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

I recently attended the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing LEAPS Advanced Practices Workshop in Boston and, though these events are always good for new information, I found myself surprised – and even outright alarmed – by one particular statistic cited at the beginning of the event: 61% of companies do not routinely test their email campaigns.

Sixty-one percent. See for yourself:
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Your potential customers are ignoring the work you’ve invested thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours into as you’re reading this sentence. That’s why we spend so much time on the MarketingExperiments blog talking about optimization. Because the less people ignore us, the more we can contribute to that ever fragile bottom-line.

But in order to stop being ignored, we have to get to know who we’re talking to. In the end, it’s all about sparking conversations and developing relationships with real people.

Knowing who those people are (and what they truly need) is harder than it seems. How can you gain this valuable marketing intelligence about your potential customers?

Let me tell you a story…
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One of the most enjoyable parts of being a MECLABS employee is seeing tests performed for a wide variety of companies and organizations. From international conglomerates to regional mom and pops, we always welcome new opportunities to test, learn and share for the betterment of the marketing community.

[End shameless self-promotion]

However, while looking far and wide, there are often some very interesting things going on right under our noses. For example, when our sister company, MarketingSherpa, let us know they’d be trying something new with a promotional email for an upcoming event, we put away our passports and paid closer attention. Read more…

Some of my favorite tweets on #SherpaLPO (the hashtag for Optimization Summit in Atlanta) reflect the stark difference between evidence-based marketing and “song and dance” marketing…

Landed safe and sound in Atlanta, ready to nerd it up tomorrow with fellow website optimizers #SherpaLPO http://ow.ly/57ghH

– @DesignerMeg

Getting ready to geek out with @MarkKilens and @mgieva at #SherpaLPO

– @mcdmiller

To use a high school analogy, marketers are often thought of as the popular people – the Student Government president, the captain of the football team (or perhaps curling team for our Canadian friends).

But the 139 marketers listening to Dr. Flint McGlaughlin teach right now in our pre-Optimization Summit Landing Page Optimization Workshop in Atlanta (the next stops of this workshop will be in New York and San Francisco) are not seeking to learn about better ways to add a winning smile or flashy move to their marketing campaigns.

Evidence-based marketers are a little different. They are the chess club president or captain of the academic team (don’t worry, popularity comes when you start marketing based on business intelligence, instead of just intuition, and your campaigns produce results). Read more…

I know how it feels to not finish a landing page optimization (LPO) project. A couple of years ago I started running my own business as an Internet marketing consultant and was tasked with optimizing several SEO landing pages for a client. I told them I would, but as I started the project I realized fairly quickly that I simply didn’t have the know-how or the resources to follow through. Eventually I had to tell them I couldn’t do it. That was a rough day.

The only reason I can admit this publicly today is because I know I’m not alone. According to Boris Grinkot’s new LPO Benchmark Report, about half of all LPO projects undertaken are abandoned before the optimized page goes live.

So where does that leave you?

Chances are fairly good that you’ve either not started or not finished an LPO project of your own. Maybe it’s because you don’t know how to do LPO. Maybe it’s because you don’t have the resources. Whatever the reason, I’m assuming you want to have a successful LPO project under your belt or you wouldn’t have read this far.

Knowing that, I’ve put together this little list of resources to help you get your LPO projects done: Read more…

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

William Shakespeare lived in what can only be defined as the pre-Google era. Sure, Juliet didn’t care what a rose was called. She wasn’t searching for rose vendors since she chose a guy from the other side of the tracks and would never have a proper wedding. And she certainly wasn’t selling roses online with a site that relied on organic traffic for two-thirds of its revenue.

However, names do matter if you’re searching for optimization or A/B testing vendors, or if you’re offering those services yourself. Even more important, words matter because they hint at the approach you’re taking to your marketing efforts. That’s why I was so intrigued by two marketing research charts in Boris Grinkot’s 2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report… Read more…