Last month, Razorfish Search kicked off Practical Steps Towards Integrated Direct-Response Marketing, a POV series written by Adam Heimlich, Group Search Director at Razorfish, in collaboration with Google and vertical experts within Razorfish.

This month, we’re pleased to bring you Part Two of the series: Integrated DR Marketing for Multi-Channel Retailers. Co-authored by Adam Heimlich (Razorfish) and Brett Goffin (Google), the whitepaper outlines steps to integrate digital into the existing acquisition and retention efforts of multi-channel retailers. We want to hear from you, so read it and share your thoughts.

In case you missed it, here’s Part One of the series: Google’s Development Roadmap: More Info in More Places

Practical Steps Toward Integrated Direct-Response Marketing is a series of whitepapers offering clear instructions on how to improve ROI this year. Developed by Razorfish Search in collaboration with vertical experts from Google and marketers from Razorfish’s Media, Analytics, CRM and Ad Exchange departments, the series aims to cut through the hyperbole surrounding new advertising technology by telling executives exactly what they need to know. Razorfish believes a rare opportunity is at hand, and that sound guidance on measuring cross-channel activity, unifying views of the customer, testing contact strategies and optimizing creative are required for early success. Practical Steps… brings the broad experience of digital natives to bear on the core challenges of large marketing organizations.

Part 1 of the series is “Google’s Development Roadmap: More Info in More Places,” currently available at Razorfish.com. Forthcoming chapters will focus on specific verticals, starting with retail. All whitepapers in the series take an evolution-not-revolution approach, delivering recommendations on how to enhance offline direct-response efforts with online data. Razorfish believes success at integrated marketing is less a matter of tearing down traditional DR than of achieving the ability to learn new tactics that provide reproducible results.

We want to hear from you! Post comments or email us at razorfishsearch@razorfish.com

Baidu’s share of searches in China increased 6% from Q4 to Q1. Google redirecting visitors from mainland China to their Hong Kong site doesn’t seem a likely factor for this growth, given that Google’s change didn’t happen until March 22nd. It looks more like the increasing number of Chinese internet users is responsible. The share of Chinese citizens regularly accessing the internet was less than 30% in 2009. Internet penetration is increasing a lot faster in China than in the US, where penetration is now above 75%.

Employees at Razorfish’s offices in Beijing and Shanghai report that Google users are loyal, citing the accuracy and relevance Google is trusted to provide. Also, Google is necessary for searching for English-language pages in China.  Baidu results are only available in Chinese. Google will have a significant market in China until Baidu makes a big strategy shift.

Baidu’s strategy is to increase query share by concentrating on new users, rather than stealing from Google. Baidu also hopes to capture more of the mobile search share in China. This week, executives from Baidu explained their ambition to achieve the same query share from mobile as they have on PCs. With less than 1% of their sales teams dedicated to international business, it’s clear Baidu is not looking to the West.

Today Razorfish released the sixth annual Razorfish Outlook Report.

The report drives home the fact that digital is on center stage right now. Consumers and technology are responsible for the shift  — marketers need to keep up.

Search VP Josh Palau provides the outlook for search. Explaining the concept “Search Everywhere,”  he points out that as consumers expect more and more information at their fingertips, smart marketers will make sure search is integrated into all aspects of marketing, not a standalone tactic.

We encourage you to explore the full report and check out the graphics on flickr.

This year, the Razorfish Search team sent Shawn Cheng, Search Account Manager at Razorfish, to SXSW Interactive and he returned rejuvenated. We’re excited to share his thoughts on his first trip to the festival in Austin, TX and we particularly love his SXSW Approval Matrix (with apologies and thanks to New York Magazine).

Being this was my first SXSW and the conference has been going on since 1987, I had a lot of catching up to do. SXSW has been a music festival since 1987. In 1994, the Film and Interactive portions were born. Tech evangelists, serious start ups and hordes of VCs make pilgrimages to Austin to check out the newest technology.

The back of every SXSW’I program lists attendees by company. I noticed that most companies only had a handful of representatives, but under ‘R’ there was a fat block of 40 Razorfishers, demonstrating our commitment to innovation. We were born digital, we bleed digital and we’re looking for people with the same passion. Did I mention we’re hiring?

I was lucky enough to be a part of SXSW history, as the Interactive attendance of 12,000+ outnumbered the Music portion for the first time in the festival’s 23-year history. I created this SXSW Approval Matrix to capture the spirit of my experience at the festival.

SXSW Interactive Approval Matrix

If you attended, I want to hear from you! Did I miss any noteworthy events that deserve a place in one of the four quadrants? Do you think I misclassified something?