Archive for June, 2008
June 26, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner
Just finished a fun webinar with Loren McDonald from Silverpop - watch for it on our archive tomorrow! There was a lot of interest and buzz around mobile devices; specifically the reality of how HTML emails or even multi-part emails are rendering in the mobile environment. We had a ton of great questions and a very engaged group of attendees. If you were one of them, thanks!
For more thoughts and opinions on email, I encourage you to listen to the smart strategies of sitebrand customer ProAthlete (aka justbats.com). And you can do this via a podcast that was recorded live from the floor of the recent Internet Retailer conference in Chicago. This podcast speaks well to the opportunities around triggering capabilities and automation…
PSST - This new “Getting Personal with Sitebrand” podcast series is a natural extension to our webinar series. If you have a topic idea for one of our upcoming podcasts or webinars, I’d love to hear from you!
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1 Comment | Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Conversion, Customer Experience, Email marketing, Optimization, eCommerce
June 24, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner
What ~ Email Marketing: That was then. This is now.
When ~ This Thursday, June 26, 2008
Time ~ 2:00 PM - 2:29 PM EDT
REGISTER NOW…
You might think you’ve got your emails figured out, but judging by what I keep seeing in my inbox, I think there’s lots of learning to be done…and this Thursday’s webinar with Sitebrand and Silverpop is a good place to start. It’s free. It’s 29 minutes. And most of all, it will help you optimize your email marketing efforts (translation: happy, clicking subscribers = loyal, converting customers).
To all of you who are “blasting” your emails on a regular basis, good for you. But when I hear you calling it a “blast”, I cringe. What kind of quality control goes into a “blast”? And if you’re sending another “e-newsletter”…is it really an e-newsletter? Should it really be an e-flyer or an e-update? Do people really want more looooonnnnngggggg e-newsletters anyway?
And how about your subscriber preference centers? Do you even have such a place? Or do you just assume that everyone who buys from you wants weekly emails forever after? Do your subscribers have any say in what you send them? It’s 2008…they should.
Email marketing and the rules of engagement have changed. In addition to insight from two industry pros, there will also be time for some Q&A right after the webinar. So register today and have some burning questions ready for us!
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No Comments | Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Conversion, Customer Experience, Email marketing, Viral Marketing, eCommerce
June 20, 2008 by Jim Cain
There is a lack of tested business practice when it comes to website optimization. This is because it is a brand new aspect of the (in itself young) discipline of eMarketing. That said, one of the most compelling aspects of optimization is that there is no right way or wrong way to do it. Given the cyclical nature of an optimization initiative, if you make a change to your website and get lousy results, you are that much more likely to do better on the next pass.
Given that Sitebrand is a personalization company, we spend all of our time assisting customers in getting their own conversion optimization efforts off the ground. Because of that, I have a few points that I think should be considered by any marketer about to get started in this space. If you follow the first point, and remain aware of the second, you should be off to the races in optimizing the desired outcomes of your web property.
POINT 1: You can’t score if you don’t know where the goal is.
Don’t bother tinkering with the zeros and ones that make up your website unless you are aware of and educated on your traffic and the goals you have for them. Let’s say you want to rebuild your home page to grow your conversion rate (for simplicity, let’s assume conversion equals making a shopping cart purchase:
• How many page views does the home page have?
• What is the bounce rate for this page?
• How many home page views were the entry pages for a session?
o What is the conversion rate of this visitor type?
o How does it compare to the overall site average?
o If it was 10% higher, how much money is that worth?
o How does it trend for the last year?
These questions will allow you to see a rough revenue opportunity for your optimization, and provide some baselines to show if your changes have created a noticeable lift in goal outcomes over time. The end-game of optimization is not a feeling, it’s a number. Make sure you have clarity about what the number is and where it comes from before you start trying to play with it.
(If you want to get really into it, start drilling down a little and looking at the conversion rates of homepage visitors by source, geographic location and new or returning visitor status. Give each one an opportunity cost, and alter your page to speak to the one worth the most money. When you are done drop me an email, I would love to hear about the results)
POINT 2: There is a difference between optimizing the medium and the message. (sorry Mr. McLuhan)
An important consideration when considering online optimization is that it is delivered in two key pieces, what you say and where you say it.
Sounds Obvious huh? However most of the current discipline around site optimization focuses on where things are said. Look at some of the case studies online, where you see that moving the ‘buy now’ button two inches on the screen has an impact on conversion, or making a green menu blue decreased bounce rates by 52%….
I’m not at all saying the numbers are wrong, but I am saying that changing the shopping isles and front door of your store is only part of the equation. Moreover, it the most easily automated. Someday soon a software tool will be announced and:
• it will have a really cool sounding algorithm
• it will take every element of your site and shuffle them in real time to optimize your store layout.
Proper site optimization takes what is being said in equal (or perhaps more) consideration with where it is being said. The better your dialog with a visitor, the better your goal outcomes. The better your dialog with a visitor, the better your goal outcomes. Look at the messaging, the incentives, the calls to action and the relevance to the visitors you are targeting. You need as much Eisenberg as you do Taguchi.
Map out your goals properly, remember that the message is important too, and have fun growing your business.
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal” – Henry Ford
Cheers,
Jim
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1 Comment | Posted in Conversion, Customer Experience, Jim Cain, Optimization, Personalization, Web Analytics, eCommerce
June 19, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner
Our blog has been officially “twitterized” and we’re doing some social experienting along the way…
Starting now, every post title and link will be simultaneously pushed to Twitter-mania! To be a part of all the buzz - including random ”what’s Sitebrand doing?” updates - follow “Sitebrand” on Twitter.
QUICK POLL!
By the way, TIME Magazine says Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app. Is this more social marketing hype or do you agree? Take a 2 second quick poll and tell us where you fit in the Twitter mix…
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1 Comment | Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Social Media, Viral Marketing
June 17, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner
Since our June 26 webinar is an advanced session on email marketing with Loren McDonald from Silverpop co-presenting, I thought I would take a minute to share an awesome ”before and after” email case study featuring Sitebrand client, Legendary Whitetails. The study isn’t hot of the press; in fact it was picked up by MarketingSherpa back in March. But you know what, the findings are highly relevant and there’s still a lot of learnings to be learned! According to the Email Experience Council’s recently published “Retail Email Rendering Benchmark Study”, a shocking 53% of marketing execs say they are NOT factoring the realities of “images off” into their email designs. Call me crazy, but there’s a lot of money being left on the table! Let me explain why…
Very simply, this case study zeroes in on the impact of an email design’s ratio of HTML to text…especially as it relates to deliverability and response rates…which of course lead to revenue.
For this study, we did an A/B split test: the retailer’s image-based campaign vs. a nearly identical ‘email-optimized’ version which factors in best practices for preview pane/image blocking software.
KISS (Keep it simple, silly!) was the driving factor behind the creative strategy for this campaign. The message was simple and compelling “Free shipping for a limited time”; therefore the creative was simple and straightforward, using common look and feel elements from the web and previous campaigns. The only difference between the two versions was that text from the optimized version was coded in HTML (not images) in order to render properly even when images were disabled. In the screenshots below, you can see how both versions appear with images on…and then off…
While the concept, message and creative may be summed up as ’simple’, the results are nothing short of amazing. To get meaningful, accurate results, the database was randomly split into two with each containing almost 33,000 recipients.
The optimized version received higher results across the board. Deliverability went up from 78% to 98%, opens climbed from just under 10% to over 13%, clicks went up from 3% to nearly 5%. While, aside from deliverability, the improvement may not seem too dramatic, the most important metric, conversions, were unbelievable. The ‘before email’ brought in 139 purchases at a 0.4% conversion rate. The ‘after’ version brought in a whopping 495 purchases, or 1.5% conversion rate. This represented a revenue lift in excess of 379%.
With results like these, Legendary Whitetails could clearly see the lifts associated with optimizing emails for the inbox. And the “after” is the “always” when it comes to their email designs.
While this campaign may not be glamorous, complex or even have any bells and whistles, it does have the power of best practices and respect for the email medium backing it up. The numbers don’t lie and they show a compelling argument for what email expertise can do for a retailer’s bottom line. Unfortunately, as exposed by the EEC, many retailers are ‘behind the times’ in this area.
That said, I believe this case study and its results are another ”wake-up call” to those who’ve been ignoring or skeptical of industry expertise.
In closing, I have two questions and I encourage you to comment with your thoughts:
1. As a recipient of retail emails, are you seeing a trend towards emails that render well even with with images off or are you still receiving lots of image-heavy, direct mail style emails?
2. If your email client defaults to images off, how often do you turn images on? Never? Sometimes? Often?
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No Comments | Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Conversion, Customer Experience, Email marketing, Optimization, Viral Marketing, eCommerce
June 13, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner
The Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2008 show has come and gone…and what a show it was! From an exhibitor standpoint, it exceeded our expectations. The attendees brought great questions and interest to the show. The quality of exhibitors was also very high. It was a real pleasure to see so many great companies under one roof. I met tons of great people and I’ve lined up several exciting webinar co-presentations which I’ll tell you about soon.
But in the meantime, check out this eMarketing+Commerce podcast featuring: “Phyllis Librach, president and founder of Sydney’s Closet, an online retailer that sells plus size prom dresses, bridesmaid dresses and formal gowns, and Carolyn Gardner, director of customer experience for Sitebrand, an interactive marketing solutions provider, offer takeaways they gleaned from the 2008 Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition, live from the show floor.”
Below is a screen shot of the Sydney’s Closet website…since I’m in Canada, what I see is a geo-targeted message right beside the logo….notice how it welcomes me as a Canadian shopper and assures me that shipping isn’t a problem…this is just one of many web personalization campaigns that Sydney’s Closet uses to make each and every visitor feel the love! Find out more by reading the Sydney’s Closet Case Study.
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No Comments | Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Customer Experience, Optimization, Personalization, eCommerce
June 13, 2008 by Jim Cain
The traditional website is becoming de-centralized, as most traditional websites are fragmenting into hundreds of micro-footprints through blogs, social networks, newsgroups and multiple wholly owned properties.
At the same time, the market at large is calling for online marketing management software to become centralized (see Forrester), so that more cohesive campaigns can be built, and disparate datasets can be merged together for better visibility.
To quote a great Ottawa personality: Isn’t it ironic.
I think the answer to this ironic situation is in another quote (and source of online flame wars) - “Web analytics is hard”.
While it is definitely a legitimate hot-button and market requirement, a centralized online marketing suite is not a silver bullet. There is no doubt that it is impossible to make decisions about current successes and future plans if you have fifteen sets of reports from fifteen disparate tools.
We deal with this on a day to day basis at Sitebrand. If a customer uses us to personalize messages to a visitor from a particular affiliate with the goal of growing conversions, they now have three reports from three vendors, none of which connect, and all of which have different numbers. Yikes.
Given the aggressive adoption (and evangelization) of 2.0 technologies and marketing methods however, no online marketing suite will ever be able to solve problems out of the box.
In five years from now, it might be effective to push a viral video out through RSS specifically to mobile browsers, with the hope that they click through the video to a Facebook widget created to have friends push coupons to your products to each other, which can be used online or in store.
And I can promise you, even in five years there won’t be enough Red Bulls and developers in the world to build transparent reporting around that initiative.
All that is going to happen is that the leading thinkers in the space are going to say “Online Marketing Suites are hard”. And they will be right.
Build a plan, work the plan, show the plan worked. We are still struggling with it as we come to the end of Commerce 1.0, and we will keep struggling with it until we standardize on ‘what should be done’.
Perhaps this is a job for the WAA standards committee. They are doing a great job in standardizing the common terms in analytics so that the industry stays on the same page.
An interesting next step for them might include a practical document standardizing what a team of web practitioners should be doing for procedures, tools usage, documentation etc. Better yet, including a scoring system so that readers could self-evaluate. Think Gartner maturity model, but for eCommerce.
The moral of the story is that there is no piece of software, in present or future, that will help execute on a plan when no plan has been built. I think if more web teams knew where they ranked based on holistic best practices, they could take some of the ‘hard’ out of web 1.0, and be prepared to reap more value than hype from the next generation of technologies and practices.
Cheers,
Jim
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1 Comment | Posted in Conversion, Customer Experience, Jim Cain, Optimization, Personalization, RSS Marketing, Social Media, Viral Marketing, Web Analytics, eCommerce
June 6, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner
Well, the good news is FEDEX shipped our booth materials without any hassles so we won’t be boothless upon arrival this Monday. Ugh, yes, we’ve had issues crossing borders with FEDEX. Argh.
Anyhow, it’s true that Internet Retailer kicks things off (for the 8th year) this Monday through Thursday in Chicago. Sitebrand is exhibiting at booth 1151 so if you’re attending, be sure to drop by. We’ll be doing random, but strategic podcasting at the show so if you’ve got something you want to talk about, be sure to track me down. We’re also going to shoot some video so watch out for that too!
So the long and the short of this post is simple…if you’re going to IR, let’s plan to meet! See you there!
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2 Comments | Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Conversion, Customer Experience, Personalization, eCommerce
June 5, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner
Email marketing is deceptively simple, yet its simplicity is often misused and underused at the same time. That sounds confusing, but let me explain so you’ll see why you absolutely must register for the Sitebrand webinar which is being co-presented with Silverpop on June 26…
The deceptively simple part relates to what most people think is acceptable email marketing. They have a list. They send emails to the list. And that’s where the story ends. There’s very little thought put into the various segments in any given list. And while automation is becoming more of the norm, e-marketers are only scratching the surface in terms of what automation can really mean….when optimized.
So going back to my original statement that email marketing is deceptively simple, yet misused and underused at the same time…I’m referring to the automation piece. Automation is the future of email. Yes, there’s some up-front thinking to do in terms of what CAN be automated and what SHOULD be automated…but the rewards are high.
If you think you’re doing a good job with your email marketing efforts, we’re ready to prove you wrong. Ok that might be a bit harsh, but we are ready to share some new insight into this ever-popular, increasingly sophisticated (if you dare) marketing channel.
So see where you stand and register today for ”Email Marketing: That was then. This is now.”
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2 Comments | Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Conversion, Customer Experience, Email marketing, Viral Marketing, eCommerce
