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

Every day I hear a of some new-fangled thing that makes my head spin with all the implications. At MarketingSherpa B2B Summit in San Francisco, the attendees were electrified with technology-inspired buzz in spite of this terrible economy.

It reminded me of the time just before the tech bubble burst in the late ‘90s when everyone was giddy over the possibilities of the Internet. Only this time, the wild enthusiasm is tempered with the pragmatism and worry about the state of our economy. And no doubt some of us gray hairs remember the foolishness of the bubble from the ‘90s (well, and maybe even our own more recent home-buying exuberance).

I’m not sure if JigSaw or the Apple iPad is creating more buzz in the business world. I wrote about the coming JigSaw tidal wave a few weeks ago, so let me share my thoughts on Apple fever this week. Read more…

It seemed like everyone had one thing on their mind at this year’s first MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Summit: metrics. Well, a few people had shopping and cocktails on their mind too, as we were minutes from the shopping Mecca known as Union Square in San Francisco, not to mention a million great restaurants.

My own sidebar conversations and those of my MarketingExperiments, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS colleagues circled around a basic belief that 20 to 30 percent of the sales pipeline should come from marketing leads.

For the most part, we can all thank SiriusDecisions for this advancement in our collective understanding of funnel metrics. Everyone at budget time has a “Demand Waterfall” funnel model.

That percentage of revenue issue raises two questions for me. The first one is why 20 to 30 percent should be the correct answer. Read more…

What will your biggest B2B marketing challenges be in 2011? And how can you overcome them to (over) deliver on your numbers while staying on budget?

These are the kinds of questions our colleagues at MarketingSherpa, our sister company, obsess over. To help them zero in on some data-driven answers, they’ve just launched a survey to benchmark best practices, tactics, and results.

If you have about 15 minutes to share your expertise by participating in this year’s study, you can access the survey via this link. In return, MarketingSherpa will send you a free copy of the 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report’s Executive Summary, which will include highlights and key findings from the study, along with an invite to a webinar where study data is shared.

Senior Analyst Jen Doyle is already knee-deep in B2B marketing data to find insights to help marketers focus on key tools and tactics to fill pipeline in 2011, but was kind enough to answer a few questions about lead generation… Read more…

You know, I could tell you about the latest issue of the MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal. But it represents three months of blood, sweat, and (virtual Internet) tears for myself and the rest of the MarketingExperiments team.

So my description would be highly biased, full of hyperbole, and probably be along the lines of… “Our latest Journal includes four never-before-published marketing research articles featuring 12 experiments and…well…this Journal is the single most important piece of writing since the invention of the Internet!”

Out of control. That’s why you don’t need to hear from me. Instead, I’ll share what our readers have been telling us about the Journal through email and Twitter. But first, here is your free digital copy… Read more…

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.

At our web clinics and optimization training workshops, two of the most frequent questions  are: “What else can I test?” and “Do you have a good example?” To answer these queries with practical test ideas and examples, we’re pleased to present our new “What else can I test?” column.

More than 60% of US online retailers are seeing shopping cart abandonment rates of over 20% this year, according to a recent eMarketer article. Among the most cited and common reasons for that abandonment: just doing comparison shopping, lack of money, looking for a coupon, and no alternative payment methods available.

In a recent survey with one of our research partners, we found that the number one reason for abandonment was shipping prices, followed by “I did not intend to purchase at this moment.”

Here are a handful of ideas, drawn from our research, that can help combat those issues and decrease your cart abandonment rates:

1) Offer alternative payment methods. Credit cards are still the most popular method of payment with about 55% of online retail purchase volume in 2008 (eMarketer), followed by debit cards with 27%. The forecast for next five years shows credit cards as the #1 payment type. However, alternative payment types like debit cards, Bill Me Later, PayPal, and Google Checkout are growing fast in popularity.

Test offering any of these alternative methods and don’t forget to promote them in your shopping cart as well as on your homepage and product pages. It’s important to let visitors know all the payment options available as soon as they land on your website. See examples:

Alternative method of payments - example 1

Alternative method of payments - example 2

Note: Some online retailers are seeing a significant improvement in average order value by providing a Bill Me Later option.

2) State your shipping prices or rules upfront. Simply state your shipping prices or rules in a visible area in your website and cart page. The best locations are next to the shopping cart, page header or footer or within content in the product pages. See examples:

Shipping prices upfront - example 1

Shipping prices upfront - example 2

3) Offer exclusive products online. These can help with shoppers who are just browsing and researching. You may need to do some research to find attractive products that you won’t lose money on if you only offered them online. See example:

Online exclusive offer example

4) Put your nav bar to work for your cart. It’s a common mistake to think that the navigation bar needs to stay the same in your cart page. I understand usability might be the reason, but you don’t want to offer more links to your visitors to abandon the cart. Instead your nav bar can become your center of “anxiety relief.” Use it to state your shipping prices, customer support options (phone number, email, chat), method of payments available, and security seals. The nav bar can help reduce your visitors’ anxiety by making them feel more secure and comfortable with your checkout process. (If you don’t have a navigation bar use the bottom section of your cart page). See example:

Anxiety relief nav bar example

5) Promote your promo codes. The feeling of missing a promotion because you don’t have a promo code can be frustrating. It actually can lead to abandoning the cart to go and search for promo codes online. Instead of wasting your visitors’ time, offer them a way to get promo codes directly from you. GetElastic provides a great example of how to do this. Another option, if visitors come from a channel that you can control (email, PPC, banner, affiliate), is to have the promo code prefilled for them. You can use the visitors’ session or URL to carry over the promo code value and use it right in the shopping cart page.

6) Plug in a progress bar. This is a very simple and easy update to your cart and checkout pages. Especially for those online retailers that have a short (two to four steps) checkout process, having a progress bar can help reduce visitors’ anxiety and encourage them to continue. For longer checkouts (more than four steps), I’d recommend testing first reducing the number of steps and then testing a progress bar. See example:

Progress bar example

7) Brand your checkout process. Along with the progress bar, naming your checkout process can reduce visitors’ anxiety. By naming I refer to using adjectives to describe the nature of your checkout process. For example, “easy checkout”, “1-2-3 checkout”, “express checkout”, etc. Test different names powerful enough that can create a sense of relief in your visitors’ mind. See example:

Branded checkout example

For more tactics and suggestions on how to optimize an eretail website, join us for our Sept. 30 web clinic: Ecommerce Optimization: A holiday playbook for procrastinators.