Is it time to stop supporting IE6?

by Michael Duxbury

With the full release of Internet Explorer 8 around the corner (Release Candidate 1 was released on Monday), we've started to wonder if the time has finally come to stop supporting version 6.

Released in August 2001, IE6 is looking a little elderly to put it mildly. It suffers from key rendering issues - and some serious security flaws (earlier this month, Secunia reported 142 vulnerabilities). With a mammoth 234 distinct releases over the last eight years, it's nigh on impossible to test sites on them all.

However, current usage statistics show the ageing browser still has a market share of around 30%, despite the recent advances of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. But does that figure really represent our users? A lot of our sites are UK-focused, and a large proportion of those have a young demographic. Within this group, the percentage using IE6 could be a lot lower - and that's something that tools such as Google Analytics can show us on a site-specific level. On our dotmailer.co.uk site, IE6 users over the last month accounted for just 15% of visitors (down from 20% six months ago, and from 33% a year ago).

Not testing our sites in a browser used by 2 out of 10 of users seems like a bad move - so I think we're stuck with it for now. However, a 50% drop in usage over a year means that people are moving on to newer browsers - if only they were doing it quicker...

In recession, traditional ad agencies need to seek out digital partners

By Tink Taylor

Bleak news reported on bnet.com last week, that the Ogilvy Group is to lay off around 10% of its workforce. BNET's Ad Agency Layoff Counter when I last checked was running at over 6,500 heads.

Unfortunately, no-one in the ad business is surprised that when clients start to cut back on above the line and print spend, agencies are forced to make cut backs themselves.

When times get hard and budgets get tight, above the line ad spend in particular is vulnerable, as it can potentially be difficult to measure and prove the return on investment. Next goes print and mailings - especially when looking at response rates against the cost of production and distribution. Then there's the pressure of the ‘environmental cost’ that the print sector faces.

Digital marketing spend however, has remained robust - precisely because it is both measurable and can demonstrate outstanding ROI. Retained clients will start to spend again - maybe it will take 12 months, maybe longer. So it's critical for agencies to maintain their client relationships and continue to provide a quality service in the meantime.

Digital services will play a crucial role here. Clients cutting back on traditional channels will be ramping up their spend on online marketing. The crunch is that with headcount losses and less manpower it becomes harder for agencies to cover off increased demand in this specialised area - and that's where outsourcing to a specialist digital agency will help.

Dedicated digital agencies like dotMailer - with many years experience of working with agencies behind the scenes to provide website design, build and support - can be a godsend in these tough times. At dotMailer we've been partnering with traditional agencies for over 9 years.

The irony is that by the very nature of the work, it can be hard for digital agencies like dotMailer to shout about the agency to agency work we do, as so much of it is done confidentially. But that's the whole point - we're happy to work our socks off behind the scenes so traditional agencies can take centre stage and deliver a block buster of a digital campaign to the client.

Just how mega was 'mega Monday'?

By Cliff Guy

Christmas 2009 saw the word 'Mega-Monday' enter the e-marketing and retail domain. Used to describe the predicted record online spend day of December 8th, the phrase was way too 1980s for its subject matter, but it did make a point.

So just how mega did it all pan out to be? According to the latest numbers released by IMRG Capgemini, it all panned out very well! Christmas online sales were up 14.2% on December '07, following a record online spend in November '08. All this in the face of one of the harshest Christmas retail periods in living memory, with High Street names seeing significant slumps in sales, despite massive in-store reductions.

The message to marketers is clear - the opportunities for exploiting growth in the current contracting market lie fairly and squarely in digital marketing. Now, that's mega.

dotMailer Ltd becomes dotDigital Group PLC

By Peter Simmonds

I am proud to announce that from 30 January 2009, subject to shareholder approval, dotMailer Ltd will become dotDigital Group PLC, a company quoted on the PLUS Market following the reverse takeover of West End Ventures PLC.

dotDigital Group PLC will be made up of three businesses initially:

• dotMailer, the email marketing company that provides over 2,000 users with high deliverability and advanced ROI-boosting features through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface;

• dotAgency, the digital marketing specialists that offer design, website creation, search engine optimisation and strategic digital marketing consultancy; and

• dotCommerce, the affordable, flexible and scalable off-the-shelf ecommerce package that fits like a tailored solution.

2008 was an exceptional year for dotMailer. We were named one of the Deloitte Fast Track 500 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, having grown revenue by 97%, profit by 118% and staff numbers by over 100%.

We plan to use the proceeds from the reverse takeover to continue improving our product and service range utilising an even stronger balance sheet to continue investing in growth in these challenging economic times.

Becoming a PLUS Market quoted company opens the door to additional equity funding and if the right opportunities arise we will seek to acquire complementary businesses in the digital marketing space.

All of this puts us in great shape to continue the impressive growth story into 2009 and beyond.

Of course, we couldn’t have done this without our fantastic and highly committed team, who have worked extremely hard to bring us to this point. One of the most rewarding aspects of this deal is that our employees will now be able to share in our long term success.