Convert Your RSS Into Email Newsletters With Ads

This is a sponsored post.

RevResponse, a company that helps bloggers make money by selling and giving away white papers and magazine subscriptions, has a new nifty tool that converts a blog's RSS feed into an email with automatically inserted promo offers.

RevResponse's aptly named RSS to Email Tool is a welcome addition to the pretty small group of  RSS converters. A field once teeming with start-ups, it is now the domain of a few email newsletter providers, notably MailChimp,  and Feedburner,  a once innovative product that has become stale after its sale to Google and the departure of Dick Costolo to the greener pastures of Twitter.

Like other similar tools out there, RSS to Email takes your most recent posts and packages them into a template of your choice. The templates come in a range of colors, and while they are not likely to win any beauty pageants the tool does come with a fairly flexible scheduling system that allows you to send digests of your brilliance either once a month, once a week, or on any combination of days of your choice.

Importantly -- and uniquely -- the tool adds rather unobtrusive ads for contextually chosen whitepapers or other publications right into your blogomail: either a set of text links or an ad with a thumbnail of the publication's cover. If you run a marketing blog, advertised publications could range from HubSpot's white papers and something called Chief Social Marketer to the awesomely esoteric niche B2B pubs such as Perishables Buyer and Archery Business.

Memorable Metal Plaques From Impact Signs

This is a sponsored post.

The many uses for fine metal plaques are as varied as those who commission them. Whether they're intended for individual recognition, as a treasured memorial, or to identify a landmark or location, customized plaques make noteworthy markers.

Impact Signs creates metal plaques with distinction. Shapes of any style are available, and in most cases, turnaround is complete within eight business days; no extra fees apply. With exacting standards and superior services, Impact Signs is a leading source for metal plaques.

Abundant choices make it easy to create a unique and unforgettable plaque. After selecting the shape, material choices continue the design. Cast metals, such as aluminum or bronze, may be plain or textured in leatherette, pebble, smooth sand or stipple. Etched finishes offer a different, glossier look in brass, bronze, copper or stainless steel.

Several background color choices add to the appearance of metal casts, and specialty finishes lend an impressive air. Specialty finishes for cast bronze include oxidized options as well as colorful patinas, while both aluminum and bronze casts are available with a polished finish.

There are also numerous border and edge choices for cast plaques. Beveled edges, no borders, and single or double-line borders are available for both aluminum and bronze casts. Etched finishes come with either beveled edges or no border.

The finishing touches on a metal plaque are no less important than the plaque shape, materials and finishes. A variety of installation methods suit different materials and can create unique appearances, especially with the addition of rosette details to conceal or enhance the mounts. Additionally, both etched and cast plaques offer photo options that are truly exceptional.

In business since 1989, Impact Signs uses ecologically friendly practices, including recycled signage materials, solar technology and recycling of waste products. All work comes with a lifetime guarantee.

Real-Time Web Traffic Stats On Your iPhone [ad]

I had been searching for a traffic counter with a dedicated iPhone interface that I can access on the go for some time, and it turns out that good solutions aren't really that many. There's Mint, which you have to host yourself. There's the Analytics app for iPhone, which is a mobile interface for your Google Analytics account. I tested, I think, every single one of those apps, and Analytics is by far the best, but it comes with all the limitations of Google Analytics itself, most importantly the reporting lag.

Then there's Clicky, which is a hosted service that offers an iPhone-like mobile web interface (the screenshot above), real-time reporting, and detailed activity logs for each visitor.  Clicky comes in a variety of plans that range from free to $20 a month. I've been a happy customer of their $10/month Pro plan for half a year now and am happy to recommend them.

Advertiser Shout-out

A hat tip and a thank you to AdLab's very own advertisers:

• DoMedia, who keep a database of offbeat out-of-home vendors, 
• LeaderPromos, who sell promotional products,   
• Marler Haley, who make banner stands,
• and Max, who paid for the space but is keeping it ad-free
  

DesignBay: White Label Crowdsourcing [ad]

"DesignBay is a marketplace for graphic design and creative services that uses a new innovative business model called crowdsourcing. We give creative people opportunities and help businesses get risk-free creativity.

Ad agencies, marketing firms and branding agencies can use DesignBay as a tool to expand their service offering to win new clients, to cut costs or to increase their capacity when they're busy. DesignBay offers a white-labeling service that lets ad agencies leverage our product as their own, behind the scenes.

An advertising agency that specializes in print and TV ad production could use DesignBay to help a client create a logo / identity for a new product it is launching. They could charge the client their typical fee, provide them with strategy and direction, present logo concepts as being developed in-house but outsource to DesignBay privately and make significant margin.

A web design firm may use DesignBay to get 20+ creative Photoshop (PSD) web design layouts while focusing on collecting requirements, functional design, coding and implementation.

A brand consultant may help create a strategy and positioning for a client and then use DesignBay to offer execution of that strategy to their client.

How we are better than other crowdsourcing sites:

Designers are better protected at Designbay.

We have a higher caliber of designers.

You do not need waste time assessing quotes.

Designers compete based on the merit of their ideas."

(This post is a paid announcement.)

On MediaBids and the Art of Selling Ads [paid review]

The review order (via ReviewMe) for MediaBids.com, an online marketplace for ad space in print media, caught me off guard -- print is not exactly making headlines (pun!) for the growth of its ad revenue:




I am not a media buyer and my experience with tools of that trade is limited to only occasional encounters, so I asked my media buyer colleagues (special thanks to Erica and Nicole) for guidance. Here are some thoughts resulting from our conversation.

- Even without print's decline, an online marketplace for newspapers and magazines must be a tough business to run. Consider something more esoteric, like podcasting. We don't buy a lot of podcast time, don't know too many reps, and a specialized marketplace like, say, Podtrac addresses a still rare but well defined need. It is hard, on the other hand, to be more established than print. Most of the large agencies are already using well-entrenched tools such as SRDS -- expensive services, contracts for which are made on the agency level.

- In the long term, other things being equal, it becomes the question of cost. One popular buying tool charges agencies a flat 4% fee on each media buy. MediaBids claims to be free for advertisers but takes an 8.5% commission from publishers.

- Media buyers and media planners are responsible for different parts of the process and use narrowly specialized tools. Planners need access to demo data. Buyers usually work on tight schedules and need to make direct contact with reps.

- Ad selling is still more art than science. I have a favorite quote from Seth Godin, and it is this:

"There are two kinds of advertising and this leads to two kinds of ad sales. The first kind is the rational kind. This is advertising that works, if 'works' is defined as, "pay $3 and make $4." [...]

The second kind of advertising is the glamorous kind, the kind that people think of when they think of the Super Bowl or Time magazine or of profitable ads that are worth selling. These ads don't sell because they work. They sell because they are sold."

The problem with most ad marketplaces is that they sell the ads of the second kind as if they were the ads "that work" of the first kind.

- Ad buying, too, is art. A quote from a buyer: "How do I 'leverage' my client's brand with an automated tool?" Meaning, if my client historically has been avoiding print but wants to give it a try, I am likely to get a better "trial" rate for them.

- Last but not least: will automated ad exchanges with low barrier to entry make media agencies obsolete?

Instant Call Back Manager from F9 Group [ad]

A message for direct marketers from our sponsor F9 Group that offers a range of products for phone lead management:

"With a bit of new technology called ICBM (Internet Call Back Manager), a company buying a lead can have that lead flow through our system first. Within 7 seconds of your lead vendors sending the lead, the customer will be called, pre-qualified and transferred to your sales agent. You will get to the customer on average 2-24 hours before anyone else if you are buying non exclusive leads or the customer is online shopping around.

Most companies are either unable to get a hold of a lead customer or the customer was already contacted by another company before you called them back. Odds are that other company that called them back was using our technology."