Blogging

Translation is making its way into more Google services this month, having just been added to Gmail’s labs. If you get a message in a different language, there’s a new link that’ll show up in the top of the message that lets you translate it to whatever language you have Gmail set to. You can also set it up to do the translation to any language of your choice.

It does the actual translation in just a few seconds, and gets both the subject and body while retaining the original. You can switch back to it by hitting the translate link again.

Once items have been translated they don’t stay translated, which means you’ll have to re-translate every time you’re viewing that message again. The translated text is also not indexed into Gmail’s search engine, which means you have to remember the word phrase in its original language to find it. Assuming you don’t get too many e-mails in an alternate language this shouldn’t be too much of a problem, though.

I anticipate having great fun with this in my spam folder, which is frequented by non-English grammar train wrecks. As with other Gmail labs items this must be turned on from the labs menu settings before you can use it.

Recently: Google Friend Connect gets comment translation

Gmail users can now make use of translation right from their e-mails with a new Gmail labs add-on.

(Credit: CNET)

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Gmail now translates your Nigerian scam e-mails

Now that Wolfram Alpha is up and running, the next question is whether it can make any money.

Wolfram Research appears to have sold the first ad on the search engine to Lenovo, as noted by Search Engine Land. An ad for the ThinkPad appeared recently next to a Wolfram Alpha search for “pi,” the mathematical constant.

It’s not clear how advertising works on Wolfram Alpha but it does not appear that Wolfram has duplicated Google’s keyword-based search ad approach as yet. The site has said it will accept corporate sponsorship, however. Lenovo’s ad was a text ad for the ThinkPad that turned into a display ad when a visitor moused over the text.

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Ads appear on Wolfram Alpha

Google wants to make sure more key employees stick around at its Mountain View, Calif., campus.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Google thinks it will be able to tell which of its employees are going to quit, maybe even before they know.

The company revealed Tuesday that it is using its fabled data-collection and analysis powers for more than just search results. The Wall Street Journal reported that Google has developed an algorithm for assessing the number of employees likely to turn their back on the free lunches and multicolored walls of Google’s Mountain View, Calif., campus in hopes of convincing the best of those folks to stay.

A few years ago, Silicon Valley workers were flocking to Google, and the company was hiring like mad. The world has changed, however, and Google is no longer automatically seen as the best place for a budding young coder or entrepreneur to hone their talents–especially as the stock price has declined since its late 2007 heights.

As a result, Google has seen recent defections to companies du jour such as Twitter and Facebook, and is determined to retain its best people, according to a company representative quoted by the Journal. The algorithm is still in testing (insert joke about Google’s beta culture here), but the idea seems to be to identify disengaged employees before they lose interest in staying with Google.

It’s almost like a kinder, gentler version of the “forced ranking” Six Sigma program that encouraged companies to regularly fire the bottom 10 percent of their employees to get rid of the malcontents. Google’s not going down that road, but nor is it shy about using quantitative analysis to categorize its workforce.

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Google testing HR algorithm

How can you increase open rates for your email newsletters? Which common email marketing mistakes should you make sure to avoid? What are the secrets to writing killer subject lines? What campaign elements should make sure to check, and double-check, before clicking the “send” button on that big email blast?

Discover the answers to all of these questions plus email marketing strategy, tips and interesting statistics in these blog posts and articles, some of the best from the last 12 months on the topic of email marketing.

7 Tips for Increasing Your Open Rates and Site Traffic by Web Worker Daily

Dian Schaffhauser offers practical guidance for maximizing the value of email newsletters, such as making your newsletter and website complementary, and crafting headlines that are short, direct and honest.

Profit Week: E-Mail Marketing by MineThatData

Kevin Hillstrom provides a thought-provoking look at the current state of email marketing, where “we celebrate a 0.15% response rate” and concludes that the model is broken. He then suggests an entirely new approach focused around indirect value generation. Hillstrom acknowledges that his ideas may not work, but as he concludes, with only “one in seven hundred customers buying what we have to sell today, what do we have to lose?”

Email is STILL the most effective online marketing tool by Marketing Tips Blog

Mike Alvero reports on a pair of studies showing that email marketing to house lists is the most cost-effective marketing tool available. SEO is #2. Neither of these findings is particularly shocking, but sometimes it can be helpful to have the data to back up your gut instincts.

Learning a Little About Email Marketing by SEOmoz

Though claiming with what I suspect is false modesty to “not know a whole lot about email marketing,” Rebecca Kelley nevertheless manages to pack a lot of information into this post. She shares some SEOmoz experience with email marketing, industry statistics (e.g., “80% of marketers say that email is the strongest performing media buy and that it has a higher ROI than search”), her mother’s resistance to using the Internet (I can totally relate; my mother is the same way), the most important elements of the CAN-SPAM law, and a few helpful tips for improving email marketing success (e.g., “Don’t use (or limit the use of) SPAM filter catch words, like Free Viagra Sex Guaranteed with Credit Card! Though I must admit, that sounds like one hell of a deal…”).

Email marketing’s 8 deadly don’ts by iMedia Connection

Chris Marriott advises email marketers to avoid several common mistakes. Though aimed at retailers, his points apply equally well to brand and b2b marketers: don’t overmail, don’t forget to use segmentation, don’t assume that creative design that’s effective for other types of collateral will work well in an email message—and don’t miss Chris’ post for more tips on email marketing practices to avoid.

How to craft irresistible subject lines by iMedia Connection

Leah Messinger offers practical advice backed up by real-world email success stories from a variety of sources. Among her tips: be direct; highlight a benefit; beware of spam filters; consider mobile devices; and, if appropriate for your audience, use alluring keywords such as “tips,” “tricks” or “secrets.”

31 content tips and ideas for your B2B email newsletter by Email Marketing Reports

Email marketer Mark Brownlow delivers a huge list of tips on both how to generate content ideas (top tips, case studies, reviews, predictions, “best of” lists…hmm, that sounds oddly familiar) and how to manage content (keep a folder, develop reserve content, etc.). A great post to keep handy for when your muse is slacking off.

Are You Scared to Click the “Launch” Button for Your Email Campaigns? by VerticalResponse Marketing Blog

The brilliant Janine Popick provides a vital resource for evert email marketing—a checklist of all the details to walk through before actually launching a big email campaign. Did you remember to remove the word “test” from your subject line? Add alt text for all images? Double-check your links? She’s even left space at the bottom to add a couple of your own checklist items; mine would be “get it proofed” and “make sure HTML and plain text versions are in sync.”

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008: SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008: Interactive PR, Part 1
Best of 2008: SEO Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008: Search Engine Marketing
Best of 2008: Web Analytics

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

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Best of 2008: Email Marketing Tips

Here’s a brief review of some of the best posts written recently about web analytics. The articles here will show you how to use web analytics more strategically as part of your marketing program design, use some of the new advanced features in Google Analytics, and investigate alternatives to GA that provide unique views of website traffic.

Are Your Analytics Reports Breaking News or Listing Facts? by FutureNow

Melissa Burdon advises marketers to act like investigative journalists—ask the tough questions, dig for the story behind the story—rather than beat reporters who just report the who, what, where and when.

What To Expect From Your Web Analytics Tool (Web Analytics Series, Part 2) by NxtERA Marketing Blog

Elana Anderson presents a five-part framework to help companies maximize their investment in web analytics tools to develop integrated, customer-focused marketing programs. Her model outlines a progression of stages from site analysis (available to anyone using free tools) though optimization, targeting, and finally integration—a stage about which she writes “no one has nailed this one and that gives us all something to aspire towards.”

Two Alternative Solutions for Site Analytics by Web Worker Daily

Samuel Dean reviews two alternatives to Google Analytics, opensource web analytics software Piwik and the modestly priced Visitorville. Both are real-time (unlike GA) and both offer unique ways of viewing and analyzing website traffic. What’s more, as Dean points out, “In addition to being useful, these alternative site analytics solutions are fun.”

Google Analytics: Advanced Segments – Beta Feature by limeshot design

Here’s an excellent guide to using the Advanced Segments tool added to Google Analytics last November. While GA still lacks some of the features of high-end analytics packages, it is steadily encroaching further onto their turf with the addition of sophisticated new features. The post details how to use Dimensions and Metrics to set up filters, apply these to default reports, and even perform comparisons. As a real-world example, I recently used Advanced Segments to create lists of the most popular organic search phrases used to find the Spanish language version of a client website (trickier than it sounds, as the Spanish site was a virtual copy of the English site created through MotionPoint rather than a physically separate website), by month.

Using Google Analytics Advanced Segmentation to Get Proper Ad Scheduling Data by SEOptimise

On the topic of the Google Analytics Advanced Segments tool, Richard Fergie provides more detail and walks through an example of how this GA feature could be used to analyze conversions by day part in order to maximize the profitability of AdWords bids.

Review: Google Insights Can Help Merchants Optimize PPC/SEO Campaigns by Practical eCommerce

Armando Roggio reviews another relatively new tool from Google, Google Insights, a free research tool which “provides detailed search data that can help online retailers improve their pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization.” Roggio shows how the tool can be used to help marketers determine the most effective marketing messages and discover new markets, as examples, but he also carefully explains the limitation of the tool.

50 Resources for Getting the Most Out of Google Analytics by KISSmetrics

Derek Collins has compiled an impressive and extremely useful list of tools to help web analysts get more out of Google Analytics. The list is also helpfully divided into different groups of resources including resources for beginners, tips & tricks, plugins & hacks, and new/advanced features.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008: SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008: Interactive PR, Part 1
Best of 2008: SEO Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008: Search Engine Marketing

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Read more:
Best of 2008: Web Analytics