the Internet.

What is really exciting about the Long Tail is the size of it.  The potential market for a product may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the limits of the traditional marketplace.

Sounds Good

When I first heard of the Long Tail it was in reference to the music industry. Everyone’s music taste departs from the mainstream somewhere, and the more we explore alternatives, the more we’re drawn to them; hence, Napster and now iTunes and Amazon.   A hit and an obscure song are now equal, both just entries in a database retrieved on demand, both equally worthy of being carried by the store. A song is an entry in a database that anyone can do.  Popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.

A Global Marketplace

With online distribution and media, we are living in a world of abundance and the differences between products are vast.  What matters is not where customers are, or even how many of them are seeking a particular product. What matters is that they exist somewhere in the world, and that they can find your virtual storefront.

The communities of the Web – close constituents sharing ideas, social networks, and user-generated content – direct these users to offbeat content and experiences. People can share and discover content from anywhere on the web.

Anything Can Work

StuffOnMyCat.com is an example of a business that found its obscure niche and created something for that niche to rally around.  Cat lovers!  The website is a celebration of cats and everything in the world you can put on a cat to make it look cute.  Users are able to post pictures as well as purchase products with their favorite StuffOnMyCat pictures.  A lonely cat lover decided to express the hilarity and cuteness that can come from taking pictures of your cat in various poses with different objects.  This niche has always been there but now people from around the world can gather in an online community.  There is even a social network for cats, catster.com.

The funny thing is that I am not really even into cats and I don’t have any pets.  But not only have I found these niche products online, I could easily stock up on t-shirts and tote bags from the site.

Scary Scarcity

Traditional media has limited resources, creating a world of scarcity.  Chris Anderson, a writer at Wired Magazine and maven associated to the popularization of the concept of the “Long Tail,” will tell you that “big hits” of yesteryear are created by limited resources and are based on estimates of demand.  Anderson argues in his book “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More,” that “hits” are hardwired into human psychology, the combinatorial effect of conformity and word of mouth.

Check out his blog.

With the Internet, an otherwise offbeat or obscure product can be a best seller when it is a focal point of a niche that found one another because the physical limitations of shelf space are no longer an issue.  By overcoming the limitations of geography and scale, any business can discover new markets and expand existing ones.

Embrace Niches

The companies Anderson singles out in his article and book about the Long Tail are Netflix, Amazon, eBay, and Google.  Each can offer you your quirky movie, book or vintage radio as well as the Top 40 hits in pop culture. Combine enough obscure products on the Long Tail and you’ve got a market bigger than the “hits.”

Embrace niches – with your product available to the world you can capture that piece of the Long Tail and leverage these sizable niches that are being underserved.  Keeping your ear to the ground, better yet wires, you will always know what your customer wants and be able to give it to them.

Be Available

The Internet is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere in the world.  If your website is not easily found on the Internet, how do you expect your niche to find you?  To drive traffic to your website, a straightforward optimization strategy that incorporates structural improvements, carefully crafted content, and link-building efforts, is needed.

The easiest way to increase link-building efforts is to involve your business in social media and connect with the consumers who are true evangelists – those who will spread the word about your product and help grow your business exponentially. Engage with your customers with relevant topics centered around your business.  Make your business available to your community and your niche – let the Long Tail effect grow your business organically.

Connecting

We decided to turn our day off for Martin Luther King Day into a day of service.  When I started looking around for ways we could give back to the New Orleans community, I turned to a great organization called HandsOn New Orleans, which has connected over 17,000 volunteers to recovery and restoration efforts across the Gulf Coast since 2005.

I chose the Save Our Cemeteries cleanup event since I knew we were going to have a large group and the event seemed tailor made for our needs.  I also know how important cemeteries are to the identity and history of New Orleans.

Digging in

Despite a lingering fear of zombies and the prospect of getting dirty, 28 Mudbug Media employees answered the call for volunteers on Martin Luther King Day.  We spent the morning pulling weeds, raking up leaves from between the graves, hauling trash bags full of debris to the dumpsters and trimming branches from the cemetery’s many oak trees.

Check out some pictures of our employees hard at work.

Giving Back

While the work was hard and the day was unusually warm, it felt really good to be able to lend a hand.  The cemetery was swarming with fellow volunteers from local universities and groups of tourists from across the country and I think everyone had a good time.

By lunchtime, the historic cemetery was in much better shape than we found it.  Graves were clean and tidy, we all got a little sun, no zombies had escaped and we all felt a little bit better for helping preserve a bit of New Orleans on our day off.