It kinda makes me blush to get letter like this – she sent it out to several thousand people on her combined mailing lists.  I have no idea how many people will join the Web Analytics Association to vote for me but I sure appreciate the support! 

Letter below: 

Thanks Robin!!!  Here goes -

What can I say?  I'll do what I can to develop standards for SEO and SEM, Engagement Metrics, RIA Application Measurement standards,3D Virtual Worlds Metrics standardization and anything else the WAA wants me to work on.

Thanks again, for the support Robin!

I wrote this post several weeks ago regarding Peach Direct and GE Money Bank that was highly critical of both companies.  Since then the situation has changed and I have decided to rewrite the post in light of new developments.

Originally I ordered two laptops and a monitor on December 11th 2006 and had been billed for the entire order even though I never received the order.  After several interactions with Peach Direct and GE Money Bank, the situation was resolved in the last week to make it up to me.

Peach Direct had some supply chain problems late last year that caused about 153 customers to not get their orders in a timely way (I got this info from someone at Peach Direct who I spoke with) – demand outpaced supply and they were unprepared for it – including Call Center employees and contractors that had not been trained for this situation.

As I left it, Peach Direct, woke up, started fixing these problems and tracked down every one of the 153 people, including me, and resolved the issues – one by one.

I won't say that Peach Direct is blameless here – or that someone should not fall on their sword for this, but they have really tried to bend backwards now to be nice.

In the spirit of reciprocation – I've decided to remove my story about Peach Direct and leave it as a situation that's been resolved and hopefully won't happen again to anyone else who orders from them.

I've been hammering away at my clients and former clients on how they needed to move towards a Social Media approach if they were going to have any real hope of increasing conversion rates. 

Particularly, the Architects I have dealt with have such horrible conversion rates (rates that are often explained by the length of the buying cycle for this sector, but have as much to do with lousy creative as anything else).  But how does a site that has no experience in developing Social Media tools or building communities suddenly do that?   I mean, it's one thing to know the sickness, another thing to apply the cure successfully.

Enter KickApps.

KickApps is a way to build social networks for sites that would never, in a million years, know how to build one like Mascord.com and my former client, The House Designers.  It still takes imagination and creativity to build on the community, but now, sites that want to,  can build a whole social network, with all the full blown Social Networking Tools while still retaining the look and feel of their own sites plus the ownership of the communities of each site builds.

Especially, in the case of large email list, like The House Designers has (their most valuable asset, in my opinion) a Social Network built around the email list could be, if done right, more effective than any other single thing they've ever done (hint).

Sites that use KickApps?  Alot of them… such as UndergroundOnline Beta, MyAFL, NationalLampoonCollege, Procter & Gamble's TAG Body Spray, TrekkiesOnline, WUAB Cleveland's My43.net.

Here's something I "grabbed" from the Trekkies site – something the Architects would not know, in a million years, how to do, but which, with KickApps, would be easy as pie to "Steal" a Architectural House Plan – and have your fans stick it all over the place … see what I mean? 

First I'll show you three User Generated Videos, One from Star Wars, one of Kirk and the other of Spock –  and then the Widget that was used to grab it – created easily with KickApps.  You just need the "content" but when you "unleash" your fans, there's usually plenty of content!

Just think of how "creative" some of your "fans" can be.

 Above: User Generated Video of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker

Above: User Generated Video on "Kirk".

Above: User Generated Video of "Spock".

And here's the Widget (below).  There's a lot of creativity out there – people, your fans want to contribute to your brand – you just have to learn how to allow them to.  In fact, I wrote about this with the Pontiac Island Study in Second Life a couple of days ago at the Virtual Worlds 2007 Conference.

How do you get started? Follow the instructions here.

In the past month or two I have written about tools like Collarity and KickApps that have, creatively employed, have a much greater potential to increase conversion rates than any combination of SEO or Paid Advertising can hope to match – that is truly my belief – that's why I have continued to harp on this with my current and even former clients.

In the case of the Architects, they'd have to really sit down with me and plan this all out, brainstorm mainly - just because you have the tools doesn't mean they solve your problems  - Social Media needs to be built around what your site does, what your community already does.

That's right, each site has a community – even if they don't realize it- in fact, there are several communities that come to a site – and – more and more, Branding has become the way a company provides tools to enable it's commun

ities to have a 2 way conversations and to talk with each other.

I will develop a plan for KickApps for my current client, Mascord.com around http://www.mascordlivingspaces.com/, becasue they are my client, but I given a hint of what the direction could be for many sites.

Granted, there is some advertising that is shown by KickApps, you can buy it back from them, but I'd like to see an option where you pay extra not to have any advertising shown or to show your own.  Otherwise, I have nothing but good things to say about  KickApps.

Hopefully this will not become another example of the Path Not Taken.