I recently read an article by Anna Talerico entitled "A simple road to more personalized site experiences", where she urges companies to segment visitors as they come on their landing page. She goes on to say that "you [merchants] can't get out there and talk to each person who clicks through your site, so let your landing pages do the talking for you". 

While Anna may be correct in the fact that segmentation increases customer conversion I strongly disagree with her statement that you can't talk to everyone out there.

One of our customers achieved a 20% conversion to sales ratio in our last field trial meaning that for every 100 digital sales calls made, 20 people walked into the store and bought something with the offer we delivered. How'd they do it and what does it say about the ideal Micronotes customer? 

First off, we were able to get the appointment. Entrepreneurs and flush trust-funds owners notwithstanding, most people have either time or money -- but not both meaning those with the most spending power tend to have the least time to interact with marketers.

We've just completed our second field trial with real brands and real bill-payers using our KulaQ technology which enables marketers to conduct mass-scale one-on-one MicroInterviews with opted-in bank bill-pay customers; and automatically make the right offer based on that interview. If you'd don't understand what a MicroInterview is, please go here.

KulaQ represents a new form of targeted outbound marketing based on a very old idea; namely, "Advertising is salesmanship mass produced. No one would bother to use advertising if he could talk to all his prospects face-to-face." Morris L. Hite, Advertising Hall of Fame.

I am pleased to announce that Drazen Prelec, Digital Equipment Corp. Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management, has joined the Micronotes Advisory Board.

Professor Prelec's research deals with the psychology and neuroscience of decision making (behavioral economics and neuroeconomics; risky choice, time discounting, self-control, consumer behavior).

Actually, I don't know -- I haven't found that number just yet.

We had a board meeting Monday with not 1, not 2, but 3 MIT Professors in attendance; Glen Urban, Drazen Prelec, and Nelson Repenning. We were talking through the data from our most recent field study which, again, yielded an average offer acceptance rate of 66% and cost per action of about $5 (table below).