MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

When we asked for your 2010 Internet marketing predictions, you told us that local is going to be huge this year. And I wholeheartedly agree. I can’t wait for the day I can simply search for a product on one site and find the best price of an in-stock item at a small business or major chain store near me.

But in our fervor for the new opportunities cropping up at a micro level in our own hometown, let’s not overlook the macro possibilities. So today I’d like to take our focus off of local and discuss, well, the entire world.

After all, you are reading the MarketingExperiments Blog International Edition. Sounds fancy, and I loved seeing the International Edition of American publications when I was in Montréal (très chic!). But, of course, everything on the Internet is essentially an International Edition. After all, our readers include Stephanie from Canada, Meraj from Singapore, Inna from Germany, Gabriela from Argentina, and Gavin from the UK.

How well do you know your audience? For Americans at least, sometimes I worry we have a view of the world similar to Saul Steinberg’s famous cover for The New Yorker. But let’s not forget that this is the World Wide Web. Your customers are, or at least have the potential to come from, anywhere in the world.

So here are some thoughts to consider and ideas to test when appealing to an international audience:

Where in the world?

Now that the world is your oyster, where should you begin? Most analytics software, such as Google Analytics, will break down your traffic by country of origin (and drill down even deeper than that). Understanding where your current audience comes from can help you shape your message.

But don’t just limit yourself to where your audience is coming from today, consider where they could be coming from and think about how you can target content to that potential audience. In addition, if you have an ecommerce or even lead generation site, look at how your traffic compares to actual orders and leads. If you get a big chunk of traffic from a certain nation, yet they very rarely order or become a lead, what in your conversion process is stopping them?

Understand when it pays to habla Español

While you don’t necessarily need an entire website for every possible language, it is always a good idea to delve into proper segmentation of your current and possible audience. And if you find a big enough potential market, that commonality of language may significantly help your conversion rate.
You don’t even necessarily need to look beyond your borders to find that opportunity. For example, according to the U.S. Census, the buying power of Americans of Hispanic origin is projected to exceed $1.2 trillion by 2014. If that segment could generate a significant amount of business for you, you should probably consider testing custom Spanish-language landing pages to see if they are worth the investment.

Shalom means hello…and goodbye

If you do choose to test custom foreign-language pages, keep the word custom in mind. Don’t just settle for poor translations of your current pages, but truly put the time and investment into understanding that segment and its motivations…as you would with any other segment.

Marketing history is littered with funny (and costly) cross-cultural blunders – such as the introduction of the Chevy Nova in Central and South America. It doesn’t take a major blunder. Even simple bad translations can turn away potential customers. I probably would not shop in the “Exciting Dressy Fashion zone” or want to eat “Desktop bacteria rice.”

It’s easy to laugh at these snafus, but if we do not truly understand the cultures of global and bilingual markets we seek to enter, we may be making these same mistakes. We can’t be transparent marketers if our audience doesn’t understand what we’re talking about. And far from welcoming new customers, we may be turning them off to our message.

You can still spreek het English…

While custom foreign-language landing pages are worth testing if the segmentation is right for your organization, don’t feel like you necessarily need to invest resources to customize your site for every possible language. As French is la langue de l’amour, English is currently the international language of business and the Web (after all, ICANN is still an American organization).

Also, services like Google Translate and Babel Fish enable your non-English-speaking visitors to instantly translate your page into almost any language for free. So here are a few other ideas to test in your native language…

Ciao bello world!

As I said above, there is an entire world out there. Just make a right at the Atlantic or a left at the Pacific and you’ll likely find untapped markets. So acknowledge it…as I did in the intro to this post when I mentioned our readers from across the globe or as Boris Grinkot did in a recent post where he simply mentioned regulations to consider in India.

The first step to profiting from an international audience is recognizing that you have one. Test how often to mention different cultures and which cultures to mention and see how that affects your traffic.

6,809 ways to say “customer service”

Even better than acknowledging the existence of other cultures, show them that you truly cater to their needs. If you’re looking for some good examples, Israeli websites tend cater to a global audience well (a combination of state subsidies that makes international shipping cheap and the global interest of a nation that holds importance to three major religions).

One good example from that country is TheGreatShofar.com. This site clearly illustrates how it serves other parts of the world by, for example, having an American phone number and a testimonial from someone in America right on its homepage (leading us to believe that either America is one of its most important, sought after segments or this is a landing page optimized for Americans).

Also, the site clearly spells out in its FAQ that it ships around the world:

I live in Timbuktu.  Will you ship to me?

Yes.  We ship to Timbuktu as well as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, China and pretty much anywhere that has a postal service.

To find out how much it will cost to ship to your location, just add your desired products to the shopping cart and our shipping estimator will display your shipping costs.

One way we try to cater to our international audience is through live training and speaking engagements around the world. Dr. Flint McGlaughlin will next be teaching and speaking about email response optimization at Email Marketing Germany 2010 in Munich from March 8-9, 2010. Register (in English) today. Or, if you prefer, register (in German) today.

General, Internet Marketing Strategy

In my last blog post, I challenged you (and myself as well) to be more proactive in approaching customers for feedback. I recently found an excellent example on Twitter of an auto detailing supply company tying in the New Year with an offer to give feedback on things they can do better in the coming year.

Finding the right incentive

Notice they also offer a small incentive for providing feedback. However, it is important to note that the incentive is not a brand new car or a Neil Diamond Cruise Trip. It is just enough to pique the interest of followers, but probably not enough to cloud the feedback with nonsense in an effort for a chance at winning the car wax.

Social media caveat

When using social media channels for feedback, please understand the control you have with this medium. Remember that with the advent and popularity of social media channels you can receive a flood of real-time feedback from all over the globe.

But that feedback rolling in can be positive or negative. The negative feedback can now become very visible not only to your past customers but also perspective ones.

Now I say all of this not to dampen your enthusiasm for using emerging social media, but to have you consider what the outcome could be once you hit that update button on Twitter.

So consider questions like these… Did your company have a massive shipping issue this year? Was a bad batch of products sent out? Did you offend Ashton Kutcher in any way?

While the feedback you could gather is still very valuable, you might choose a more controllable channel to gather customer feedback if you have reason to believe some of that feedback may be negative.

Speaking of feedback, we want to hear from you. What is your favorite source of news and information in the advertising and marketing industry? Not a blog or magazine you just like…but something you really love enough to send a Valentine to on this upcoming (and well-marketed) holiday.

Email or share your feedback using social media and we’ll publish our favorites in a future post right here on the blog.

Practical Application

If you have been following the blog over the past few weeks, you already know that Dr. Flint McGlaughlin recently taught live on “The 5 Best Ways to Optimize Email Response” at the 2010 MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Miami.

“The discomfort was worth it by all accounts!”

The session was very lively and included on-the-spot optimization of audience-submitted emails. Some even suggested cutting lunch to continue with more live optimization. You can watch a replay of the complete presentation below and here are a couple reviews from live attendees:

“Even if this was the third time I attended one of his lectures, I still learn from each new session. Flint is a tremendous speaker and his mathematical approach on all email marketing aspects based on serious testing is amazing.” – Kenny Van Beeck, EmailGarage

“After a reported late influx of attendees, people took to sitting on the floor to listen to the first session, delivered by Dr Flint McGlaughlin. The discomfort was worth it by all accounts!” – Mick Griffin, Get Response

(Replay) Optimizing Email Response – Part 1

Today we are hosting the “Part 2” of this presentation to focus on how to actually craft effective email messages. We will also be taking some additional time to work with and optimize your email campaigns live on today’s web clinic.

Today, we expect Dr. McGlaughlin to be as lively as he was in Miami. We hope you can make it to today’s presentation at 4PM EST.

Now, get some email optimization love of your own

Admittedly, we have already chosen most of the live audience submissions we will cover during today’s call. However, we did save one spot for our blog readers. So, if you have an email you would like us to look at today post a URL hosting the email in a comment or send it to us via email. We will choose one lucky blog reader from the submissions today. Good luck and see you this afternoon.

Clinic Notes, Email Marketing, Practical Application

Editor’s Note: Troy O’Bryan and his team at Response Capture drove a 258% conversion rate increase for their client through two rounds of testing and optimizing a landing page. Yet when I interviewed Troy to write his team’s success story, he made clear that they weren’t content with their achievement. They’re constantly considering optimization ideas for a new test.

So I crept into the lab, distracted Dr. Optimize (a.k.a. Adam Lapp) from his current experimentation, and convinced him to apply his complex genius to this page. Here’s what he had to say…

It’s great to hear a fellow marketer realize the power of testing. Congratulations Troy! Without testing, how will you ever know if your landing page or website is performing the best that it could?

Never stop testing

Let’s all take a lesson from Amazon.com. No matter how much money or market share Amazon creates, they have never stopped testing. They are constantly proving and disproving new ideas and concepts. I have no doubt they have eliminated thousands of page designs that did not work. But that’s indicative of a true testing culture.

If we compare the laboratories of our online marketing colleagues to that of scientists finding cures to common ailments, there are many similarities. How many concoctions do you think doctors will rule out before they find the cure to baldness? I’m sure that number will dwarf the number of landing pages the average marketer will rule out before they find the one that works the best.

That’s the number one optimization recommendation I can give to anyone…keep on testing. And I’m glad to see the team at Response Capture working (and succeeding) by following that creed.

What to test next

Of course, it’s one thing to know the importance of continuous testing. Sometimes, the biggest challenge is deciding what to test next. Let’s take a look at the successful landing page:

My advice is two-fold:

1. Test several more radical redesigns

Then when you think you have a design that can’t be beat by other new treatments…

2. Begin fine tuning (multivariate tests work really well for this)

Radical Test Ideas

The current page does a lot of things right, but there is still room for improvement. The first thing I would test would be the tone.

Currently the look and feel of the page can only be described as “slick.” You look at and say “Wow!” It’s dark and sleek. The bright blue pops out at you. And the overall feels is that this page has been designed by a professional design firm with a very high proficiency with Photoshop.

As great as it is, is this the best tone to go with? At MarketingExperiments, we’ve spoken about the concept that “Ugly converts.” That concept really doesn’t necessarily mean that ugly pages perform better than pretty pages. Rather, we want to remind you that strategy is more important than design.

So what different tones can Response Capture test? Here are a few ideas:

TEST IDEA #1: Simple, plain layout

This page does not have a complex objective – just enter your email to receive a free whitepaper. Assuming most visitors are very qualified (i.e. they know what a PDN is and are your ideal customer), you don’t really have to do much selling.

We see a common mistake across many industries where a landing page is composed of elements that just over-complicate the objective.

For example, if you only want to know if a newspaper is delivered in your area, then your landing page only needs a headline, ZIP Code field, and button. Bulky copy, testimonials, demos, videos, images, and other fancy page elements are just not necessary.

The Washington Post is an excellent example of a simple ZIP Code entry:

Compare this to the New York Post:

I just want to find out if you deliver to my area. I don’t need to know about the top columnist or the Page Six gossip section.

This applies for companies that provide free quotes for insurance or a similar service. A visitor just wants to enter a few pieces of information and see a number. Putting layers of clutter in their way just creates friction.

To summarize, I would test a page that has the following:

• A non-descript background
• Simple headline: “Download your free report on PDN Simulation”
• Sub-headline: “Tell us where to send the report”
• Email field
• Button

Just make it as simple as possible.

TEST IDEA #2: Report style

So if someone clicks through, we know we have their interest. They are ready to read about PDN Simulation (must be a page turner!). Then give them what they want right away.

Upon landing, visitors could see a page that looks like a report. Here’s one I found quickly from Google Research:

They clicked through with the expectation of seeing a report, and that’s what you have given them with this treatment. Get them engaged right away. Provide an abstract or first couple of paragraphs, then place a call to action to “download the full report.”

Just make sure that you clearly communicate that the whitepaper is free because this treatment strategy communicates much more value than the others. The report style has more of a high-brow, university type of tone – which isn’t always free. It may work or it may not, but the idea is to test.

Those two test ideas should give you a good start, but if you can think of more, test them and let us know how they work out.

Fine Tuning Ideas

Once you’ve found a primary strategy that works, then it’s time to fine tune. Nothing is off limits here. Let’s assume that the current design has stood the test of time…it has defeated several other radical redesigns you have thrown at it. What do you test?

1. Headline

• Test variations that quantify what’s in the report
• Create urgency (i.e. “available for a limited time” or “you have to know this now”)
• Think of several benefits from reading the report, then test each one in the headline
• Pull out several one-liners from the report that announce an exciting finding
• Test a few provocative questions

2. Rotate bullets and add new bullets

3. Choose three or four different images to test

• Other images of the report
• Photographs of people that may connect with the target audience
• Charts and graphs
• Other items related to PDN (I have to admit, I’m not your target customer so I’m not quite sure what they would be)

4. Button copy – it’s pretty good now, but you could definitely stumble upon something better

5. Color scheme

• Test several different background/font combinations
• Will a light background with dark font work better?

6. Placement of gift card incentive

• In the headline
• As one of the main bullets
• Before the button
• To the right of the button

Now we put this challenge in front of you, the MarketingExperiments community. Use the comments field to post your suggestions for this landing page, agree/disagree with this assessment by Dr. Optimize, and let the page owner know what you would do differently.

Landing Page Optimization, Practical Application, Research Topics

On Wednesday we showed you two pages and asked you to pick the highest performer. And congratulations to Brad Einarsen who not only picked the ideal incentive, but was closest to the conversion gain achieved by that incentive. But any site can just display a few screen captures and ask you which test won. The real value lies in truly discovering the principles behind successful experiments so you can test those principles on your own sites. With that in mind, here is the full story…

Response Capture’s B2B client wanted to find a scalable alternative to telephone-based opt-in collection and improve an established benchmark landing page conversion rate as well. This Beaverton, Oregon-based performance marketing company decided to test for the ideal opt-in incentive while experimenting with the landing page.

Control White Paper Landing Page: Friction at work

Potential customers were driven to a landing page by email. The conversion goal was to have visitors download a white paper from a respected industry author.
Response Capture quickly focused on a few areas that would be ripe for optimization. They sought to reduce distractions such as navigation, search, and account creation. They also wanted to present an image of the white paper offer, bank on the white paper author’s creditability, and reduce the friction generated by the amount of form fields.

Test #1: A wealth of information…and results

After removing distractions, presenting an image of the offer, and reducing the form field requirement to just email address (and even then, pre-populating the email text box for all known visitors), Response Capture achieved a 25% opt-in rate gain (from the check box option) and 36.4% conversion rate gain (of white paper downloads).

To gain the additional information that was lost when the form was reduced to just email, they created a second-step after the white paper download. This page used Amazon.com gift cards as an incentive to provide additional profile information. We’ll get to these results in a bit, but first let’s focus on this impressive landing page optimization.

“Adequacy is the Enemy of Excellence.” – Peter Drucker

These were significant gains that produced incremental opt-ins for the client. And if Response Capture had stopped here, this would be a very successful case study and an excellent example of how you can test key principles on your own sites. But, since we are profiling Response Capture on the MarketingExperiments blog, we all know that they did not stop there. Our story now takes us to the Emerald City.

Troy O’Bryan, the Co-Founder and Chief Response Officer of Response Capture, attended a Live Optimization Workshop taught by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin in Seattle. That changed everything.

“Troy was the first to take MarketingExperiments training program and he led the charge of implementing the learnings into the campaign that was referenced in the blog.” said Bill Kent, Response Strategist at Response Capture.

Before we continue with our story, I want to pause and ask you a simple request. Brag. I know what you’re thinking. In an age of Transparent Marketing, bragging is a totally inappropriate behavior. And I would agree. But I’m not asking you to brag to your customers; rather I want you to brag to your peers.
You see, we love hearing directly from our more than 2,000 alumni and learning about the success they’re creating in the real world. We only discovered Response Capture’s success from a Twitter comment about Bill’s blog post.

Alumni are often hesitant to tell us about their success directly because they worry we’ll poke holes in their methodology or suggest even bigger improvements they can gain. Don’t be shy. Tell us about your success in the comments section.

Test #2: After the Landing-Page-Optimization Certification Course

While Response Capture had already driven an impressive gain for the client, Troy noticed several areas they could further optimize after returning from the Live Optimization Workshop in Seattle. He learned that he needed to improve message consistency and created a new headline promoting the offer versus the generic “wealth of knowledge” headline from the previous test. He clearly supported the value proposition message by changing the copy to a bulleted list of white paper benefits. And he decreased the resistance to respond with a new, benefit-oriented button that says “Get the Free Report Now.”

Results: A 258% Conversion Rate Increase for the Client and additional projects for the Agency

The new landing page delivered a 162.5% conversion rate increase over the previously optimized page and a 258% conversion rate increase over the original page. The new opt-in rate for the continuation offer increased 201% over the original page and 141% over the previously optimized page. And these results came at a reduced cost per collected opt-in.

What’s In It for Me?

In addition, Response Capture tested the incentive that would generate the highest amount of profile completions. Remember, this was a two-part process. The landing page converted white paper downloads and allowed opt-ins but only asked for the email address. And then the continuation offer captured more information from the prospect.

They tested a sweepstakes offering 20 Amazon gift cards worth $25…

…against a sweepstakes offering 10 $50 gift cards…

The sweepstakes that offered less, more valuable gift cards (10 $50 gift cards) gained 31% more conversions. The total cost of the incentive was the same ($500), but by testing and discovering that prospects preferred quality over quantity they were able to increase profile completion.

These are excellent results any agency would be proud of. It’s always fulfilling to deliver for our clients, but let’s talk about what these numbers really mean for Response Capture. After the success of these projects, they were referred to additional divisions and there is now an ongoing relationship between Response Capture and its client. And it all started with one class…

“After attending the live course, I had one of our Response Strategists take the self-guided, on-demand Landing Page Optimization Course online. And we have another Response Strategist who is scheduled to take the course next quarter as well,” Troy said. “We are big fans of the MarketingExperiments curriculum. We learned not just how to optimize a page, but how to optimize the thought process of visitors. By applying these learning’s, our clients have realized stronger results and our organization has benefited from happy clients.”

Our story doesn’t end here. With every page, there is always room for our improvement. Troy asked our researchers to take a look at his most recently optimized page, and propose further ideas to test. Come back to the blog on Monday and see that advice.

Landing Page Optimization, Practical Application, Research Topics

This challenge comes to us from Troy O’Bryan, the Co-Founder and Chief Response Officer of Response Capture – a performance marketing company in Beaverton, Oregon. Troy is an alumnus of a Live Optimization Workshop taught by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin in Seattle.

Objective: Response Capture’s B2B client sought to improve landing page conversion rates while generating optins for ongoing communications

Goal: To gather profile information

Primary research question: Which incentive will generate the most conversions?

Approach: A/B single-factorial split test

“… a chance to win one of twenty “… a chance to win one of ten
$25 Amazon gift cards…”                          $50 Amazon gift cards…”

The Results:

As we teach in our Landing Page Optimization course, the objective of Incentive is to “tip the balance” of emotional forces from the negative, in this case represented by the Friction of filling in several fields of profile information as well as by the Anxiety of submitting personal information.

There is an “ideal incentive.” Incentives must be tested to find that ideal. And that is the challenge Troy took on with the above test.

But, dear reader, we post a different challenge to you…can you use your marketing intuition to guess which incentive performed best? Remember, the cost of these offers was the same, yet the formulation of the incentive produced a conversion rate increase for Troy’s client.

Which do you think performed best?

Take a good look at these incentives and let us know which one you think performed best in the comments section. Also, let us know by how much you think it improved conversion. The marketer that chooses the correct incentive with the closest conversion rate gain guess wins…the jealousy and admiration of his or her peers.

Come back on Friday to find the conversion gain winner along with the full story behind this successful test so you can drive similar improvements with your own pages.

Practical Application

My colleague, Robert Reynard, and I just returned from Affiliate Summit. Special thanks to Shawn Collins and Missy Ward for having us. This is not the first time I have been, but nonetheless it impresses me to see the number of people who have an interest in this space.

Affiliate Marketing Regulation

One of the most interesting topics this year was around government actions which are threatening many who have profited from this space for many years. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is cracking down on Internet sites that profit from promoting other’s products or services without disclosing within that promotion that they received some sort of compensation from the company.

Compensation in this instance is not limited to cash. Let me give you an example that I heard at the show:

Let’s say a stay-at-home mom begins a blog to help other stay-at-home moms. A diaper manufacturer sees that blog and decides to send her a box of diapers with the hope that she would try them on her children and then blog about how well they performed.

That mom must disclose that this was a gift from the manufacturer and she must disclose that this blog post is partial to them for that reason, even if she would have blogged about “the diapers making it through the night without leaking” anyway and was in no way influenced by the fact that the diapers were a gift. In other words, even mommy bloggers could be held liable for product reviews.

This may be an extreme example, but thanks to some who may have been taking advantage of consumers through use of exaggerated claims and fake reviews and testimonials, it has become a necessary part of affiliate marketing.

Google Adwords frustration

Another hot topic surrounding this event was affiliate frustration with the Google Adwords program. Over the last year, many affiliates who used Google Adwords to advertise their site(s) were notified that they were no longer welcome to use the Google advertising platform.

OK, so “notified” may be a bit of a stretch, typically the way they found this out was without any sort of notification at all but rather by noticing that sales are lower or perhaps non-existent and logging into their Adwords account to troubleshoot.

After looking around for a bit, they probably found that everything seemed to be in order. On the surface at least. They then may have scrolled over a status column which, when hovered over, opens a small box showing a users Quality Score. To the affiliate’s surprise, the Quality Score ranking that once read 7/10, 8/10 or even 10/10 now says 1/10.

A 1/10 Quality Score ranking in Google Adwords is about as effective at removing advertisements as deleting the campaign altogether. Worse yet, starting over with a new campaign will not help. An advertiser’s Quality Score remains with their domain.

I have heard, but this has not been confirmed by Google, that the only way to receive a 1/10 Quality Score across an entire account is for a Google Policy Team Member to manually place this on the account…meaning that this does not naturally occur. Perhaps this is why affiliates have affectionately labeled this occurrence a “Google Slap.”

Can you imagine being in business one day and out the next? That is what is happening to some of these affiliates. So why would Google do this? After all, affiliates are paying them, right? Well, Google, like the FTC, is probably reacting to the bad apples. Google is fanatical about protecting its customers (i.e. search users) and if it takes hurting some legitimate affiliate’s business to protect customers from the bad apples, it looks like Google is okay with this concession.

What this may mean for 2010

It will be interesting to see how both of these situations play out over this year. I counted 46 businesses from the advertising and marketing industry that made last year’s Inc 500 list of the fastest-growing companies, private companies.

Many of these businesses have deep roots in the affiliate marketing business. Their growth rates have skyrocketed on the backs of affiliates using Google Adwords to advertise, and in some instances have grown off of sites that now must alter their pages to abide by the new FTC guidelines.

Will these companies be able to adjust their business models and continue these impressive growth rates in the face of these new obstacles? Share your thoughts in the comments section of this post or start a conversation with your peers in the MarketingExperiments Optimization group.

(’’)

Events, Internet Marketing News

Right now, 650 of the lead email marketing practitioners and thought leaders are gathered in Miami for MarketingSherpa’s Ema@il Summit ‘10. To get the inside scoop on the biggest buzz from the event, we pulled MarketingSherpa President Bob Lorum out of one of the sessions to get his real-time insights.

As Bob said, there is an emphasis on strategy versus just tactical implementation across the board. And email integration with social media and other mediums is becoming more relevant and important.

In his keynote presentation, Joseph Jaffe commented that “retention is the new acquisition.” Organization will be more successful if they use email and other mediums to retain existing customers.

There is clearly a consensus that email is on the rise and becoming an even more important part of an organization’s marketing arsenal. Of course, creating email campaigns that truly drive revenue in such a crowded market is easier said than done. That’s why MarketingExperiments launched a new, focused research offering at Em@il Summit ‘10 to help you address your unique challenges and opportunities.

Since our lab can’t meet the demand of marketers seeking intensive Research Partnerships, we have started a program to create custom Email Response Optimization Packages that will allow more marketers to leverage our scientific email campaign optimization strategies. These Packages can help you connect the dots between our research into “discovering what really works” and finding specific ways to make those discoveries really work in your organization.

Events, Internet Marketing News

Email design always proves to be a hot topic with marketers. And when you have top agencies competing against each other, the fire just gets hotter as we learned during last week’s live web clinic – Maximize your Agency ROI: How adding science to the creative process reveals a 26% gain.

We received a plethora of questions, most which we could did not have time to address during the hour-long clinic. So, as with every Web Clinic Extra, we have picked a handful of the most common questions to address here on our blog. This week we pulled in Andy Mott, the Senior Manager of Research Partnerships, to answer these questions…

Email marketing is a topic that comes up often in the MarketingExperiments community. In fact, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin is delivering a keynote today at Em@il Summit ’10 in Miami as well as teaching a pre-summit Live Email Optimization Workshop. If you couldn’t make it out there this year to get valuable insights from your peers and industry leaders, come back to the blog on Friday for some key takeaways from this year’s summit.

You can view a replay of the clinic or read the latest issue of MarketingExperiments Journal. Our next live web clinic, The Five Best Ways to Optimize Email Response (Part 2): How to craft effective email messages that drive your customers to action, will be taught on February 3rd from 4 to 5 p.m. EST.

Clinic Notes, Email Marketing, Marketing Q&A

You get home from a long day in your marketing department or agency. Whip up a quick dinner. And just when you’re about to bite into your arroz con pollo, you hear that dreaded ring.

I call this situation Dan’s Lament. Our associate editor, Daniel Burstein, was sounding off to me about this situation earlier today. For some reason, at least in his household, they only get one type of phone call around 7pm and that, of course, is the dreaded telemarketer.

Now telemarketing is illegal at some level in the United States, as it is in many other countries, and Dan is on the National Do Not Call Registry. Yet there are those loopholes that ensure his phone still rings at dinnertime. In the latest case, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wanted to discuss his fishing habits.

Surveys. Non-profits. Or my personal favorite…political push polls. They all have found a loophole.

The more you segment, the less you blindly dial for dollars

I’ve really grown to hate telemarketers. Not so much because they prevent foodie friends of mine like Dan from enjoying a good winter vegetable salad with fresh, in-season kale, but rather as a professional marketer.

The technology and science behind segmentation have helped marketers target their message so much better than before, so I feel professionally insulted that someone would think they can, precisely at the dreaded 7pm, offer sandwich-toting Dan something he didn’t already think about buying in a store or online.

So I am a fan of do-not-call registries…even if they are only marginally effective.

Now I know what many of you may be thinking. “Wait a minute, Boris, I don’t mean to interrupt Dan’s enjoyment of a hearty winter vegetable salad or pastrami on rye, but these lists are a major challenge for me…I need to leverage the human touch for an upsell or to nurture a complex sale.”

The reality is that cultural and corresponding regulatory changes have led to a certain shift in the utilization of call centers, from making to taking calls. It’s not bad news. It’s great news for you savvy marketers that have the resources to leverage a call center, if you know how to do it profitably.

Is automation right for you?

If you are a Web marketer reading this, you might be asking yourself “what does this have to do with me?” However, looking at marketing holistically may be precisely where you can maximize return on your marketing dollars, as the automation afforded by the digital medium is not a one-size-fits-all solution to all sales processes.

Yes, it’s cheaper to sell online. Yet you may be doing a better job of selling and cross-selling over the phone, even though it costs you more. The question is where the higher net profit lies.

As the resident KPI (that’s key performance indicator) Guy at MarketingExperiments, among other things, I want to reintroduce you to a KPI that is critical to inbound marketing. It is the same KPI what would have been applied to a telemarketing campaign just a few short years ago: cost per acquisition (CPA).

The obvious use of this metric is to understand how much you can afford to spend on a media buy. You may be more familiar with this metric in the demand generation realms (paid search, affiliate marketing, lead gen, etc.). However, in conjunction with a bottom-line metric, such as revenue (preferably, lifetime) per visitor (RPV), it can also provide you with critical insights for directing your marketing efforts and formulating your messaging.

Even though your site can now do many things that have replaced telemarketing – from further qualifying a lead to completing an order to even getting that upsell – don’t let technology guide your decisions. Depending on the nature of your product, the human touch can be so much more effective for any or all of these steps.

So the best thing to do is… wait for it… test!

By varying the emphasis you place on calls to action that lead to a human interaction (phone number, live chat, call-me form), both in the layout of your pages (location, graphical weighting) and their prominence in the order process (from focusing the option as the primary action to not even mentioning it).

Experimenting with live chat is its own subject, as you can test how quickly (if at all) you want to turn the online chat into a phone conversation. You might even test a click-to-call button, although be wary of spam (and if you market in India, strict regulations).

What you’re trying to discover is whether the increased cost of acquiring a customer is offset or surpassed by an increase in closed orders, upsells, or higher-quality leads (e.g., for a complex sale, how does the increase in calls help your lead management efforts).

In other words, you will need to compare the change in CPA to the change in RPV (and depending on the nature of your business, both may need to be adjusted for the customer’s projected lifetime cost and value).

You have to be careful with how you juggle the numbers, as there are many potential pitfalls. Remember that your ultimate goal is increased profits. Depending on your business plan, your primary or close secondary goal is likely increased profits in the foreseeable future or over the customer’s lifetime. If adding human interaction results in sufficiently higher revenue per website visitor, it may be worth the extra cost.

But you’ll only know if you test. And use the right KPI.

How do you use inbound marketing, telesales, and customer service? What KPIs do you use to measure your success? Share your triumphs and ideas in the comments section of this post or start a conversation with your peers in the MarketingExperiments Optimization group.

Lead Generation, Marketing Insights, Research Topics