#1 most useful thing I learned at @d:tech was from Kevin Lee of did-it.com who’s done extensive research on conversion patterns of consumers who click on search engine results. He’s noticed that the type of consumer who clicks on the very first result is FAR LESS LIKELY to convert into a customer of that site, than people who click on the second or third ranked results of their search. Why? Apparently it’s due to personality types. People who click on the very first thing are more likely to be impulse clickers who didn’t bother to read the decription of the site to see if it was right for their needs. People who click on lower-ranked sites are considered clickers, who carefully decided which site was right for them.
This definitely means if you pay for placement on systems such as Overture or Ah-Ha, you should be tracking the conversion on the clicks you’re buying based on what rank you purchased. Make sure you’re paying for a rank that brings clickers most likely to convert – not impulse clickers.
Ok it’s time for the official BAN on email marketing campaigns using generic holiday messages. Yes, your lovely email campaign may be the only one you send this year saying, “Holiday Special”, “Holiday savings!” or “Celebrate the Season”, but it’s the 199th with that style subject line that your recipients will get. (Today alone I got at least a half dozen.)
So, make sure you get some far less generic terms in your campaign subject lines — and put them as high up as possible (vs. at the end of the line) so they are not cut off by email systems that only accept 20 character subject lines.
Sherpa reader Tricia Robinson, VP Marketing at Socketware, just sent in the following useful factoid:
“Mondays stink for sending email campaigns! We attribute it to ‘Weekend Wearies’ Since Monday is a
back-to-business day for most people, less time is spent with commercial email promotions. We encourage marketers to not send on Mondays.”
At the very least, her observation, based on watching results for dozens of clients sending email, means that you should be testing day-of-week for your campaigns. Yes, this definitely affects b2c marketers too, because so many consumers check personal email accounts during the working day, often because their office Internet access is so much speedier — and because at work you’re not competing with the kids to use the family’s home computer.
, Associate Editor of Ezine-Tips, has posted a useful overview article on what’s going on with Excite @home email addresses, as well as some nasty problems for email newsletter publishers who use bCentral’s system to send out their issues. Check out her article here.
http://ezine-tips.com/articles/management/20011204.shtml
Thanks to MarketingSherpa reader Tim Scheel who sent in this update on the AT&T switchover on the 850,000 accounts they bought from Excite in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere:
“AT & T has promised that addresses would only change from the @ sign on. Our address was tscheele@home.com but has now changed to tscheele@attbi.com. So newsletter publishers can probably take all of their bounces and change them using the formula above and at least be able to reach AT & T @home customers.
Sherpa reader Barbara Kaplowitz just emailed in her favorite bad-web-design page:thispagecannotbedisplayed.com, which reminds me of the advice EVERY Internet marketing consultant on this planet has given in their newsletters and/or speechs since the beginning of time (and yet still most of us blithely ignore it – including bad-me) which is:
When your users try to access a page on your site that’s not there anymore, or their link was slightly wrong, don’t just send them to an ordinary “Error 404: File not found” page that your techies out up when they built the site. Instead, use the page to redirect the visitors to … well, wherever you want them to go!
[Note: after I posted this, Hollis Thomases of WebAdvantage.net emailed in, “Give it time and let it go for as long as you can stand it: http://www.binaryinc.org/404.html“
Here I am at the @d:tech online marketing conference in NYC. I just ran into Craig Sherman, Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer at Ancestry.com– and he was very psyched, “We just hit 500,000 paid subscribers yesterday!”
Way cool — and three weeks ahead of his budgeted deadline too. Ancestry charges consumers an average of $49-59 a year to access their HUGE content database on American family histories.
Craig has been behind the marketing wheel there for just over a year now, and has helped turn the red-ink dot-com into a profitable sub site. I expect Ancestry will be in the running to beat WSJ.com and ConsumerReports.org’s sub numbers soon — it’s gonna be a neck and neck race.
Sad news on the Excite @Home email address transition front — it appears that Excite will NOT be forwarding messages sent to its address to the new emails customers are assigned. For Sherpa this means we could lose as much of 5% of our hard-won opt-in list this week. (Ouch!) I’m sending an emergency message to my subscribers to let them know if they have Excite-related accounts, they must switch the addresses immediately or lose
service.
In the meantime, here’s an update from Ben Isaacson, Executive Director of AIM the Association for Interactive Media :
“After hearing back from AT&T, it looks like this is Excite@Home’s issue not forwarding on the emails. AT&T didn’t seem to take that much interest in it, but referred me to the Excite people in a way that says that things are pretty bad between the company. It sounds like they’re just trying to milk a few more $$ from AT&T before going under.
I’ve left a message with my contact at Cox as well and will get back to you about it.
As far as I’m concerned, this represents a stronger need for ECOA services. While Veripost-Return Path, Fresh Address, and others are building their companies, it’s times like these when we wished that they were set up at the same time as the email list
business many years ago. I would imagine that in future ISP consolidations, ECOA will be a critical factor.
Best,
Ben
If you’re like me, no matter how your company site is improved, the glass is always half empty and all you see is the stuff that’s not as good as it could be. So, today why not go look at some really, truly awful Web sites, and then you can think, “Hey, we’re not so bad after all.”
My three favorite spots to surf bad Web design:
1. The Web Awards— Sad but true. These awards are the result of creative Web designers run amuck. Loooong Flash intros with pounding canned music, navigation bars that use cutesy icons instead of obvious text terms, black or colored backgrounds with white text … you know the drill. (BTW: yes I did ask them if a usability or marketing expert were included on the panel of judges. No reply.)
2. Web Pages That Suck and Bad Designs are usability guru Jakob Neilsen’s favorite sites to surf for awful design.
3. pDom’s 10 Worst Celebrity Sites reveals the ugly side of Hollywood. (Feel really sorry for Maureen McCormick.)
Warning email newsletter publishers! With the bankruptcy of Excite, related email addresses (including @home addresses) are being changed to new emails. The users’ new email address will depend on whatever cable system is taking their account (Comcast, Cox, AT&T and others are taking over depending on region.) The changeover is staggered. I have some subscribers who say their @home addresses no longer work, while others are unaware of the change.
Unfortunately you can’t just guess what your @home subscribers’ new emails will be because the address is changing in some cases more radically than just appending a new @ ending. (That’s because the cable cos may have conflicting customers who’ve already claimed some email addresses.)
So, this week you probably should send a message to the @home names on your file … or at least pop a message at the top of your issues, that folks need to remember to change their email addresses in your system!!!!
In the meantime, Ben Isaacson who heads AIM , is calling related members such as Cox, AT&T Broadband, Veripost and ReturnPath.net to learn how they will be assisting list owners and the public with the change. He’ll get back to me with more news later and I’ll post it here.
