MarketingSherpa Blog

The first time I’d ever heard about social shopping sites like StyleHive.com, ThisNext.com, and CribCandy.com was when working on a special report for MarketingSherpa.

A source mentioned these sites as an inexpensive way for B-to-C marketers to get their brand name out there as marketing budgets are slashed. It made me question whether these sites are successfully generating leads for marketers in tough times.

Read more…

My husband types two-three words per minute (it’s true, I timed him once).

So, late last Tuesday night, when he decided to donate to Barack Obama’s campaign after watching a bunch of speeches on TV, he got me out of bed to go online and do it for him.

The donation form wasn’t anything unusual — much like most charity and political sites. But, the next page, that ‘Thank you for Donating’ page made me sit up and get excited.

Wow — this is a page every marketer in the world, but especially nonprofits seeking donations, should examine for potential right away. I’ve posted a screenshot of it below, so you don’t have to donate to see it.

Here’s why you should take a look:

Most ‘thank you’ pages are dead ends. These pages show up when you opt in for a site’s email newsletter, submit a form or buy something. You see a “thank you” or confirmation and, perhaps, a receipt. But that’s it. Aside from the rare exception — such as Amazon’s post-purchase page — visitors are given nothing more to do, no place to click to, no more interactive choices. Just flat, this-transaction-is-over politeness.

Emotionally, the moment you’ve done a transaction of any kind, you are MORE likely to be open to doing another transaction than at any other time in your relationship with that brand or site.

In effect, the customer has just nodded his or her head and said, “Yes.” Why not present them with another feel-good offer for them to say “yes” to while they are in head-nodding mode?

Every salesperson in the world knows this. They get their foot in the door and then keep cross-selling and up-selling merrily along. “And would you like fries with that, Mister?”

In Obama’s case, that thank-you-for-donating page features a highly entertaining video, featuring in Web 2.0-style, some of his fans imitating his speeches. Plus, there’s a tell-a-friend viral form that you can use to send a hotlink of the video to everyone you know.

The box for forwarding is awe-inspiringly big. You could enter about 25 email addresses if you so choose. I know I found myself entering a few more names than I had planned just because there was more space and he got me on a roll. (Of course, in my case, I was forwarding to marketers I know to say, “Hey, we can copy this idea!”)

How can you copy this idea?

If you have a newsletter, content site or blog with great content, why not list hotlinks to your Top 3 Most Popular Posts Ever on your thank-you page? This way, new fans can continue exploring.

If you seek donations online, why not add a video about your cause, (soft-sell not ‘Donate now’) to your thank-you page for new donors to forward to friends?

If you market for a highly complex product or service, why not include a quick introductory video of an inside sales or service rep in that prospect’s region with a personal plea to “contact me with your questions about technology, budgeting or integration, I’m here to help you understand this thing.” This would be perfect on the thank-you page after new leads register.

Anyway, take a look at the sample and start brainstorming. This is fairly cheap and easy technology and won’t require your IT department to leap through flaming hoops or increase their budgets.

Useful links related to this article

Email with useful hotlinks Obama sends to new donators:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/vidty/1.html

‘Thank you for Donation’ page:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/vidty/2.html

Landing page that “forwarded friends” get in their in-box from the thank you page:
http://my.barackobama.com/YesWeCanvideo

Yes We Can video screenshot (in case live link dies someday):
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/vidty/3.html

Marketers buying on multiple ad networks might be stretched a little too thin. Focusing on fewer networks can help your response rates.

Jocelyn Griffing, Senior Vice President, Director of Online Media, ICON, cut down on the number of networks she used regularly from eight to four over the last year. Now she says campaigns that used to attract a 2% response rate are getting 9%.

Read more…

Advertisers looking to build brand have a new option. Google now serves mobile image ads on its mobile content network. As with the rest of Google AdWords, pricing is auction-based and you can set a budget.

If you’re planning a branding campaign, and you’re already using AdWords, why not try a test? You might get a good price, since I doubt mobile AdWords is as competitive as regular AdWords.

Only one image ad will appear per mobile page, according to the Google Mobile Blog. That gives you dominance on mobile sites advertising only through AdSense.

A few weeks back, MarketingSherpa founder Anne Holland recounted her frustrations with Web contact forms, speculating that the communication channel is where customer inquiries go to die. New data shows that the situation is as bad as she suspected.

Read more…

It can take a long time and lots of experience before you are “ready” to become a consultant. Even then it might not be right for you.

That’s the big takeaway I found while researching the characteristics of successful marketing and PR consultants for a MarketingSherpa article and quiz. But there are other traits that should be mentioned. Read more…

Marketers spent more than $419 million on promotional magnets last year, according to the Promotional Products Association International.

If you’re a niche ecommerce site, I urge you to consider tossing a magnet with your URL and telephone number into all your fulfillment packaging.

Magnets cost very little per piece — as low as a few cents. Yet, the impact can be tremendous. Unless you’re a household name website, past customers probably forget your brand name and URL when they want to buy again (or tell a friend about you) a few months later.

Like many people, I won’t sign up for email from a site I order from only occasionally — even if I’m a very satisfied customer. I don’t want more email from a site I intend to visit only rarely.

So, when I need to reorder, I’ll surf a search engine, hoping to trip over you again. That’s bad news because PPC clicks can easily cost more than a magnet, and I’m as likely to find a competitor’s site as your site.

There’s one specialist ecommerce site I always go to directly. Durham’s Bee Farm routinely tosses a promotional magnet featuring their logo, URL and phone number into all of their fulfillment packages.

When I need to re-order from them, I just run to the kitchen, grab the magnet from the fridge and type in the URL. I’ve ordered from them at least six times in the past three years, which is five more times than I’ve ever remembered any other niche ecommerce site’s name or URL.

The other nice thing about using magnets as a promotional item is that they have a higher perceived value than their actual cost. In my family, we all feel guilty about throwing a “useful” item away. Which means we now have six Durham’s magnets lined up in a stripe running across the door of the fridge. No doubt we’ll have to start a second row soon.

Should the US slip into a dreaded recession, 67% of US consumers said they’d be more likely to use coupons, according to an ICOM survey. If you’re looking to hold customers through the storm, maybe a coupon strategy can help.

If your eyes just rolled, you might be surprised to hear how coupons are changing. Cell phones are taking them out of the Sunday paper. Consumers are receiving and redeeming coupons straight from their phones.

Read more…

Behavioral targeting for online content has been around for a while, but your customers might have just learned about it. And they might not be comfortable with the idea.

Almost 6 in 10 respondents (59%) to a Harris Interactive survey said they weren’t comfortable with ads or content targeted to their online activity. Can you blame them? I was creeped out the first time I saw Gmail ads matching my emails.

Read more…

Have you noticed? Some marketers and email publishers are testing shorter and shorter subject lines.

In the old days, we’d all try to fit in as many descriptive words as possible to increase the chances the inbox skimmer’s eye would land on a word that delighted it, and you’d grab the open. Not any more.

Now people’s inboxes are so cluttered with stuff that the teeny-tiny subject line can be best of all.

It’s about white space. When you’re skimming down a list of wordy subject lines, your eyes are trying to deal with a lot of visual clutter. Text, text, text, text.

Then, oooh! A bit of restful white space.

A one-, two- or three short-word subject line leaves space at the end. White space is eye candy in a crowded screen. Your eye dives in there automatically.

Which is why the various presidential candidates’ email campaigns have been relying, for the most part, on very short subject lines, indeed. A sampler (one subject line per line):

Special Request
The crowds
MyPA
Yes, they can

One of the reasons I started noticing this trend — aside from the fact that it’s glaring to the email-marketing-obsessed like me — is at Sherpa we routinely review our own subject line success rates. I’ll get a list of all emails sent for 3-6 months for one of our weekly newsletters (we publish nine on various marketing niches altogether.) Then, I’ll skim down the subject lines, looking at open and click rates. Clicks are more important, of course.

The point is to look for trends. Is anything working in particular? Is anything really not working anymore? What tweak should we test?

The biggest standout from my last in-house subject line review was that newsletter issues with just one-two word subject lines invariably got better open rates. Maybe it’s an element of the unusual. Or maybe it’s that white space. I don’t know. What I do know is that for now it works.

And, it’s something you should be testing, too.

Got data? Let us know.