MarketingSherpa Blog

During my routine check of the blogsphere the other night, I came across a post about MarketingSherpa listed in Feedster that I was a little scared to click on to check out.

Why? Well, the named blogger was our Director of Internet, Scott McDaniel. I knew he had a personal blog when we hired him this summer, but I didn’t think much about it. Now here he was apparently writing about Sherpa in, gulp, public.

I always made fun of those big corporate types who were so uptight about their official messaging that they didn’t let employees blog, or worse yet, fired folks for saying the “wrong” things in personal blogs.

But, now I find myself on the other end of the stick. Now I was the one with an employee who knows all — the good, the bad, the ugly — who’s blithely blogging away about us in his spare time. It makes you think. Corporate transparency is all very well and fine until you’re the one who has to sashay onstage in the emperor’s new clothes.

Anyway, I bravely clicked on the link. And then I started breathing again. http://www.scottmcdaniel.com/2005/12/13/whats-new-whats-not-lets-start-with-the-job

Back in the 1970s the catalog industry ran eyetracking tests to discover what people’s eyes did when they “read” a catalog. The results startled many: eyes skim diagonally across a page in a Z-like motion looking for items of interest, rather than reading “in order.”

While fascinating, not many of these tests were conducted partly because the equipment was clunky. Consumers had to wear a big metal headset with wires sticking out around their head, so it was hard for marketers to believe the results closely mirrored reality.

In November 2004, I was thrilled to discover eyetracking technology has been updated for the Web age. It’s now super easy for participants; no headset at all. Folks just sit in front of what looks like a regular computer monitor and act like they would normally online — looking at Web pages, scrolling (or not) and clicking.

The resulting colorful “heatmaps” tell you how people’s eyes really see the Web and how that makes them click.

I was so wowed by the potential data that we wound up conducting eyetracking studies throughout 2005 and included the resulting heatmaps in three MarketingSherpa research reports:

– Landing page eyetracking for our Landing Page Handbook – Search marketing eyetracking for our Search Benchmark Guide – Email campaign eyetracking for our Email Marketing Benchmark Guide (See link below for sample.)

Along the way I discovered eyetracking has three key benefits:

#1. Because the way human’s eyes are “hardwired,” a very few participants can give you data that applies across much bigger groups. So, the cost of doing eyetracking studies is minimal, as you only have to recruit a few participants per design iteration.

#2. You can run eyetracking tests on mock-up Web pages (or search engine results pages, or email creative). The participants don’t need to know it’s not a “real” site, as long as the HTML page they see looks real. This is great for testing design ideas before you build out an entire site or campaign.

#3. Eyetracking allows for multivariate testing. This means you can test extremely different creatives against each other to determine a winner. (This was tough for me, with my A/B testing background, to get my head around at first.)

We used a firm called Eyetools Inc. to conduct our tests because they were the only ones I’d heard of, but there are several other good ones out there now. Plus, some interactive agencies, such as Enquiro, are now buying the software so they can conduct tests in-house.

If you’ve done any eyetracking, or you plan to, please do let me know how it turns out and what you learned. I’m extremely interested in covering this topic in future issues — so you may find yourself the subject of a MarketingSherpa Case Study!

Here’s that link to a test result — it’s on page 6 of this PDF: http://www.MarketingSherpa.com/exs/EMBG06_execsumm.pdf

By the way – if you’re interested in any of the Sherpa research reports I mentioned above, they’re all available at http://www.sherpastore.com or call (877) 895-1717.

How many emails did you have in your inbox when you came back after this holiday weekend? Mine wasn’t too bad – only 2,784 messages, mainly from eretailers promoting “Black Monday” offers and from readers outside the US who didn’t have Thanksgiving off.

No fewer than 16 LinkedIn requests to connect were also in the pile.

(LinkedIn is one of those social networking systems online, where you can swap personal connections with other members. It has its uses, mainly for biz dev and some recruiting. I use it, albeit rarely, when researching story sources.)

I have this gargantuan pet peeve about people using social networking services; networking wanna-bes who hope to tap into my personal (and closely guarded) network of connections shouldn’t send me a form letter.

Yet, roughly 85% of the “requests to connect” I get use the default message LinkedIn provides for the writing-challenged:

“Anne,

I noticed that you are also using LinkedIn. I’d be happy to recommend you to the people I know. If you feel the same, please accept my invitation to connect networks. I’ll only pass requests on to you from people I trust, and I hope you’ll do the same for me.”

It’s not such a bad letter really. It’s just that it’s a form letter.

Why should I bother to connect personally with you, if you can’t be bothered to write me a personal note? Plus, because the average businessperson has more than 3,000 connections, you should probably include a description of how you know me if you’re not 100% sure I’ll remember your name.

Here are three examples of LinkedIn notes where the authors took 30 seconds to write a real note instead of lazily sending the form letter. Yes, I added each to my network immediately. In each case, it wasn’t about the cleverness of the writing, it was about the fact that it was honestly, personally-written.

“Hi Anne,

I’m taking advantage of this rainy Friday afternoon to reconnect with old friends and colleagues via LinkedIn. But we aren’t in each other’s networks at this point. Maybe you could add me to yours?

Good luck on the upcoming show! I have no doubt it will be a success as always.

Take care,” — Andrew Bourland

“Ahoy thar pirate Holland! Hope all is well in Sherpaland. Connectez vous?” — Aaron Dragushan

“Hey Anne,

We met @ the BMA meeting in Denver last month, and we talked about doing case studies together.

Anyway, I found you while I was searching my network at LinkedIn. Let’s connect directly, so we can help each other with referrals. If we connect, both of our networks will grow. To add me as your connection, just follow the link below.” — Natascha Lee

Anyway, I’m not writing this as an endorsement of LinkedIn over other systems, nor as a request for anyone else to request linking to me. I just figured, if you (or your biz dev reps) are using social networking you might want to improve the odds that someone will want to network with you.

Good luck!

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MarketingSherpa’s new Guide gives you real-life email campaign data from 1,927 marketers:

-> Open rates, click rates, conversions -> B-to-B vs. B-to-C data -> What’s working for newsletters & alerts -> Eyetracking “heatmap” tests of email creative

310 *practical* charts to make your job easier: http://www.sherpastore.com/c/a.pl?1150&p.cfm/1976 or call 877-895-1717
~~~~~~~~~~~

Around midnight last Friday I started feeling pretty poorly. I was in a San Francisco hotel (our B-to-B Summit had just ended), so I grabbed the Yellow Pages from the bedside table and looked for a local doctor who’d be available at such a crazy hour.

And, being me, when I got the doctor on the phone we naturally started talking marketing.

Turns out the 24/7 house call business is booming, much to the delight of five physician-entrepreneurs who started San Francisco On Call Medical Group. Their clients have included the rock band Blink 182.

“How did Blink 182 find out about you?” I asked. “They saw our ad in Google,” explained Dr Clifton Sewell.

The doctors have been running paid ads on Google for four months now, under terms such as “San Francisco Doctor.” They’re spending roughly 50 cents per click for top positions and their total monthly spend is about $500. “We get about 20-30 new patients a month from it, so we’re happy,” said Clifton.

I couldn’t help but give him a few tips that might increase the conversion rate — such as adding their photos to their landing page because people like to see people. “You should consider adding a photo to your Yellow Pages ad as well,” I added. “You’re already running four-color so it won’t cost you any more.”

“Nah,” Clifton replied. “We’re doing so well with paid search ads that we’ve decided to cut our print ad and just use standard plain listing. The Internet is where people find us. Almost nobody uses the phone book anymore.”

Guess that makes me the last of a dying breed.

Anyway, if you’re a rock star visiting San Francisco and you need a doctor in the middle of the night, I recommend these fellows: http://www.sfoncall.com

The other day I get an email from a Sherpa reader with a really great SIG (signature section).

Instead of just a name and contact info, this marketer put a little business card-style box at the end of her note to me, including a hotlink to a page of videos about her company. Naturally I asked her how the SIG was working.

She said, “Oh that’s an initiative from our Web department.” So I called over there and got the guy who invented the SIG box on the line.

Turns out last year he’d been fretting over the variances in everyone’s SIGs. When you’re a big ecommerce and high tech company with thousands of employees there’s a lot of email going out from everyone’s accounts, and everyone had “invented” their own SIGs to stick at the end of letters. Why not, he wondered, give folks a few branded formal templates that might work better? Last fall he created a selection of officially-approved SIGs, posted them on the company intranet and everyone could take their pick. The SIGs’ hotlinks were all coded so the Web department could track SIG traffic amount and value with a 14-day cookie (although they did not track by individual employee).

Results? The company (which is public and has asked to not be named here) now receives just over 5,000 clicks from employee email SIGs per quarter. The average revenue per click is $9. You do the math.

As the Web guy pointed out, some of these buyers might have clicked anyway. They might have been responding to email from a service or sales rep and used the SIG hotlink to get to the site more easily. But, some of them might not have visited the site at that time if the unusual SIG hadn’t caught their eye.

Because you never know why people are clicking on a SIG link, the best landing page turned out to be one with a choice of educational content (folks loved the company videos) plus lots of navigation links to shopping and service options.

It was more interesting than a formal company home page, but still easy to use as a launching pad for a broad site search. (This is the opposite of most landing pages, which should be extremely focused with little or no navigation.)

Maybe you should start thinking about what you could do with your employee email SIGs. Chances are, you can do more. And while you’re at it, track the clicks from them!

Sponsor: New! Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MarketingSherpa’s new Search Benchmark helps you compare your results & budget to the norm. 210 charts include:

– Typical Cost Per Click & Click Rates – Conversion rates for B-to-B, B-to-C, & Ecommerce – What your competitors are budgeting for search – Do agencies get better results than in-house marketers? – SEO (Optimization) vs PPC campaign data

+ 3,271 marketers’ real-life 2005 SEM results: http://SEMGuideB2C.MarketingSherpa.com Or call 877-895-1717
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last week at our East Coast Summit four different attendees came up to me separately to say, “Hey, I really liked your marketing campaign for this event!”

Of course I was thrilled — there’s no greater compliment than one from a fellow marketer. Then I was surprised and bemused to discover each one of the four was referring to a completely different marketing tactic.

o One agency exec had been a faithful reader for more than a year and said the quality of the newsletters over that long time period had finally converted her into becoming a ticket buyer.

o Another attendee admitted she’s never heard of us before at all until a colleague forwarded her one of the B-to-B Lead Gen “Hell” cartoons from our viral marketing campaign this fall. Here’s a sample of one of them:

o A Fortune 500 marketer said he’d known about us “for years” but never bought anything until he happened to attend a third-party Webinar where I was a guest speaker two days before. “You mentioned the Summit as an aside, and I went online to get my ticket right then and there while you were still speaking.”

o Last, but not least, faithful customer Robert Lesser of http://www.DirectImpactNow.com told me he’d joked over the phone with a Sherpa editorial staffer about how he “deserved a T-shirt” because he was considering attending both the East and West Coast Summits.

Much to his surprise, he got a custom T-shirt in the mail shortly thereafter. Here’s the photo he emailed back of himself wearing it:

My lesson learned? Although superbly integrated, matching-across-all-media campaigns are in fashion right now and can certainly improve your brand impact. Sometimes the scattershot approach works best.

Fact is, not all people are alike. So there’s no reason why they’d all prefer the same kind of marketing messaging. If we’d depended on one single message, no matter how beautifully executed across multiple channels, we would have never won over all four of those marketers.

Let’s hear it for disorganized — but heartfelt — marketing! Rah!

–> Reader response to this column:

“I cringed when I saw your headline ‘Forget Integrated Campaigns’ because in my newly started marketing consulting practice, I preach integration — nay, I scream it. I instantly thought you had gone mad. However, I was very pleased to see that the feedback experience you recounted for us clearly demonstrates the importance of integration: all media executions staying true to the brand and working together with support systems to generate a conversion.

“I absolutely agree that you do not need to have one message/creative approach directing the delivery of every medium/execution. Overdone, this can actually lull prospects to sleep because they get used to rejecting the same ‘look and feel’ of your message.

However, I think true integration happens when all message touch points (tactics) represent the established brand (read positioning, not creative) and lead prospects to an easy way to convert (easy way to find your product to review it, signing up for something, buying something, making a referral, etc.).

The marketing tactics that each of your fans responded to were integrated! They all represented your brand well (except for maybe the T-shirt, although the personalization was key) and they each had a clear way for the prospect to respond – follow a link to your site and easily learn about and register for an upcoming conference.

I know you know, that there are too many companies out there who excel at getting the message out and then never address the conversion experience -– usually because the advertising team, the PR team and the internal support teams are not integrated – in other words, ready to make and take handoffs without dropping the customer along the way. So I applaud you for your well-integrated and disjointed marketing campaign.

I also want to thank you. Due to your blog entry, I just realized that when I say ‘integration,’ my clients may be thinking ‘same creative,’ so I need to look for another way to get my point across.”

Kurt Fisher,Principal View Marketing, L.L.C. http://www.viewmarketing.com

Sponsor: New! Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MarketingSherpa’s new Search Benchmark helps you compare your results & budget to the norm. 210 charts include:

– Typical Cost Per Click & Click Rates – Conversion rates for B-to-B, B-to-C, & Ecommerce – What your competitors are budgeting for search – Do agencies get better results than in-house marketers? – SEO (Optimization) vs PPC campaign data

+ 3,271 marketers’ real-life 2005 SEM results: http://SEMGuideB2C.MarketingSherpa.com Or call 877-895-1717
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thought you’d like to know the USPS has at last announced the official new postal rate hikes. The new rates should “take effect in early 2006”:

First class letter – .39 cents (up from .37)
Postcard – .24 cents (up from .23)
Bulk mail – up 3%
ECR mail – up 5.5%
Non-profit ECR mail – up 12.3%

How will this affect email? Most marketers who were ulttra-concerned with postal mail cost have already made substantial shifts into online and email, so we don’t expect massive changes. However, the rate hike make transactional email deliverability all the more critical, along with allied growth in the Print on Demand industry…

So many organizations switched from print to email to save budgets in the past five years. Now, those transactional emails (receipts, shipping, account updates) are more likely to be filtered in the general run of things. *Plus* smart marketers are including campaign messages/offers within the body of regular transactional emails … which again ups the false positive filtering quotient due to content filters.

If email response is critical to your business, you’ll want to build in database communications between email delivery indicators on the individual account level and your postal mail system. For example, if you can tell a critical email may not have gotten through, your automated Print on Demand system can quickly substitute a postal mailed version to that customer.

The Print on Demand industry is ready and waiting to be integrated into your email system for that purpose. This extra postal hike will mean mailing smarter and more carefully, not stopping
mailing.

Here are two useful links for you if you’re interested in the subject:

#1. USPS rate hike announcement:
http://www.prc.gov (click on the scrolling red headline)

#2. The Digital Printing Initiative (PODi) http://www.podi.org

Sponsor: New! Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Compare your search marketing budget & results to the norm with
MarketingSherpa’s all-new Search Benchmark Guide:

– Typical Cost Per Click & Click Rates
– Conversion rates for B-to-B, B-to-C, & Ecommerce
– What your competitors are budgeting for search
– Do agencies get better results than in-house marketers?
– SEO (Optimization) vs PPC campaign data

+ 3,271 marketers’ real-life 2005 SEM results:
http://SEMGuideB2C.MarketingSherpa.com
Or call 877-895-1717
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s a viral-by-mistake marketing story you gotta love.

This summer alt pop band OK Go were getting ready for a tour to promote their second album.

So, there they were in a Chicago-area backyard practicing a dance routine to go with one of their songs, ‘A Million Ways.’ The problem with practicing a dance routine in a backyard (as opposed to, say, in a dance studio) is there are no mirrors, so you can’t see how you look.

Which is why the guys decided to tape the thing on a video camera set up on a tripod. They did their three-minute routine a few times and then checked the video.

One of their girlfriends thought the video looked so fun that she begged them to release it as their official video instead of the “real” video they were planning to do with a professional director. The band laughed at her. Thereupon, she posted the video online and emailed a couple of friends to get a second opinion.

Two point five million downloads later, the boys found themselves invited to perform the dance live on Good Morning America and The Tonight Show.

They’ve also begun receiving emails from fans with links to homemade videos of other groups of men performing the dance. (Apparently it’s a big hit at weddings.)

Since reality hits a note with the fans, now the band have continued by launching a written plus audio blog (aka podcast) of their tour that’s pretty darn fun, too.

The lesson here — keep it real. That doesn’t mean handheld imperfect-on-purpose videocam shots we all got used to in “cool” ads in the late 90s. It means be really genuine as opposed to faux genuine.

This, however, can be incredibly difficult when you’re a marketer on a schedule with a campaign to get out (or approve.) “OK from 10 a.m.-11a.m. I have to write heartfelt copy. Then from 11-12 we’ll do a heartfelt design session.” Yeah, right.

You wind up getting slick, and your enthusiasm for whatever you’re marketing becomes strained, improbable. Which is when language like “The Leader” and “Solution” creep in as exclamation marks meant to gloss over our lack of connection with either the product and/or the marketplace. I don’t have a solution for that, beyond take a deep breath, take a walk over to the service department, and shoot the breeze with a customer or two to get back in touch with their needs. Your campaign has to serve the customer directly, not just your deadline.

Anyway, here’s a link to the site with the dance video, enjoy! http://www.okgo.net

This morning as you read this, I’ll be standing in front of a podium at our live “in person” Summit in Boston. And I’ll be worrying a lot about … picking my nose in public.

It’s incredibly stupid. Years ago I read an interview where rock star Sting said the giant video screens at concerts make him nervous he’ll slip up, pick his nose and be horribly embarrassed in front of thousands of people.

For some reason that stuck with me, and although I am *not* a nose picker, that’s the dumb thing I find myself fretting about at conferences.

Luckily for my stress-level, this year I’ve mainly presented live at virtual events such as webinars and teleconferences. Unfortunately, even in the virtual event world, opportunities for being a dork abound.

Here are my top 10 tips for any of you who also have to give “virtual” speeches: (Note: Looking for photos? Scroll to the bottom).

#1. Nobody can see your arms waving

I’m the queen of gesticulation — waving my arms with excitement as I speak. (And all too frequently knocking over water glasses in the process, but that’s another story.)

If you’re doing a webinar or telephone event, nobody can see you. On the other hand, they can see their co-workers, phone call-waiting flashes and incoming email. Your voice has to be so compelling that it carries them away from their office distractions.

So I’ve learned to try to take the energy away from my arms and put it more into my voice.

#2. Alternate male and female speakers

Nothing’s worse than presenting by yourself for 60 minutes straight. You’ll end up exhausted and worried everyone listening was bored by that endless monologue no matter how peppy it was.

Get yourself a co-host. Better yet, get yourself a co-host of the opposite sex. That way the overt change in voice keeps your listeners’ attention.

#3. Don’t trust your co-host to show up

On three occasions in the past six months, whoever was co-hosting with me failed to make the date. Once I didn’t know until after the speech had started. Ack!

The problem is, once you get used to having a co-host around, you can get a bit lazy. You only have to cover, say 35 minutes, and count on him for the rest. Suddenly there you are with a whopping 60 minutes of air time and only 35 minutes of something to say.

I’ve learned two lessons: keep written notes on what my co-host is going to say that’s not on the slides. Also, don’t be afraid to end a little early. Better to give folks a quick-but-juicy presentation than have streeeeetched it out and bored them to death.

#4. Keep printouts of your presentation on hand

Invariably your office Web connection will go down someday while you’re in the middle of giving a speech. Nothing is worse than staring at a blank screen while inanely talking, hoping like crazy you’ll remember off the top of your head what the next five slides contain.

Keep a printed out copy of the presentation. Plus, arrange a codeword or secret phrase with a co-presenter or moderator to let them know you can’t move the slides along anymore (if you were in charge of that).

#5. Post a PDF copy of the presentation online *beforehand*

Also invariably a few attendees will not be able to see the slides being presented on the screen (almost no matter what system you’re using).

I’ve learned to create a PDF of the presentation and have our production folks post it to a handy page online. Then I try to make an announcement in the first five minutes, and also on the half hour, letting folks know they should “zap off an email to customer service for your slides if you can’t see them.”

We usually get a handful of takers, so it’s well worth the trouble.

#6. Never start a presentation “on the hour”

Watching the live attendee count can be unnerving. One second you have 177 people, the next 173 and you think, ‘My golly, what did I say?!” So, I try to ignore that part of the webinar screen.

However, the live counts have taught me never ever to start a presentation until at least two minutes past the hour. Just like meetings in real life, most people don’t show up on time.

#7. Don’t go over your officially allotted time

Incredibly ignorant of me — I used to think if I went over the official time by say 10 minutes people would not mind because they were getting extra information. More value – right? Nope.

Most marketers are too busy and heavily scheduled to enjoy meetings that run overtime, no matter how useful the information being presented is. It’s not respectful to run long and I’m trying my darndest never to do it again.

BTW: Always rehearse an entire speech live and time it before you give it for real.

I’ve found the less experienced my co-host is, the more likely they’ll want to pack in way too many slides and info for the time allotted. Rule of thumb — one slide for every two to four minutes is best. More often means your content is too “lite” or your speech is too jammed.

#8. Resist using live chat or Q&A during the main speech

Webinar companies include ongoing Q&A and live chat with the presentation because the tech’s not that hard to build. However, just because it’s possible to do, doesn’t mean it’s smart.

No one can speak effectively and compellingly and answer off-the-cuff questions in the non-Q&A section of their speech. You wind up sounding disjointed and flustered. Plus, if you wait until your co-host is speaking to dash off written answers to folks, it’s rude and disrespectful of his/her time in front of the audience.

#9. The videoconferencing dork factor

I recently did my first videoconference. Super neat. I was sitting in a conference room in Boston, presenting live to a group in Arizona. They stuck a video camera on the table at the front of their room so I could “see” everyone, and vice versa.

Thing is, the camera sits on the table… so your perspective as a viewer is of being a tiny little person looking up at these great huge creatures looming above the table. And vice versa.

Also, sometimes the slight time lag between what you say and what they hear can throw you off. I’d crack a joke, nobody would laugh, then I’d panic thinking “Stop making lame jokes!” and try to act more serious, and then a second later everyone would start laughing. You wind up feeling dorky twice in a row.

#10. Don’t forget to move the cat

We have a company policy that everyone can bring their pets to work (yes, we have a No-Pets room where allergic folks are isolated for their comfort and safety).

Anyway, my old cat Pete lives in my office. His hobbies are eating, sleeping, sleeping and sleeping. And, sometimes he likes to take a nap.

You’d never know he was there. Except the minute I get on the phone to do a webinar or teleseminar. Then he erupts into a frenzy of loud meows. Unceasingly. For the entire hour.

So I purchased a fleece-lined animal carrier bag called, no joke, a Sherpa. Prior to each event, I stuff Pete into the Sherpa and off he goes down the hall to spend the next hour making the lives of the folks in our service department a living nightmare.

If you call in to our 800 line the next time I’m giving a virtual speech, you’ll be able to hear Pete yowling away in the background.

Anyway, today Pete’s happily catching up on some much needed zzzzs while I pontificate in person at the Summit. While *not* picking my nose, thank you very much!

MarketingSherpa virtual events: behind-the-scenes

1. Dorky action shot — during a webinar, no one can see you gesticulating

2. Pete the office cat goes into his Sherpa holder before a teleconference

3. When you give a videoconference, you think you’re about 3 inches tall… while in reality you’re looming over the audience.

4. Here I am *not* picking my nose at our B-to-B Lead Gen Summit on Monday:

I’m having a new cork floor put in my house. It’s warmer to touch than wood, eco-friendly (harvested cork trees live for 150 years or so) and cork can be gorgeous.

Cork’s also famously sound absorbent — a fact which has not escaped me given than I’ve got two older stepchildren moving in shortly.

So last Monday I went online, clicked on every cork link in the search engines and sent away for a gazillion samples. By mid-week my mailbox was swamped with fat manila packages from a horde of cork competitors. Then Lumber Liquidators’ sample box arrived and it was such a thing of golden glowing glory that it was impossible to look elsewhere.

o Instead of using the flattest-possible package, they used a shoebox-style box. Dimensional marketers have known for years, fatter in the mail can be higher-impact.

o Instead of bland cardboard, the entire box was colored a cheerful taxi-cab yellow.

o A big red headline next to my address label proclaimed, “Samples You Requested!”

o Logos, phone numbers and warranty slogans were printed on the sides of the box.

o Details on the company’s 50-year residential warranty adorned the bottom of the box.

… but wait, there’s more: when I tore open the box to get at my samples, I discovered the ENTIRE inside was also golden and printed with compelling marketing copy.

o My personal sales rep’s card was taped to the inside front flap under the red headline “Give me a call to order!” Plus the 800-number was printed beside it, in case I removed and lost the card (entirely possible in my household).

o The inside sides of the box were printed with lengthy testimonials from named satisfied customers.

o The inside bottom of the box featured another headline and blurb on the satisfaction guarantee.

Although I’ve shopped online for nearly a decade, I must admit I was feeling a bit nervous to be ordering 1,000 square feet of flooring from a company I’ve never visited in person. That was before Lumber Liquidators’ golden box arrived. A company that puts that kind of work into making potential customers feel secure through its sampling packaging is a company I feel secure doing business with.

It’s also made me wonder — what lessons can all of us take from this? Whether you have an actual sampling campaign, a catalog or brochure request form, or you use the Internet for other types of lead generation, how can you create something physical to send your most qualified prospects that will stop them in their tracks?

Chances are, just like me, those prospects requesting info are doing so at all of your competitors’ sites at the same time. Your follow-through materials need to be just as competitively designed as your search campaign and landing page.

If you’re spending top dollar for qualified traffic, why then suddenly clamp down the budget to communicate with those leads only in the absolute cheapest way possible? If you’re only sending follow-up email, only offering a PDF, or only a Webinar… perhaps it’s time to consider adding some real-world punch to your follow-up program.

I know as we budget for 2006, real-world has become a significant line-item.