Entertainment — Fair to great.   Game — Great.

Commercials — Some good, others stinko!

What a happening! Super Bowl 44 attracted a huge audience and big dollars from advertisers trying to build their brand. Some succeeded; others didn’t in my humble (well maybe not so humble) opinion.

The entertainment started with Queen Latifah. She looked great but appeared a little unsure of herself and sang a strange arrangement of America the Beautiful. Sorry you can’t see the YouTube video, but it was removed “due to terms of use violation.”

Carrie Underwood, in a smashing white jumpsuit, followed with a fine version of The National Anthem. Her last note was a little weak, but she gave a good performance.

In addition to the great entertainment of the game, the Who provided one of the best halftime shows ever. Song after song to great applause and with unbelievable lighting effects, they did their thing without a hitch. There was one wardrobe malfunction, however. See if you can find it in Part one or Part two. (Answer at end of article.)

But if you are a marketing type, the commercials are always a Super Bowl extravaganza. Will there be another Mean Joe Green equal? Super Bowl 44 didn’t provide one, but there were some good spots.

Here are my top three:

No. 3. In addition to sponsoring the halftime show, Bridgestone ran this fine commercial with an orca, a car, a dock and super driving. They also ran another one, Your tires or your life, which was funny, but a little dark.

No. 2. Who says deadpan and rivals can’t go together? These three rivals pull it off. You just have to laugh. Only four words from Oprah? Wow!

No. 1. The best of the bunch and the funniest ran very early in the broadcast. Snickers made you more than snicker. Betty White is a literal smash. And do you remember the old guy from Barney Miller? (Answer at end of article.)

There were a number of honorable mentions:

• Coke’s Hard Times.

• E*Trade’s Milkaholic — What happened to the “Shankapotimus” kid?

• Hundai’s Sonata — 10 Years from Now with Brett Farve and a hologram older than most of the fans.

• Intel’s hurt-feelings robot, Jeffrey.

• Cars.com’s very interesting Timothy Richman spot.

Unfortunately, all the commercials were not of this caliber. And some were outright distasteful and could damage the brands rather than help them.

Here are the worst three

No. 3. Boost Mobile’s Jim McMahon in a thong. Good music bad shuffle and what’s with Ditka’s mustache?

No. 2 and 2A. Both Go Daddy spots. Cheap service but crass commercials — I don’t want to “See more now.” Here’s one.

And … the worst of the worst ….

No. 3. Careerbuilders.com’s Casual Friday, “Expose yourself with something better.” Watch a different commercial.

And there also were some dishonorable mentions:

• U.S. Census Snapshot of America with too dry humor was probably a waste of taxpayer funds.

• Tim Tebow tackling his mother — Why here?

• Dockers I wear no pants — Great pants, stupid commercial.

Oh, and I do want to mention the only wardrobe malfunction of note: Guitarist Pete Townshend’s shirt out of his pants that showed his belly. Maybe he was auditioning for the Casual Friday Commercial.

Regarding the “old actor,” it’s Abe Vigoda — He’s just a little older than me.

And that’s it until next year. These were my opinions only. If you have others that you think should have made the lists, please let me know.

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Study mailing reports for your roadmap to success

History, social studies, mathematics, English, reading, spelling — you know the drill: Study well and you succeed in passing the tests. In the same way reading a report card provides insights into strengths and areas of needed improvement, so does reading your email reports.

The subjects are different -  open rate, click-through rate, bounces, unsubscribes, unique clicks, feature, call-to-action, Website visits, forwards, reader history, survey results  -  but the need to know them inside and out is the same.

Study every aspect of your e-newsletter mailing, and you’ll become smarter and be able to make informed decisions on future mailings that should lead to better results.

Here are some good strategies link to remainder of article below

Premailing reports

Even before you send your email effort, there’s a report you should read: The spam score report. Will your email get through most spam filters or will it be considered spam and never get to your intended recipient?

Run your mailing through a variety of spam checkers and judge your spam score. If it’s high, rewrite, reformat and resubmit.

Another premailing report

Just as in early elementary school, there were checkmarks for good or bad or satisfactory or unsatisfactory, you should run a checklist report on important things to be sure everything is perfect before sending. Here are some items to put on your checklist:

* Did you do a test run though spam checkers?
* Did you proofread the mailing?
* Is the call-to-action prominent?
* Did you add new names to mailing list?
* Have you permanently removed opt-outs?
* Does the list require segmentation?
* Are different versions aligned to list segments?
* Do all the links work as intended?
* Is the tracking set up?
* Have you tested the subject line?
* Are the tests set up properly?
* Have you notified the sales force about the mailing?
* Do images appear as intended in various browsers?

This checklist will vary by sender, depending on the number of tests involved, whether you are sending different versions, or your sales force is involved, the number of regions to contact, and other factors unique to different marketers.

OK, you checked the spam score, went through the checklist and emailed the mailing. Results begin, and now, what do you analyze?

Important things to measure

For direct marketing attempts, only four things matter in the following order:

1. How many prospects ordered or took the step you wanted?
2. How many recipients opened the email?
3. How many unique clicks did you receive?

4. How many people opted out?

If tests are involved, then measurements of each test are important. Don’t rely on memory. Write down the results in a testing log so that future tests are not repetitive or impractical based on previous results.

E-newsletter reports, open and click-through rates

For e-newsletters, measurement is more extensive because there is more content to measure and study. But again, the four most important things are:

1. How many prospects ordered or took the step you wanted?
2. How many recipients opened the email?
3. How many unique clicks did you receive?
4. How many people opted out?

Open rate is the number of emails that people open divided by the number of emails you deliver. Since some recipients open an email more than once, unique opens are the true open rate, a tally of how many different recipients opened the email or viewed it in their preview panel. Unfortunately, an email snared by a spam filter and sent to a spam file counts as an email delivered but not opened.

The click-through rate (CTR) is not as clear cut as the open rate. Some say it’s the number of clicks divided by the number of emails you deliver. Others say it’s the number of clicks divided by the number of emails recipients open. Whichever you use is up to you, but be sure to count unique clicks rather than total clicks because some people click more than once on the same item.

For more information about these rates and how to improve them, see How to improve open and click-through rates.

Learning from readers’ actions

The most important measurement, of course, is the link associated with your call to action. How many people clicked there and took action. How many clicked there but didn’t take action. Is your offer worded well? Could it be more compelling? Is there a follow up to those who clicked but didn’t act?

An often-neglected but very important measurement is the opt-out rate or how many decide to unsubscribe from your newsletter. Try to learn who these folks are (job titles, male or female, SIC code of company, new or old subscriber, other attributes that may give you some insights as to why they are deciding to depart). On your opt-out link, have a dialog box with a question like, “Why are you unsubscribing?”

Since you intend to mail them future issues of your newsletter, you want to know what interests the readers. Your reports should rank the most popular articles (links readers clicked) from highest to lowest. Who read what? Look at a report segmented by job title or, perhaps, by SIC code to determine which types of articles interest which types of readers.

What has a particular reader read in past issues? Look at this, and you can develop an interest profile.

Visual reports at a glance

A very effective report includes a visual of the front page of the newsletter with color-coded highlights on the links (red, orange, yellow and blue) that rank the links on unique clicks. Red highlights are the best (top 25 percent), orange 26 to 50 percent, yellow 51 to 75 percent and blue the worst (lowest 25 percent). This type of report shows you in one quick glance what’s hot and what’s not. It also provides an easy way to see how placement or size of a link or image impacts results.

This is a very interesting report and one that you can forward to others in your company. And speaking of forwarding reports, which type of reports can you tailor for your sales force?

Sales team interest

What amount of information do you want to share with the sales team? You don’t want to overwhelm them with too much data that they will eventually ignore or tune out, but you need to provide relevant information that will help them start a dialog with a prospect to get the sale.

Obviously, a report of the call to action respondents and also those who clicked but didn’t act will be quite valuable. What other information should you provide?

Consider a report filtered to show only a particular salesperson’s prospects and their reader reactions on the past issue and clicks on previous newsletters. These can provide clues into prospects interests and possible hot buttons.

Whatever you decide, provide it in an easy-to-read format and segregate it by salesperson or sales region.

Will your emailing make the grade?

Don’t be a dunce and neglect to study. If you measure past efforts and analyze your reports and adapt, your emails will get better and better – and surely pass the test.

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