Marketing e-mails are widely accepted as obnoxious, though they are the darling of the marketing team’s online arsenal. But the infamous inbox clutter may finally be losing marketing steam. A November 2008 study by MailerMailer shows that fewer consumers worldwide are opening marketing e-mails. The average open rate fell to 13.2 percent in the first half of 2008, compared with 16.11 percent in the first half of 2007. Click rates also fell from 3.18 percent in the first half of 2007 to 2.73 percent in the first half of this year.

Specific criteria affect open rates, including what business categories the e-mails originate from and the length of subject line. Some industries had higher open rates for their marketing e-mail, among them banking and finance, religious and spiritual, government and telecommunications. E-mails with subject lines of less than 35 characters yielded open rates of 19.6 percent and a 3.1 percent average click rate. When the subject lines exceeded 35 characters, the average open rates dipped to 14.8 percent and a 1.9 percent click rate.

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RSS subscribers make a great target audience. Really Simple Syndication enables Web users to have automatically updating access to customized Web content. These RSS feeds are read in aggregator software, such as FeedReader, Google Reader or Bloglines. It is a less popular, but highly efficient method to access frequently updated content on news sites and blogs.

Bill Flitter, co-founder and CEO of RSS media distributor Pheedo, explained the unique monetizability of RSS: “It’s not a buy like an ad network would be,” Mr. Flitter said in eMarketer today. “With RSS subscribers, you know their interests and how often they consume your content.” Pheedo’s click-through rate averages between 0.4 and 0.6 percent, but those clickers are highly interested. It is a smaller funnel, but higher impact, because the end-user is in a non-crowded environment.

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Social networking has been shaping online retail for some time, but Facebook fan pages are emerging as the new popular promotion tool. Representation on other sites such as MySpace and YouTube show a presence of 26 or 27 percent of respondents from a Vovici poll of US Online Retailers in August, 2008. For Facebook, the representation reached to nearly one-third.

A September 2008 study by Rosetta, via eMarketer , focused on the top 100 online retailers in the US. Of these, 59 had a fan page on Facebook, up from 30 in May. Since then, of the 29 retailers that had built pages were companies such as Best Buy, Toys ‘R’ Us, Kohl’s and Wal-Mart.

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When EA’s Battlefield 2142 released, it was widely criticized for including in-game dynamic advertising in its online maps.

Since then, there hasn’t been a lot of talk about in-game advertising. Until Obama campaign ads started appearing in the Xbox Live racing game Burnout Paradise. Obama, the first presidential candidate to advertise in a game, continues his campaign’s shrewd mining of emerging avenues of political advertising.

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New data was released Tuesday reveals that most people will sit through a fair amount of advertising in order to visit Web sites. Including pop-ups, out-of-frame ads, floating ads, etc., 61 percent of US adults using the Internet would watch between one and five online ads for free Web content per hour in 2007 with a median response of 2 per hour.

66 percent of those polled thought that the amount of over-content ads on the sites they visited had increased over the last six months, up from 57 percent in 2005. The Center for Media Research said Internet users thought they were seeing more interruptive ads because they visited a wider array of sites, which exposed them to a greater variety of ads and ad types.

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Apple announced Thursday that it will release its new laptop on October 14th. The laptop, code-named “Brick” may mark Apple’s first foray into the budget-laptop market, as it is rumored to be priced at $800.

The new laptop is said to be made from single sheets of aluminum – hence “Brick” – carved with a laser and water-jet system, which would reduce manufacturing prices and also make the laptop sturdier.

Last month, Morgan Stanley’s Kathryn Huberty said that budget computer (under $1,000) was the only current computer growth market. Apple has always been known for the high price of Macs, letting PCs dominate the budget computer market. At $800 dollars, the price is still much higher than most budget PCs, but Apple’s nurturing of a cache market has shown to provide underwhelming market performance.

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One of the main themes at last week’s Online Market World 2008 was how businesses can best use social media. This was oft discussed, but best summed up by Bill Hanekamp, CEO of The Well Inc. Advertising. In discussing strategies for viral marketing, Hanekamp gave a succinct summary of how to “let the customers spread the word about you for free.” I’ve fleshed out his list with some ideas offered by other presenters.

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Online retailers are following under-30s shoppers to social sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. “Generation Y online buyers” participate in Internet activities more than any younger generation, and this influences their online spending habits.

The Society for New Communications Research study entitled, “Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media,” confirms the importance that this demographic holds for online rating systems, discussion forums and blogs.  These sources of information seem to be divorced from traditional marketing strategies, and therefore have more credibility.

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Facebook’s new hompage can be seen at www.new.facebook.com. The former tagline was “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you”. They switched for “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” They still won’t get out of the closet and say that they are a social networking site!

Beside the clean and boring interface with a map and dots, I looked up the different versions in several countries and here’s how Facebook describes itself.

The French version says:
“Facebook vous permet de partager des informations et de créer un environnement ouvert et connecté au monde”, which (if I translate properly) means: “Facebook allows you to share information and to create an open environment and connected to the world.”

The Spanish version says:
“Facebook te permite compartir y te ofrece un mundo más accesible y conectado”, which (if I translate properly) means: “Facebook lets you share and gives you a world more accessible and connected”

The Japanese version says:
“Facebookは、情報共有の場を提供することにより、よりオープンでつながりのある世界の構築をお手伝いします。”
Now I would go easy on the Japanese translation, and would accept any help with this one: “Facebook, to share information by providing a place for a more open world and to help create connections.”

My favorite boring new version is the English-Pirate, clickbelow.

After that JPMorgan Chase & Co. acquired the banking assets of Washington Mutual (including $307 billion in assets and $188 billion in deposits) late Thursday, WaMu’s website got a quick fix overnight. (photo above: before - photo bottom: after)