FetchBack

It's Nice to Meet You!

It’s refreshing to know that you can meet so many awesome people in such a short period of time! Luckily for me, this has been my experience for the past few days. Being the newest member of the FetchBack team— marketing to be exact— I’ve had the opportunity to witness this creative, brilliant, crazy team first hand. I have to say, I’m thrilled to be a part of it!

I wanted to take the time to introduce myself to you fabulous FetchBack fans out there. My name? Crystal. My bio? Well… I won’t bore you with all of the details. But I will tell you this— my background has definitely been a diverse and fulfilling one. My degree is in broadcast journalism and career-wise, I’ve done everything from affiliate marketing to public relations. Through it all, a few things have remained pretty steadfast—my love of technology, my love of meeting new people, and a pretty habitual overconsumption of coffee.

I’m so excited to be a part of this team and likewise, am looking forward to getting to know all of our wonderful friends out there!

Until next time— Stay cool, FetchBack fam!

 

No Shave November - Supporting the Fight against Prostate Cancer

 

This November, Fetchback employees are putting away their razors and letting it grow.

The FetchBeards club members are growing out their beards through the month of November to raise money for the Prostate Cancer Foundation. At the end of November, Fetchback employees will donate on behalf of their favorite beard. Whichever beard raises the most money will be declared the best beard in the office!

See our clean shaven participants on Facebook. Check back at the end of the month to see the progress of our FetchBeards.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Retargeting

by Austin Leonard, a FetchBack National Account Executive

As Americans, I think that we take it for granted. I just came back from Washington, D.C., and it really hit home. I'm standing there, looking at the Capital Building, and thinking, what a great country! FetchBack's CEO and founder, Chad Little, had a great idea for a new way to advertise to your website's visitors. And then he took his idea and made it a reality. He formed a great company that is simply laser-focused on the right way to retarget your lost prospects. I wasn't there at the very beginning, but I've been here long enough to know that it wasn't easy.

And now that many, many other companies have realized that Chad's idea was a home run, it isn't getting any easier. Many companies say that they can "retarget" or "remarket" your lost customers, creating a lot of noise and confusion in the marketplace. Moreover, there really are very few companies out there that stay true to their original visions, shifting their focus to whatever the latest trend appears to be.

 Don’t get me wrong, there have been a lot of opportunities to shift gears along the way; mobile display, prospect-sharing, look-alike modeling and now search retargeting. We could have branched out in a thousand different ways, but we didn't because none of them come close to being as vitally important as retargeting. There is simply too much opportunity to maximize the return on the money that has already been spent on front-end traffic.

Call it being too close to the action or call it a puff-piece, but I'm happy that FetchBack is still ONLY focused on retargeting. By continuing to be laser-focused on retargeting, we’re developing solutions that allow our clients to truly integrate retargeting with their overall digital goals and strategies. We’re not just stopping at the product level, we’re offering solutions across the entire prospect funnel.

As marketers continue to embrace retargeting and dream up new capabilities, we’ll be there every step of the way, whether it is pixeling an email campaign or finding a new way to utilize dynamic technology that gets smarter with every ad served. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it; it started with a good idea that sparked a whole new industry – a real-life American business success story!

Chad Little and FetchBack believe that retargeting is the second most important innovation in online advertising. Where does recapturing lost prospects rank on your list of strategic priorities?

YOU...

by The Girl with the Pink Leash, FetchBack's culture Diva

You…

That’s why we do what we do. To our client’s, our partners; it is because of you we are who we are and we do what we do. No matter the role I play or the role another plays, it is only possible because you exist and because you trust us with your brand.And we, we are so very grateful.

Each and every day we walk the floor of this office, we strive to expand our knowledge and we work together for you. But, you see… this amazing and wonderful job, again, is only possible because of you.

You are some of the coolest people we know. Riding the Tour de France route for a fun summer vacation with friends, honeymooning in Africa, going back to school for your MBA while surfing the California coastline, following your passion as an aerial acrobat, loving fantasy football as much as we do and managing your teams diligently (what’s up with Vick’s status for Sunday) and entering pooches into the Weiner Mania pup races.

 As our client’s you also rock in the giving department too. Hosting an annual fundraiser to support the Adler Aphasia Center, working with MCACC to save the lives of furry friends, supporting the adoption of over 1,000,000 animals in 2010, selecting a charity each month to support, putting on live concerts to improve customer experiences as they travel through JFK’s terminal 5 and partnering with peers in your industry to put on Lasso for Life to benefit Leukemia and Lymphoma.

And when it comes to doing business, there are no others that are better than you. Paying for a ten year security deposit in bricks of gold, ranking on the INC 500 as the fastest growing small business, being acquired by Google to help support their growth and improvement of local products, utilizing research to update your brand and win the Grand Ogilvy Award for the use of said research, ranking on the 2011 Digital 100 as one of the world’s most valuable start-ups and earning five-star ratings and top honors across all your products for ease of use, performance, documentation, support and overall use.

We are so very thankful for the partnerships you provide, for the relationships you’ve built with our many departments and for the friendships that have stemmed over the years. We are grateful for the support you’ve given us as we grow, expand and modify. We appreciate all the advice, input and suggestions that have been made to make our business better. Most of all, we are thankful that you trust us with your business and that you’ve taught us how to be cooler, more giving and an overall better business.

Thank you, without you, we are not us.

Get a peek behind the FetchBack "scenes" by following "The Girl with the Pink Leash" on Facebook and Twitter.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Girl-with-the-Pink-Leash/225868950779459

 http://twitter.com/#!/GrlWThePnkLeash

 

Are you a leader or a follower?

by Austin Leonard, a FetchBack National Sales Executive

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” -Steve Jobs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As all great buzzwords go, many people have different ideas of what “innovation” means. Some people envision huge, game-changing ideas that become disruptive forces, while others believe that being innovative entails continuously releasing new bells and whistles to their existing products or services. It gets thrown out in a lot of sales pitches and marketing slogans, quickly wearing out the word, but I believe that you can tell if innovation is in a company’s DNA by its continuing body of work.

I also believe that Steve Jobs’ quote helps set the pace. The companies that we hear about are the ones that are always pushing the envelope. That trail of innovation builds a reputation that helps keep industry leaders at the forefront.

 At FetchBack, we understand the pace of the evolution of technology in not only the display space, but the entire online marketing space, as well. We work hard to try to balance the next level jumps in the retargeting and display world with the continuous improvements needed to keep our products fresh.

Not only do we continue to grow our extremely talented engineering team by recruiting world-class talent, but we also try to foster ideas from across the organization. The main initiative is a cross-channel team that includes members from account management, creative, sales and engineering. The team is tasked by our executive group with researching and developing projects from across the spectrum, from customer-facing to public-facing technologies. One example of this is our Dynamic Qualified Sequential technology, which was built specifically to help companies target and deliver the right message based on where their customers are in the purchase funnel.

We also have team members tasked with growing our integration capabilities with our sister companies, e-Dialog, the Pepperjam Network, ClearSaleing and MBS. One of our clearest strategic advantages is being part of eBay and GSI Marketing Services, and we work hard to deliver true multi-channel functionality to our clients.

 While innovation can lead you down a lot of rabbit holes, it can also get you to look at your business from the outside as you try to figure out what’s next. That’s why we also have an internal platform where any member of the company can make a product or service suggestion or idea. Team members can then comment or expand on the original idea, or anonymously vote on the ideas that they believe our R&D team should spend time on.

 Our goal is to be the leader in retargeting as it becomes the second most important innovation in online advertising and we know that our clients rely on us to continue to expand our capabilities to accomplish their objectives. If we don’t innovate, we will merely be a follower along for the ride.

How does your company foster innovation and growth internally and externally?

FIDO, the Billion Dollar Mutt

by Kevin Nuest, FetchBack's Advertiser Operations Manager (and Guest Blogger)

A lot of companies like to issue press releases about the amount of money they make each year or the funding they have raised. The people at these companies worked hard and it's great to step back and reflect on their accomplishment. I get that, which is why I wanted to point out a milestone that FetchBack achieved last week.

 

 Our company culture is pretty different compared to other places. From the Account Managers, to Sales, to Development, to Accounting, to the Creative Team and so on, we are all striving for a common goal: make our client's look like Rock Stars and drive as much value for them as possible. That's why we display a counter on the wall in our office (and on our website home page) of the revenue driven for our clients.

Last week, FetchBack exceeded the $1 billion dollar mark for total revenue driven on behalf of our clients!

 Now that's something worth bragging about!

 

A Cube By Any Other Name Would Be Just A Cube…

by The Girl With the Pink Leash, FetchBack's own cultural diva 

Boring. Sterile. Noisy. Too private. Not private enough. Lack of communication. Distractions. Silos.

 It’s a tough environment, but someone has to work in it. And in the FetchBack environment the positives far outweigh the negatives. Sure, we get loud. Sure, we interrupt one another. Yes, there are distractions. And there certainly isn’t much privacy. But, what we do have is pretty darn incredible.

Start with the open environment and the ability we have to make our space our own. Move to the familial structure and our energy. Step into the shared learning opportunities and the positive motivators we provide one another. And finish it all off with our ability to remain approachable and accessible… Seems we’re doing something right.

We all work in a “cube” environment. The walls are 4 feet in height, but the barriers have been removed. We have windows and cork boards. And in this environment we’ve all had the opportunity to make our space our own; to bring little pieces of us to this office. We spend 8 hours, 5 days a week enjoying our surroundings. Look on nearly every desk and there is a personal touch somewhere. From the birthday cards received, to the photos of family and friends, to the 5Hour Energy drink or the box of Cheez-It’s. There are plants and pictures, drawings and art, food and drink, statues and stuffed animals, even a fridge every so often.

 There is a familial structure here too. There is banter and a way of communication that fosters positive relationships. There is laughter and jokes, sharing of funny stories and weekend events. There is an energy that is unbeatable. When sitting at your desk and hearing peers laughter and jokes, seeing nerf bullets shot through the office, hearing a pup bark and lingering music in the background, the positive is contagious.

 Beyond all the fun and energy there is great opportunity. There is opportunity to be a constant learner. There is opportunity to share knowledge and support one another. There is opportunity to truly work in a cohesive environment where “Teamwork really does make the dream work”. We utilize one another daily; to bounce ideas, to see a new perspective, to dig a little deeper, to think outside of the box, to challenge ourselves and to ensure what we are providing our client’s with the best support and knowledge possible. Educating and supporting one another sure beats a silo.

All of the positives make for an office full of cubes that still feels very accessible and individuals all feel quite approachable.

 Can’t beat that, now can ya?

 

Be sure to "LIKE" The Girl with the Pink Leash on Facebook and follow her musings on Twitter!

 

The Zero Moment of Truth...Be sure to get in the last word

by Austin Leonard, FetchBack National Account Executive

What does “custom” mean to you?

When somebody tells you that they have a “customized solution” for you? Do you envision a lot of work?

As the trend continues towards 1-to-1 advertising and personalized messaging, marketers are being given more data about their customers and their customers’ shopping habits every single day. While there are many large, enterprise-level solutions available through companies like Omniture and IBM, the sheer volume of data can be overwhelming. Without the ability to use this data, it is essentially rendered useless.

Perfect – you know that your customer is in California and prefers to shop at 7pm on Tuesday evenings. She’s purchased a pair of shoes and browsed blouses for the past few weeks now, so you know that she’s already a fan of your brand and is interested in adding to her wardrobe.

How do you take advantage of this knowledge? The right offer, served with the right product, at exactly the right time will close the sale, strengthening her relationship with your brand.

 Google calls this the “Zero Moment of Truth”. It’s the moment when you win the consumer over or your competitor gets the last word in and takes market share from you.

 They’ve seen your ads on TV, they’ve visited your website to see your offerings. Now they’re out in the wild again; searching on the web for reviews, opinions from their favorite celebrities and seeing what their friends are doing or wearing.

But you’re going to get that sale anyway, right? They’ve bought once, so there’s no need to spend money to advertise to this prospect. They’ve also been to your site, so they know all about what you sell and your latest products.

Or maybe you rely on email to help keep your prospects and customers informed. When’s the last time you went through your personal email inbox and selected 10-15 emails for immediate deletion without catching up with the latest sale from Best Buy or Macy’s?

 Don’t get me wrong – I’m not bashing email, I’m simply encouraging you to take advantage of the rapidly evolving marketing technology around you as part of your media mix. Display technology has the ability to tie in live geographical, time-of-day, consumer preference, and promotional pricing data automatically for every single prospect within milliseconds. Forget just showing the actual product for shoppers who get down to the product level or abandon their shopping carts – think bigger than that!

 Plug the most recent local store circular into an ad on your prospect’s favorite blog with an invitation to visit the store closest to them with a special offer to purchase that jacket that they’ve been debating on, knowing that they are in your email database and received the new fall lineup announcement last week. It’s raining there, so to brighten your prospect’s mood, the background image shows a bright sunny day on the ski slopes, rather than a white background with a product feed rotating through.

 If that sounds like a lot of work to get customizable ads like this for every single shopper, think again. With automatic creative rules and the ability to get smarter over time by automatically processing the mounds of consumer behavior data available from your site and around the web, a comprehensive retargeting solution can make all of your ads smarter and, much more importantly, much more efficient.

The customized solution then only needs to be how to maximize remarketing as part of your overall marketing strategy so that the few pennies per customer that you invest closest to the final buying decision become the smartest pennies that you spend in your entire marketing budget.

 Let the technology do the work so that all of the money that you spend building your brand doesn’t end up being negated by a well-placed competitor’s ad at the Zero Moment of Truth.

Chop, Mix and Blend...Are you whipping up messaging that is tailored to your consumer?

by  Melissa Slavsky, FetchBack Enterprise Account Manager

You’re up late one night watching bad TV when an infomercial for The Magic Bullet Blender appears on your screen. You watch for a few minutes because it looks like a fun product. You even think, “I could really use one of those!” You walk over to your computer and look up The Magic Bullet Blender and even consider buying it right there and then….but something makes you think “Do I really need this? Or will this sit in my kitchen cabinet unused like all those other products I bought?” Once you get to the site and read through the product info and look at a couple photos, you realize you really don’t need to spend the money on another small appliance that you will use only once. So you leave the site without buying the blender.

 Your initial search for The Magic Bullet Blender is a result of the infomercial influencing you to believe you really need one. That’s good advertising. The website didn’t convince you to actually buy the blender, so this is when even better advertising needs to come into play – time to introduce you to the retargeted ad.

Since you left the site without buying the product, an ad that really strikes a chord with you has to flash across your screen. The ads must not only be in front of you in the right place at the right time, but the message has to grab your attention. The imagery has to resonate with your lifestyle. The offer better be one you haven’t seen before and it better be good.

As advertisers/marketers, we must ALWAYS look at things from the perspective of the consumer. We need to step out of our day jobs as advertisers and step into our personal lives as consumers. What makes us respond to advertising? For many of us we need to have some sort of emotional reaction in order to respond to the ad. Yes, the offer can make a huge difference, but it’s not always enough.

So how do we know what will make consumers respond? We need to use what we already know about the potential customer, and what we don’t know, we need to learn. As you are designing the creative, do your research. What are the general demographics/psychographics of the sites where you buy inventory? Are there specific geographical locations you want to target? What are the demographics/psychographics of those locations? Get to know your prospects.

Tailor the creative to the consumer, not to the product you are trying to sell.

Here’s a perfect example of advertising that evoked emotion through images and messaging only. No offer was even needed. The advertiser did their research and learned how to reach (get through to) consumers in their market. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjtGUcQOVVg

Do you have examples of advertising that got through to you and changed your mind about a product or service? Tell us about it!

Have you "herd"? Different is good.

by David Bendtsen, FetchBack's West Regional Agency Director

Different is good. Same is good if you’re comparing lottery numbers, but usually different is better. Viewing the world from fresh angles makes life more interesting and much less boring.

Take a peanut-butter sandwich. It’s more fun to eat when you take that first luscious bite from a sharp corner instead of that fat old crusty edge. It's not healthier or more nutritious, it’s just better when mom adds flair with a quick swipe of her butter knife and lays before you a diagonally cut slice of heaven.

 I like it when the hotel staff folds up a towel to look like a swan sitting on my pillow. A "towelgami" surprise at the end of a hard day. It’s even better when the swan sits on little chocolate egg. That’s creative. They don’t have to do that and they don’t charge me for it. But that’s what I remember and it makes me want to go back. Even if they did charge me a little more, I’d probably still stay there because it just feels better than the same old, same old.

You can get lost in the herd if you’re just like everyone else…same solution, same pricing, same silly PowerPoint promising the same thing as the guy who was there before you. Might be in a cool font with a different background, but it’s the same worn out message. You’re talking solution, they’re hearing moo-moo-moo, and thinking “Get back to the herd Mr. CowJustLikeEverybodyElse…..”.

When we bring creativity into our businesses world it becomes interesting to our partners for reasons more than just not being boring, it evident that we’re really thinking about their business and looking for new ways to increase efficiencies. Reshaping our thinking to help our partners achieve their goals cheaper, faster, better is exactly what they’re searching for.

 Applying the same old solutions to the same old issues wins you a spot with the same old herd.