Alvin Jimenez

To kick off the year for this blog (wedding preparations not withstanding), I have decided to make a conscious effort to embrace social media. We’re not talking about collecting “friends”on Friendster, Plurk, Twitter, or Facebook here. I am talking about building one’s online reputation. Being an Internet marketer after all means putting your name out there.

Here are two obvious basics you can start with.

1. Own your domain - Even if you don’t know anything about building a website, nail that <firstname><lastname>.com domain down. All it takes is a credit card and $9.99. You can take your time learning everything there is to know, but your domain name might be gone in the next hour.
2. Find uniformity - All of us have tried searching for our names online at least once or twice, and what are the first results that come up? Social networking. I have acquired the usernames alvinj on Linkedin, alvinjimenez on Facebook, and alvinj on Plurk. I wish all of them were alvinjimenez, but someone beat me to it on Linkedin and Plurk.

Doing the above will take more than 10 minutes, and will guarantee yourself a lifetime of controlled findability.

I was browsing through the hundreds of Internet Retailer sites I signed up to receive emails from this afternoon, when I realized how different the Pinoy consumer is from our Western counterparts.

For one, Americans are already used to making transactions online. Whether it be to pounce on that “Today Only” sale from Bestbuy.com, or to have the week’s bag of groceries get delivered to their doorstep, the cons of making a purchase online is now close to none.

Filipinos on the other hand, are more accustomed to buying their stuff in person. They do it not only because of apprehensions on shopping online, but they would just rather have their stuff right away. The courier services (or lack of) do nothing to help the present situation.

One thing I learned on a trip I made to the US in June of 2003 — is that you don’t even need to shop online to benefit from a little email marketing.

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In the Philippines, Halloween and Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated by most. There’s no such thing as Cyber Monday, and Black Friday isn’t what we would say the best retail day of the year. Looking at the subject lines in my inbox, I see that most US retailers (those that survived) showing no signs of the economic storm it had to go through more than a year ago. Spending was down. Jobs were lost. Americans cut corners any way they could.

On our own shores, we experienced our own storm more than a month ago.  As rains filled up our streets, washed away cars, houses, and lives, we saw how natural it was for Filipinos to share whatever they could for their countrymen. And then we saw those same people be first in line at one of our local malls’ 3-day sales. It’s funny how people from opposite sides of the globe react to almost similar situations. Most of this is rooted on the belief that Christmas season begins as soon as the “ber months” arrive.

Using consumer behavior in the Philippines as a starting point, here’s a general guideline (or an idea) on how you can become the first mover online in your own market this Holiday season.

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With an staggering amount of advertising spend that has been thrown (or wasted) on it, it’s impossible for you to not have heard about Sandbox.ph. Without including any technical jargon or Internet buzz words and phrases, I think it is what it is — a glorified web portal, or a different version of Yehey.com with a dependency on user generated content. More on these in a later post.

If you aren’t Yahoo or AOL, this is one route no one should ever be taking. If you haven’t noticed, Pinoys are resistant to change, even if that change will make our lives easier. Sandbox.ph in lieu of Inquirer.net, Facebook, et al? “If everyone just learned how to use Sandbox, then this will eventually catch on”?

C’mon guys, who are we kidding here.

[Disclaimer This short post was done in 2008, hence the figures maybe inaccurate. It's the concept behind the article that's more important.]

Email Marketing isn’t even in its infancy stages here in the Philippines. The lack of reliable payment gateways, along with the typical Pinoy’s reluctance to give his credit card information, make it impossible for emails to become valid points of purchase. While sites such as Bidshot and Ebay.ph provide the platforms, transactions happen through simple kaliwaans instead. Do you know anyone who has acquired any item through honest bids?

Such is the unfortunate state of e-commerce in the Philippines.

While this is the case, there are some local sites out there that show a lot of promise. Take FHM.com.ph for example. It has the makings of a brand that can adapt remarketing strategies to boost its revenue.

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If you’re like me who has more than two email accounts, then I guess you should be immune to email related spam or scams already. If it isn’t a notice asking you contact <insert obscure name from foreign country X here> so they can transfer to your name money that’s supposedly yours, it’s usually an email asking you to send in your personal information so you can earn thousands of dollars at home. Though the latter isn’t impossible, it’s not something that can be done overnight.

Just this morning, a high school classmate forwarded to our user group an email supposedly from Yahoo, asking anyone who receives it to send in their account information.

It sure had me fooled for a while. If you look at all the elements of the email, it looks like a legit email from Yahoo. One thing you have to remember though when receiving supposed “system generated emails”, is that these people have the capability to filter accounts that haven’t been opened for a long time. Why the need for an email like this?

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I think I’ve said my piece about the implications of spending for “equipment” when it comes to a person’s fitness. What I didn’t realize when I purchased my Nikeplus sensor about a month ago, was how exceptional Nike’s marketing ploy was. Not only did they succeed in upselling themselves (to me at least), they managed to create a well supported social media effort with their gear.

With Nike+ running shoes and a Nike+ iPod Sport Kit or Sensor, your iPod nano, iPod touch, or iPhone 3GS will motivate you mile after mile.

The following are some of the things I like about the Apple-Nike partnership.

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There sure is nothing like a Katrina-like storm to jolt me back to my (blogging) senses. With the country suffering another serious beat down from mother nature, I can only hope to impart another lesson from a colleague of mine at work — that you can never get an Internet Marketer down. Armed with nothing but a brown Macbook (don’t ask why) and an Internet connection, Mikey has managed to raise more than $1,000 for the victims of Typhoon Ondoy.

If the you haven’t seen any of the posts, then I suggest you go on ahead and announce it on all your online/social media accounts.

Philippineaid.com makes it easier for you to lend a helping hand to the victims of Tropical Storm Kestana (ondoy) in the Philippines. Send help to people in dire need using Pay Pal or your Credit Card.

The faster we get this out there, the easier it’ll be for everyone else out there to help this initiative make a difference for the hundreds of thousands who have been displaced from their homes.

UPDATE: As of 5:07 PM, Philippineaid.com has managed to raise $1,221.60! A sincere thank you to everyone out there. If you can’t spare any amount, a good re-post or re-tweet will suffice!

It shouldn’t have to be this way, but leave it to a few friends who didn’t anticipate the Tuesday evening traffic to leave me alone in a restaurant with my trusty Macbook. Not that I’m complaining — It’s been a while since my last post anyway. I just wanted to share some of the resource sites I frequent.

Retail Email Blog - I’ve been following this site ever since it had a Blogspot URL. Chad White authors the blog, and is subscribed to the top 100 online retailers based on the Internet Retailer 500. He gives a lot of interesting insights regarding what everyone is doing right, wrong, and everything else experimental. I have just one quip though, our company is in the top 100, but yet I don’t see us on his list.

Spam Meltdown - One of the few sites that focus on the creative side of Email Marketing, this site has failed to update its content in recent months. However, what they have archived now can be a good point of comparison for any up and coming Email Marketing program.

Email Insider on Media Post - This is a substantial source for up to date Email Marketing developments. Most of the articles are opinion based, which is good if you’re looking for new perspective every now and then.

The Email Wars - The blog is maintained by EROI, an email marketing agency. Also a good source of white papers.

I am also refer to the following sites:

Advertising Age - When you’re trying to get a feel for how consumers and advertisers think in the US, no other site can give you a better overview. To us Internet Marketers, it’s encouraging to see that they’ve been covering more non traditional media topics lately.

Trend Hunter - For similar reasons, Trend Hunter can help any media/advertising/marketing team anticipate and prepare for any market changing consumer behavior. This especially works for more traditional forms of media such as magazines (because of the usual 1-2 month production lead time).

Hope this helps!

Unlike in the US, the online city guide landscape is very limited in the Philippines. Clickthecity.com was pretty much the only choice you had if you wanted a comprehensive city guide. Even then, people only visited the site for the TV and movie schedules (yup, that’s really it).

It was sometime last year when Summit and NMI decided to join the city guide wars with Spot.ph. Needless to say, it was a complete mess. Back then, there was already a clear disconnect between the site and (objectively speaking) the magazine arm of one of the most prestigious print companies in the country. The site clearly didn’t enjoy the same quality control all Summit magazines were known for.

As I write this, both Spot.ph and ClicktheCity.com are undergoing various levels of redesign, reformatting, or whatever you want to call it. Hence leaving me with too many things to write about (and thus more reasons for you to come back here).

All of this just made me think — more than the occasional “blog-about-this-blog-about-that” event, online newspaper, or social networking site, are Filipinos ready to leave everything traditional and go online?