Didn't get all your holiday marketing plans locked in place this summer?

Don't panic. You're not alone. We know you've been stretched thin this year, but help for your holiday ecommerce marketing efforts is on the way.

On September 30, MarketingExperiments presented a special guest clinic with renowned ecommerce analyst and GetElastic blogger Linda Bustos, where we presented a playbook of test ideas and tactics you can use right away and get back in the race.

Optimizing for conversion rates is often linked to landing pages – and for good reason. But we all know landing pages are just the tip of the iceberg.

In our September 16 web clinic, our research team explored how you can apply our Conversion Sequence and improve results in myriad areas, from ecommerce and shopping cart pages to lead-generation paths, homepages, and more.

If you're looking to increase ROI in several places on your site, these are the strategies that will help you get there.

Web marketers are running tests every day based on intuition, hunches, and test ideas that have ostensibly worked in the past.

But this all-too-common approach to testing is fraught with hazards – from validity threats and sample size issues to questionable data and analysis.
If you’re like most marketers, you’re struggling to dodge numerous testing pitfalls and implement a consistent, science-based approach to testing and optimization.

In our July 15 web clinic, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin reviewed the same research-driven testing strategies and protocol that MarketingExperiments uses to achieve the ROI gains detailed in our case studies. He also examined a recent experiment that showed how this approach yielded a 119% sales increase.

Throughout the presentation, Dr. McGlaughlin also explored:

• the importance of cumulative testing and challenging your own hypotheses
• using the testing cycle to discover how to motivate your prospects and customers, and
• how to dig into your data and identify insights that will sharpen your marketing decisions.

To learn how to apply these strategies and strengthen your testing methods, view the clinic presentation: Optimization vs. frustration: Overcoming barriers to better tests and gains

Twitter has become the latest must-have social media tool that everyone wants to master. We wanted to use our June 10 web clinic to discuss the potential for translating Twitter hype into business results.

Why is Twitter important? Can a tweet drive business objectives? What steps should organizations take to get real returns?

To answer these questions, we teamed up with Jason Breed, Sr. Director of Business Development at Neighborhood America, and Marc Meyer, CEO of Digital Response Marketing Group, to review research and examples and examine different ways that businesses are – and should be – using Twitter.

Here's a question most marketers are grappling with today: Which marketing strategies are getting the buzz – and which ones are getting the real gains?

To find the answers, we teamed with up MarketingSherpa's Research Director, Stefan Tornquist, for our May 27 web clinic on optimizing ecommerce sites.

Using a mix of new research and case studies, we identified tactics, channels, and test strategies that are increasing conversion rates and revenue now for a variety of companies. We also explored how you can tap into elusive sources of ROI by going the extra step with your metrics and analysis.

Is your Spanish-language website getting the optimization attention — and results — that it deserves? Are you getting ready to reach out to the Spanish-language market but not quite sure how, or where, to begin?

By 2020 (11 years from now), according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 1 out of 5 Americans will be of Hispanic origin. By 2014, their buying power will exceed $1.2 trillion.

Yet in many English-language markets, it's not uncommon for sites to simply translate their existing English pages to Spanish. There are better ways to reach out to this growing audience.

In our March 25, 2009 clinic, Ana Gabriela Diaz and Arturo Silva, the core of our bilingual analysts team, worked together to:

• Explore our audience’s segmentation approach with the Spanish-language market
• Offer a sneak preview of our tests in this area
• Optimize a range of landing pages submitted by attendees

Throughout the clinic the focus remained on drilling down into optimization theory that would help marketers reach this audience through the most clear and effective offers.

How can affiliate marketing help you generate more traffic, leads and sales? What steps should merchants, affiliates and networks take to increase their ROI?

Inspired by takeaways from Affiliate Summit and past MarketingExperiments affiliate clinics, we looked at ways that all involved can avoid or overcome common pitfalls and build more successful programs.

During the August 26 clinic, Director of Channels Aaron Rosenthal and Senior Analyst Robert Reynard explored:

• Research on what is and isn't working today
• Tests and experiments with gains of up to 165%
• Do's and don'ts for merchants, networks and affiliates

With increased pressure to make the most of every marketing dollar, many marketers are taking a hard look at how their PPC efforts are – or are not – delivering now.

Beyond ad copy and keywords, research shows that optimizing for post-click conversions not only helps you combat rising keyword bids and competition, but also provides the strongest ROI.

You can significantly improve results without increasing costs – and in many cases, dramatically reduce costs – with the right PPC campaign strategies in place.

In our July 29 web clinic, we reviewed a recent PPC experiment, outlined five key ways to optimize PPC campaigns, and applied those methods to ads and landing pages submitted by our audience for a live optimization review.

Our research analyst, Corey Trent, also explained how keyword insertion, value propositions, display URLs, relevance and related factors can help you produce greater gains.

To learn how to apply these strategies to your own ads and pages, view the clinic presentation: Optimizing PPC campaigns to boost conversions, ROI

Organic search results not only attract far more clicks than PPC ads, they’re also seen as more credible.

Locking in a top-five spot in Google is where you want your site to be – front and center with targeted prospects. Of course, every other marketer is gunning for the same result.

Good news: Your pages may be closer to those high-ranking spots than you think.

For our June 24 web clinic, we invited special guest Paul Taylor to discuss five key SEO factors and show how applying them to real sites from our audience can increase targeted traffic and, ultimately, lift your conversions.

If we had used "638% gain" in this clinic's title, would you have believed it?

One of our featured B2B marketers actually removed that gain from his website because many prospects didn't buy it. The clients that saw the gains reported no such issues.

Our second "Success Stories" clinic put our B2B audience in the spotlight, with four new case studies showing how marketers are increasing ROI by applying the Conversion Sequence to their websites, PPC and email campaigns.

This research brief reviews those strategies and gains, includes recommendations for future tests, and distills the takeaway ideas to help you earn your own bragging rights.

Give a man an optimized landing page and he converts for a day.

Teach a man how to optimize his own landing pages and he can plan, make changes, test, analyze and increase conversions for years to come.

With apologies to Lao Tzu, since that same idea permeates our web clinics, workshops, and research briefs, we wanted to highlight the gains our achieved by our participants in the B2C market – and continue the cycle of learning.

To stay ahead of the curve with optimization, marketers need to know what's working now — and glean strategies that they can quickly apply to their own pages and websites.

In our April 8, 2009 clinic, we took an in-depth look at 3 new tests featuring some of the most recent results from our work with partners.

The MarketingExperiments team partnered with the analysts in charge of these tests to demonstrate optimization strategies you can apply to your landing pages right away, and break down concepts that pave the way for future improvements.

Optimization best practices don't come with an iron-clad guarantee.

Enter the “wild card”--the unknown performance factor.

In optimization, wild cards are those outlier treatments that can, and do, surprise us by outperforming all attempts at surpassing them.

Our question: is it possible to discover transferrable principles behind these outliers and use them to enhance the performance of our own designs?

B2B marketers know that their audience needs a different approach than B2C, from the channels to the landing pages, and ultimately, to the sale.

So for our February 25, 2009 web clinic, we focused our live optimization contest format specifically on B2B landing pages. With guest moderator and lead-generation expert Brian Carroll, and participation from our live audience, the MarketingExperiments team analyzed an array of B2B marketing efforts.

We also awarded prizes to our top contestants and audience participants in the live clinic.

This brief distills the optimization insights from the live clinic into vital takeaways you can apply to your B2B marketing efforts.

Taking a cue from our clinic participants’ feedback, and heeding our own advice, we tested a “radical redesign” with our February 11, 2009 live optimization web clinic.

The focus was strictly B2C landing pages, a departure from our typical all-inclusive approach. With that audience in mind, the MarketingExperiments team also lightened up the science with a contest, live audience voting ("Optimization Idol"?), and a variety of prizes for participants.

Result? Most of the audience rated the clinic fun, informative, and highly interactive – the test was a success...

How aggressive are your email marketing goals for the year ahead?

Are you optimistic about growing your lists and response rates, or hedging your bets due to the economic downturn?

As marketers face increasing pressure to improve ROI, email presents a quandary: It’s still a low-cost, high-return channel, but with social media, spam filtering, and other factors taking a bite, its growth potential is in question.

One of the greatest challenges to developing your offer pages is proving to jaded prospects that the rewards outweigh the risks.

But you can tip the balance in your favor.

The key is creating offer pages that minimize Friction and Anxiety and emphasize Value Proposition and Incentive.

It's easy to fall into a rut with optimization and testing.

Over time, as you discover which tactics and best practices get results, and then apply them to other channels or pages ad infinitum, you can get lulled into a false sense of security.

There's a time to apply best practices and follow the rules. But there's also a time to break with them, take calculated risks, and expand your learning in pursuit of even greater gains.