MarketingSherpa Blog

One of the key takeaways from last year’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit was that improving engagement with email subscribers could improve deliverability. Email service providers now consider all the positive and negative interactions with your messages when deciding whether to mark your messages as spam.

This means subscribers who rarely open or click email messages can drag down your emails’ reputation. What can be done about this?

Remove unresponsive names

First of all, as noted in the MarketingSherpa 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, the effectiveness of tactics used to improve deliverability varies significantly. However, one marketer told our researchers:

“Removal of non-participating subscribers has had the most influence on improving deliverability and email performance rates in all aspects of email marketing. In other words, get rid of the deadbeat email addresses and everything improves, and the spam companies leave our email alone.”

Deleting unresponsive subscribers might seem extreme. A typical rationale is that they have not unsubscribed and they might convert some day. Since email costs nearly nothing to send, why not hold on to the names?

My assumption, based on years of interviewing all types of marketers,  is that regularly emailing subscribers who’ve not acted in six months or longer is more likely to hurt your email program than it is to help it. The good news is that you do not have to delete them outright — at least not right away.

Win them back or kick them out

You can try to reactivate unresponsive subscribers with a win-back or re-engagement campaign. This way you can hopefully salvage some good names from the trash heap.

A more radical tactic is to ask all subscribers to re-opt-in. This was done in one instance by an email marketer at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra who had a mostly unresponsive database. Although he eventually cut about 95% of his subscribers, it gave his team a solid foundation from which to build an effective program and helped double online sales.

The hardest part about these strategies is the last step: deleting the subscribers who do not respond. You might be persuaded to think that these names cannot be worthless, that they must have some value. And they do have value: negative value. Continuing to email them is only going to hurt, so let them go.

Related resources

MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2011

MarketingSherpa 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report

Email Marketing: Why should I help you?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…that is, unless you’re trying to minimize the amount of extra work you need to do before the calendar flips to 2011. Every December, my inbox lights up like Rockefeller Center, filled with email and social media requests from various publications asking me to submit my thoughts about the year that’s ending, and the one yet to come.

These crowdsourcing efforts are a great opportunity for so-called “personal branding” and “thought leadership” for the average marketer. But as much as I’d love to share my ideas with every one of these outlets, like many of you, I simply don’t have the time to do so. So when I do take the time, I want to make sure my ideas get picked. But what stands out?

How to grab attention

Well this year I have a unique perspective on the topic because I’m sitting on the other side of the submission form as well – I’m editing MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Wisdom Report. If you’re not familiar with our Wisdom Report, it’s a little New Year’s gift we distribute free to our audience of 237,000 readers. You can take a look at last year’s Wisdom Report for real-life stories and lessons from 70 of your fellow client- and agency-side marketers to see what I’m talking about.

Based on this experience, I’ve discovered an area that I’ve gained significant wisdom in – crafting a successful crowdsourcing submission. So if you do take the time to share your knowledge, it’s worth your while. (Some of this might apply to you public relations folks as you pitch media outlets as well.) And if you’d like to share your wisdom with our audience, I’m all ears.

1. Sometimes, simpler is better.

As much as we love to hear results, it’s not necessary to provide us your company’s bottom line or a three-part novella in order to have your entry published in the Wisdom Report. Sometimes, the simplest, most concise entry can evoke more inspiration than reams of positive results. Below are two of our favorites from the 2010 Wisdom Report (and based on feedback we received, they were among your favorites, as well):

“Consistently recognize the individual efforts of team members. Be specific. Be appreciative. Especially this year – when budgets are tight, tensions are high, and pay raises but a dream – affirmation and acknowledgement becomes even more meaningful. Making it a point to do this can positively alter the culture of an organization. I’ve seen it happen!”

And of course, there’s always the “Golden Rule”:

“Never undermine people who are working for/with you, and who you are working for…”

If that doesn’t qualify as universal wisdom, I’m not sure what does.

2. Be honest. Be yourself. Be real.

A trite platitude? Perhaps. But not all platitudes are without value. Each year, the Wisdom Report provides a forum for marketers to speak candidly about both successes and failures, explaining how their outcomes become lessons – lessons that provide a basis for future planning and a better understanding of their respective situations.

And, with the country still struggling within a tough economy, there are undoubtedly many of you who were forced to find new ways and means to stay afloat – and stay profitable – in 2010. You’re not alone.

As much as necessity is the mother of invention, our recent economic struggles have to be considered the mother of innovation – innovation that drove you to maximize limited marketing budgets, test new ideas and hopefully, create new opportunities to build upon for future success.

In short, the most successful Wisdom Report submissions are the ones that put aside the usual posturing and marketing-speak, and replace them with honest reflection to be shared with your peers.

~~~~~~~

As mentioned earlier, with each year that we publish the Wisdom Report, we also receive an increasing number of entries that deviate from our intended focus. These “rogue” entrants often choose to entertain more than enlighten, and promote more than they inspire. Because of this, they also don’t get in.

Let’s discuss what not to do when composing your 2011 Wisdom Report entry.

3. Laughter isn’t always the best medicine…especially when the medicine isn’t funny in the first place.

I think we all know, whenever you post an online entry form, you run the risk of a few attention-starved individuals (or bots) trying to garner a few seconds in the spotlight.  Sometimes these submissions can be amusing. Sometimes, they even contain a modicum of relevance to the topic at hand. But most of the time, Web-trolling Shecky Greenes provide entries more akin to this 2009 slice of hilarity:

“You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.”
— H. Jass, (company and location unknown)

First off, this is a family publication, so I’ll just let you figure out what the “H” in this person’s name actually represents. But more importantly, this one-liner wouldn’t sound right coming out of my crazy uncle’s mouth, much less that of a respected marketer.  This is more an example of failed spam filter than it is a legitimate submission.  But, as you’ll see, humor doesn’t quite get the job done in the following entry, either:

“If it ain’t broke, you probably haven’t tested it in Outlook or Internet Explorer yet.”

Yes, this is a more intelligent, amusing entry than the one above. But it’s still not exactly “wisdom,” now is it? Since our website and publications reach a fairly targeted audience, it’s safe to assume that this person isn’t just an Internet wise guy, but more likely a marketer who believed that this humor would somehow fit right alongside submissions from our focused, business-minded reader population.

Had this entry been accompanied by an anecdote explaining how his/her company saved money in a tough economy by eschewing enterprise software for open source offerings, then the quote isn’t only amusing, but also relevant to a broader audience.

4. Proofreading proves wisdom.

One thing that remains great about the Wisdom Report each year is how it allows marketers to represent themselves, and their companies, in their own words, rather than through homogenized “marketing-speak.” This is why it’s so important to spend a few minutes reviewing your submission, rather than quickly hammering out an entry replete with typos, grammatical errors and other mistakes that could possibly present you in a less-than-flattering light.

Note that we only edit submissions for simple errors. If a submission is written in a way that makes it difficult to decipher, we simply don’t use it, even if it contains a wealth of valuable information underneath the typos. It’s not feasible for us to contact you for clarification, nor do we publish inaccurate, error-filled copy.

Bottom line – a few extra minutes with a red pen could garner your words – and possibly, your company – some very valuable exposure with our readership. Don’t let your haste turn into our waste.

One example of this is an excerpt from last year’s Wisdom Report:

“Ranking Ranking..I want our site to be ranked number 1..” Sounds familiar ? From your clients ? Or from your management ? Many site owners fall into this, even till the extend of entering keywords they feel they should be ranked the number 1 spot which they haven’t. And they could rant on and on with ever debates on keyword rankings. Without even realizing does the ranking actually correlate to targeted traffic and eventually successful conversions which relates back to the overall business goals and objectives…”

As you can see, this person clearly had a number of thoughts about SEO and search marketing. But, while the “stream of consciousness” tone gives this entry a sense of enthusiasm, it was simply too grammatically poor to enter as-is.

Because of the inherent value in this person’s complete submission, we chose to edit and use it in the book. But, once we begin rewriting a submission for grammar and punctuation, it can no longer truly be considered “in your own words” – which simply isn’t in line with the spirit of this publication.

5. Show, don’t tell. And no matter what, please don’t sell.

I can already hear the uproar – “How are we supposed to discuss our successes without promoting our [companies/products/brands/taglines/other]???”

Simple.  Tell us a story that has universal value – value that can be applied across tactics, industries, borders and cultures. Tell us what worked and what didn’t. Tell us about creative new risks or your back-to-basics approach.  Don’t just tell us that you’re even more amazing than you already were – tell us why and how you’ve improved.

Once more with feeling, from the 2010 Wisdom Report:

“My embroidery and logowear business, [company name], is one of only a few in our industry to find success using a Web-based model, and I’m convinced it’s because we’ve been able to take our key differentiators — including exceptional customer service — and effectively communicate them to an online audience…”

The above is the (submitted) opening line from one of last year’s contributors. At its core, this is a very strong sentence that serves to introduce a solid anecdote about simplicity in Web design and online forms. The problem is that in order to get to that solid anecdote, you had to endure a) the company name and target market, b) a self-serving statement about the company’s superiority in its space, and c) a thinly-veiled pat on the back.

It’s not that the company doesn’t deserve accolades. It’s that only after the reader gets past this boilerplate copy does the submission demonstrate its true value. And, following some extensive details, we read:

“Conversions increased 49 percent with the new form, cementing for us the idea that people want to do business with people, not with Web sites.”

This simple statement offers us a concrete metric, and more importantly, a statement about how this new tactic led to a valuable lesson that is applicable beyond this specific business.

I think you get the point.

We’re sure you’ve got a great story to tell that will help make us all better marketers in 2011. And we look forward to reading them.

Related resources

Submit your 2011 Wisdom Report entry

2010 MarketingSherpa Wisdom Report

Public Relations: The best press release is no press release

“The best research is when individuals pull out their wallet and vote with cold, hard cash.” – my first boss

My first experience in marketing was working with a specialized publishing company. I had the privilege to work on exciting products with sexy topics such as “human resource compliance regulations.” Trust me when I tell you there is no better ice-breaker at a party than talking about a ground-breaking court ruling that will change how your company meets compliance of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

As a publisher, we used direct-response marketing to drive sales, with an aggressive program of direct-mail, email and telemarketing. And when it came to new product development, we were big believers in research. From customer surveys to industry research to focus groups, we used it all to make the best possible decision. At least, that was the general assumption…

Out of focus

You always have to test because many research tactics just help you achieve a best guess. And while a best guess is often closer to the truth than a random guess, it’s sometimes widely off the mark. In fact, I learned a valuable lesson one day when our company performed a focus group.

The members of this particular focus group were subscribers of a paid newsletter, and we knew that each person had subscribed by responding to a specific direct mail piece. That mail piece was extremely effective, with a powerful but somewhat provocative subject line and letter. Many people loved that direct-mail piece, but many hated it, so we wanted to get the opinion of the focus group members. When we showed the group the direct-mail piece and asked them if they would respond to that piece, 40 percent said they would never respond (if they only knew what we knew). Wow, we were shocked!

So, should we conclude that those 40% were bold-faced liars? Not necessarily. What we can conclude is that what people say they will do and what they actually do may be totally different. That is why research is only part of the equation, but if you want to sleep well at night, you have to take the next step…

Voting with their wallets

At the end of the day, the best research was when we tested the product and let the customers in the marketplace determine with their wallet if it was a viable product. We would test critical elements, like book title and price, and very quickly we would know if we had a winner or not.

Yes, all of the surveys and research were necessary to get started, but the most critical research was in our testing program. Testing is an amazing research tool. Regardless of the conversion you are trying to achieve, when your prospect takes (or doesn’t take) an action, you a have a valuable piece of information. Your conversion goal may be an event ticket sale, a white paper download, an email newsletter signup, or hundreds of other possible actions, but one thing never changes – the action you are seeking to drive can be tracked.

And if you’re ready to measure when your prospect engages with you, that is when the learning begins.

So, I’m thankful for that boss early in my career telling me repeatedly that the best research is when individuals pull out their wallet and vote with cold-hard cash. Over the years, I’ve had many experiences when individuals tell me they are going to do something but until they actually do it, I’m a little skeptical. (Editor’s Note: It’s true. Todd told me he was going to write a blog post for quite awhile. Now, I believe it.)

So gather as much research as possible, but always remember that cold, hard cash is a pretty sweet piece of research.

Related resources

Are Surveys Misleading? 7 Questions for Better Market Research (Members Library)

Marketing Research and Surveys: There are no secrets to online marketing success in this blog post

Focus Groups Vs. Reality: Would you buy a product that doesn’t exist with pretend money you don’t have?

Never Pull Sofa Duty Again: Stop guessing what your audience wants and start asking

Social media marketing often involves interacting with your audience and giving it what it wants — whether it wants high quality content, customer service or something else. Consistently meeting these goals helps build a following on the networks.

Neil Bhapkar, Online Marketing Manager, Kobo, and his team had followings on Facebook and Twitter, but wanted to boost Twitter followers last August. The marketing team at the global e-book retailer had experimented with a Twitter contest earlier in the year, and wanted to give it another shot with a heavier marketing push.

Kobo had about 4,600 Twitter followers at the time. Although Bhapkar did not consider Twitter to be his team’s most impactful channel, he felt that holding a contest on the network could help boost followers while further engaging Kobo’s online audience.

“I would call it efficient because it’s not overly costly,” Bhapkar says. “It’s a unique way to push the envelope in how we’re engaging with our customers and getting them to spread the word about Kobo.”

Promote contest through multiple channels

The team designed a contest to give away three of Kobo’s eReaders. People who followed Kobo received one entry into the contest. Additional entries could be received by tweeting a book recommendation with the @Kobo tag. For example:

“My favorite books is Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain @Kobo”

The team explained these rules on a contest landing page (pictured here). The page also included:
o Picture of the eReaders
o Countdown clock
o Links to share the landing page via Twitter, Facebook or email
o Official contest rules.

The contest lasted 10 days, during which the team promoted the contest in the following channels:

– Email

Just a few hours after announcing the campaign on Twitter, the team sent an email to its house list describing the rules and linking to the landing page. This was the only email sent to its list for the effort. The team’s parent company, Indigo Books & Music, also added a button in its email newsletter linked to the contest landing page.

– Homepage banner

The team posted a large image on its homepage, just below the fold, mentioning the campaign and linking to the landing page.

– Social media

The team launched the contest on Twitter using software from Offerpop, through which they also monitored its progress. The team reminded Twitter followers about the contest about five times over the 10-day span.

“Whenever the launch happens, there’s a first burst of activity and then it flattens,” Bhapkar says. “The best way to reinvigorate it is by tweeting to our follower base to remind them of what is happening.”

The team also mentioned the contests to its Facebook followers.

– Paid search

The team ran paid search advertising in Google for branded keywords such as “kobo ereader” and linked the ads to the contest landing page.

More engagement from relevant offer

After 10 days, the team closed the contest, randomly picked three winners and reached out to them with direct Twitter messages. Results the team saw include:
o 43.5% increase in Twitter followers
o Reached about 500,000 Twitter users with tweets related to the campaign
o More engagement with Kobo’s audience

“It was surprising how engaged some of the most active followers were. Some people didn’t stop at having just one recommendation or two. They actually had double digits; 10, 20. They were really interested in pushing their recommendations…not just in spurts but throughout the duration of the contest,” Bhapkar says.

By crafting an offer sure to interest Kobo’s followers and by encouraging more engagement, the team concentrated more energy into its Twitter campaign and saw an appreciable lift in followers. Due to its low cost, the campaign proved to be an efficient means for increasing Kobo’s following online, Bhapkar says.

Related resources

Social Marketing ROAD Map Handbook

Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report

Social Media Marketing: How enterprise-level social media managers handle negative sentiment

The swirling vortex of shopping and hype that is affectionately known as Black Friday to Cyber Monday always draws plenty of ink, both virtual and actual. Here at MarketingSherpa we prefer metrics to hype, and real world stories over vague lifestyles “reporting.” With that in mind, following are some facts about this past Monday online, a chart and below the fold an entire host of actual reactions to Cyber Monday from e-tailers, industry insiders and more.

Just the facts, ma’am

• Email is big this year – Experian CheetahMail found email volume around Black Friday was up 23 percent over 2009
• This year’s Cyber Monday was the most profitable e-commerce day in the history of the Internet
• ComScore found online retailers broke the $1 billion sales barrier, a 16 percent increase over last year
• More than nine million people shopped on Cyber Monday – up four percent over 2009 – and spent an average of $114.24
• Amazon won the most trafficked Cyber Monday e-commerce site title
• Walmart was the most searched term on Cyber Monday
• US visits to the top 500 retail sites were up 16 percent
• Search and cross-shopping across other retailers sites accounted for 44 percent of referrals last week

And now the chart …

Head below the fold for Cyber Monday reactions … Read more…

A quick look at the calendar shows that tomorrow is the deadline for entering your campaign into our 6th Annual Email Marketing Awards. To those who haven’t entered yet — enter here! Thank you to all those who have entered — and please don’t forget that multiple entries are accepted.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently trying to wrap my hands around the concept of Inbound Marketing. While it’s clear that content development and SEO are inbound tactics, there are many tactics that are not so clearly included.

Email marketing is one of these tactics. People can read your email newsletter referenced in other blogs. They can see your email promotions featured in social media networks. These are clearly inbound marketing concepts. But when you email an audience, can that really attract more customers?

When Emails Are Like Billboards

I recently spoke with Mike Volpe, VP, Inbound Marketing, HubSpot, who shared his insights on this issue. Volpe will also be presenting a case study titled “The Role of Email Marketing in an Inbound Marketing World” at our Email Summit in January. Whether an email program uses an outbound or inbound strategy depends mostly on how the marketer acquired the email addresses, he says.

“Some people will go off and purchase a list of people who have never heard of their company, and they’ll add them to their email newsletter or they’ll put them into some sort of drip email program… To me, that’s a very outbound-centric strategy,” Volpe says.

The key here is that the people receiving the email never expressed an interest in the company. This approach is similar to billboard advertising in that it reaches people who did not give an indication of wanting to be reached.

Shared Emails Can Grow an Audience

On the other hand, sending high-quality emails to an opt-in list reaches a relevant audience. This audience can secondarily attract more relevant people to your site. Here are two examples how:

Example #1. Your team emails a two-for-one promotion to your list. Subscribers click the social sharing buttons in your email and send the offer to friends on Facebook and Twitter. This pulls more relevant prospects to your website.

Example #2. A blogger writes a post referencing an article featured in your newsletter. The reference drives more relevant prospects to your site.

The prospective customers in these examples are interested in your industry. They’ve expressed that through their social networking and blog reading. By emailing valuable content and making it easy to share, you’re encouraging subscribers to extend your reach to like-minded people.

The concept is very similar to blogging. Regularly generating high-quality content attracts a relevant audience. But in this case the platform is not a blog — it’s an email.

Is this a bit of a stretch? Probably. But Volpe’s opinion has settled the case for me. Email marketing has potential as an inbound marketing tactic. Do you agree? Feel free to let us know in the comments.

Related Resources

Call for Entries: MarketingSherpa’s 6th Annual Email Awards

Agenda Release: Email Marketing Summit 2010

New Chart: Chief Challenges to Email Marketing

(Editor’s Note: In a recent MarketingSherpa webinar, Top Email Tactics to Improve Relevancy & Deliverability,we received more questions from the audience than we could possibly answer in that 60-minute window. So Tom Sather, Director, Professional Services, Return Path, was kind enough to review all the unanswered questions and provide some additional information)

Q: Doesn’t the effectiveness of having a dedicated IP address depend on the amount of volume the sender is sending out? Aren’t some senders who send low volumes of e-mail actually better off on pooled IPs with a well-groomed stable of senders to help keep complaint rates down?

– Alex, email marketing support specialist in Chicago

A: During the MarketingSherpa webinar, we highlighted the use of dedicated IP addresses as one of the most effective, yet least used tactics to improve deliverability.

Because your deliverability is only as strong as your weakest sender, your mailing reputation and deliverability is at the mercy of other marketers. Can you imagine handing the keys to your marketing program over to a complete stranger? Me neither! That’s why I recommend using a dedicated IP address whenever possible.

However, you make a good point. There are some instances when using a shared IP address can actually work in your favor. If your mailing volume is somewhere between one and 20,000 subscribers, and your domain distribution consists mainly of the top four B2C domains (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and AOL) and with a long tail of smaller domains, you may want to consider using a shared IP address. The benefits in this case are that you have a less volatile complaint rate, and ISPs and e-mail providers have an easier time assigning a reputation to higher-volume mailers.

If you do decide to go with an E-mail Service Provider (ESP) that uses shared IP addresses, here are some things to consider:

1. Ask for the shared IP addresses and look at their sending reputation. If they have a score of 80 or above, it’s safe to move to the next check. If the IP address has a reputation between 60 and 80, there’s some risk that you may run into deliverability issues. If the Sender Scores are below 60, forget about it. You’ll probably have a difficult time reaching the inbox, and there won’t be a lot you can do to fix that.
2. Did the ESP ask you to fill out a vetting document asking you about your sending practices? If not, then your ESP is probably letting any sender with a credit card on their network. That also means they don’t care about running a clean e-mail network.
3. Does the ESP handle feedback loop reporting and opt-out complaints per sender on the shared IP pool? If not, don’t consider using the shared IP. This means that the ESP doesn’t have ongoing monitoring of its senders to ensure they abide by their acceptable use policy. In this case, there is a very high potential of reputation and deliverability issues, now or in the future.

Most ESPs offer dedicated IP addresses for clients, but may charge a slightly higher premium because of the initial set up that‘s required. If you’re on a shared IP address, ask your ESP about moving to a dedicated one.

Q: How can you determine whether an e-mail makes it into an inbox (as opposed to a junk mail folder)  from a technical perspective?

– Denise, sole proprietor in San Francisco

Q: How do I know that e-mail got into Junk? If e-mail gets into Junk, is it considered undelivered mail?

– Elmira, marketing specialist in Toronto

A: The only way to determine your inbox placement rate is through a seed list-based monitoring system. A seed list is a list of custom e-mail addresses that is representative of the domains that make up your subscriber database. They should be included with every campaign deployment or segments so you can see if your e-mails are delivered to the inbox, spam folder, or if they’re missing (which usually means your mail is being blocked).

Unfortunately, most senders rely on the assumption that their undelivered file tells them what their inbox placement rate is. This is false because messages delivered to the spam folder, which is a folder that most subscribers never check, are reported as delivered messages. For example, you could have a 98 percent delivered rate, but a 30 percent inbox placement rate. This means that 70percent of your delivered mail is probably never seen by your subscribers, which is revenue you’ll never realize.

You can use a seed list either in-house or through a third-party vendor like Return Path. Doing it in-house can be time consuming as it requires you to sign up for e-mail accounts at all the ISPs. And you would have to pay for an account with those ISPs if you’d like more than just the data from the free webmail providers. You’ll also need to manually log into each of those accounts when you send a campaign to determine where it was delivered. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Using a third-party service like Return Path requires no effort on your end, allows you access to paid e-mail accounts (like Comcast for example), and gives you a real-time reporting interface on your inbox placement rate at all ISPs in a quick glance.

Q: I have a question about removing people based on their lack of opening e-mails. What if they are reading the e-mails in a text-only format, and therefore can’t have their open rates tracked?

– Karen, director of programs in Sacramento

A: If you’re sending a text-only campaign where reporting on open rates isn’t possible, you’ll have to rely on data such as  tracked links, conversions and website activity. You’ll also still be able to sign up for feedback loops from the e-mail providers, so that every time one of your subscribers marks your messages as spam, you can receive a copy of that message with the subscriber’s e-mail address.

You can use that data to help determine a good time to send a win-back and re-activation campaign to your subscribers. For example, a recent analysis I did for a major retailer showed that complaints were low until subscribers approached their one-year subscription anniversary. This indicated a perfect time for them to send a win-back campaign to their subscribers, which they did with very positive results. Even better, it’s not dependent on what format you send your e-mails in.

Related Resources

Call for Entries: MarketingSherpa’s 6th Annual Email Marketing Awards

Webinar Replay: Top Email Tactics to Improve Relevancy & Deliverability

Social Media Marketing…Or is it Email Marketing? The New Facebook Messages

Ten Numbers Every Email Marketer Should Commit to Memory

“Would you like to hear a secret? Do you promise not to tell?” John, Paul, George and Ringo knew how powerful secrets are, as does every Internet marketing “expert” who has ever written a blog post.

Well, I’m sorry, but MarketingSherpa and MarketingExperiments don’t have any secrets to share with you. The only effective strategy I’ve ever seen is hard work and experimentation. Not only do we not have secrets for you, we don’t really even have any answers. But, we can help you ask the right questions.

Question everything

“My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, ‘So, did you learn anything today?’ But not my mother. ‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘did you ask a good question today?’ That difference, asking good questions, made me become a scientist.”
– Nobel laureate Isidor Isaac Rabi, discovered nuclear magnetic resonance

And do we ever raise those questions. Like a recent article by Senior Reporter Adam T. Sutton, Are Surveys Misleading? 7 Questions for Better Market Research. When Adam first showed me the article, I knew it would be a little controversial, so I pushed him a little harder than normal in the editing process. Look at the results, and I think you’ll agree that Adam delivered. (If not, I want to hear about it.)

I was a little surprised that the biggest challenge came from within my own company, though. MECLABS Director of Research, Sergio Balegno, questioned the article’s affront to online surveys. Sergio’s a smart guy, so when he says something I listen. And I think he’s right. Well, kinda…

When online surveys are effective

For the kind of surveys Sergio’s team conducts, I believe surveys to be very effective. I use his team’s research all the time in trying to decide what content would be the most helpful for  MarketingExperiments’ and MarketingSherpa’s audiences.

click image to enlarge

The above referenced article, from a recent Chart of the Week email newsletter, questions B2B marketers about the SEO tactics they are currently using. Sergio and his team are not asking about a vaguely potential and highly personal decision somewhere down the road; they are simply asking which SEO tactics B2B marketers use, which were the most effective and which required the greatest level of effort? And here’s where you can learn from Sergio.

I believe surveys can be effective for:

• Gaining insights into current actions
• Deciphering opinions on specific subjects that the audience has a high-level knowledge about
• Getting some new ideas (essentially, crowdsourcing)

When online surveys are not effective

“Would you buy a product that doesn’t exist with pretend money you don’t have?” Yeah, there’s the rub…

Online surveys do not accurately predict actual customer behavior. Or, do they? Frankly, it’s just a shot in the dark. Your goal should be to try to truly gain knowledge about real-world situations that require complex, often counterintuitive decision-making processes that your subject may not even understand. Would a few questions on a Web page really help you gain that knowledge?

Online surveys are not effective when you’re trying to decipher:

• Potential consumer actions (such as a purchase)
• Potential B2B marketer purchase decisions very early in a sales cycle (too many variables)
• Highly sensitive information (if you disagree with this statement, please share your past three sexual experiences in the comments section of this blog)
• True sentiment on a complex topic that the survey respondent does not have expertise in. For example, 58 percent of Americans favor repeal of the new health care law, according to a recent Rasmussen Reports survey. Meanwhile, in a CBS/New York Times Poll, 41 percent of Americans favor repeal (stop and think about that for a second); and when people were actually told what features would be given up if the law is repealed, that number dropped to 25 percent.

Let’s do a little thought experiment, shall we? Write the answer to this question down on a piece of paper and bury it in your backyard… “How likely are you to buy each of the following in the next 12 months: regular mayonnaise, light mayonnaise, mayonnaise with olive oil, canola mayonnaise, low-fat mayonnaise?”

Now go leave yourself a reminder on Outlook for November 23, 2011 that says, “Dig up mayonnaise survey.” So, how accurate were you Carnac the Magnificent?

Only you can discover the marketing tactics that work best for your company

OK, I was a little too fresh up there, sorry about that. But I’m trying to help you understand this simple point (to annotate MasterCard)…there are some things in marketing that can’t be observed, for everything else try an online survey.

If you can’t observe the information you seek to obtain and there is a strong likelihood that your subjects know the answer, then a survey could be very helpful. In the example chart above, you likely could not observe the SEO tactics of 935 marketers and see into their brains to determine the effectiveness and effort required. Those respondents also likely know what SEO tactics they used, how well they worked and how much effort they required.

However, when you’re looking at potential customer actions, don’t try to ask prospective customers to predict what they might do under fictional, hypothetical circumstances. From the number of times I’ve asked my wife why she bought those shoes, believe me when I say she likely doesn’t know the answer herself.

Instead, simply observe their actual actions. And you can do that with real-world, real-time online testing.

After all, that is the real goal of all the information we provide. Again, we don’t write about secrets to Internet marketing success on MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa, and very rarely even give you any answers.

But we do help you ask the right questions and then do the experimentation (and hard work) necessary to determine what works best for your organization.

Related resources

2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report

2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report

Ask the Scientist: Price testing methods and practices

Anti-Crowdsourcing: On (not) getting marketing ideas from your customers

I recently ran across a somewhat informal, but interesting none-the-less, study on the power of “free” to drive a conversion. Behavioral economist, Dan Ariely, heard that a New York nightclub was promoting an event featuring “free tattoos,” so he sent a research assistant to see if this incentive led to a conversion in the form of a tattoo.

The power of “free”

The resulting research isn’t scientifically or statistically rigorous, but it does offer a little insight into the command that the simple incentive of “free” adds to an offer.

• The average age of “participants,” that is club-goers at that establishment on that night, was 26
• Of the people in line to get a free tattoo, 68 percent said they would not be getting the tattoo if it wasn’t free
• 90 percent of those in line were aware of the free tattoo promotion
• Only 15 percent made the decision to get a tattoo after arriving at the nightclub
• 85 percent arrived that night planning on getting the free ink

The results of this informal test:

The results indicate that the power of “free” is surprisingly influential.  When we face a decision about a tattoo, one would hope that the long term permanency of the decision, coupled with the risks of getting different types of infections would cause people to pay little attention to price, and certainly not to be swayed one way or another by the power of free.  But sadly, the reality (at list in the nightclub scene in New York) suggests that the power of free can get us to make many foolish decisions.

(From danariely.com)

The big incentivized picture

Okay, not scientific. And plenty of test subjects were likely fairly impaired by chemicals in the decision process, but the raw numbers show that 68 percent of the people made their conversion decision (getting a tattoo) based on the incentive alone.

Where does that fit in the larger world of marketing? In the Landing Page Optimization training course found at our sister company, MarketingExperiments, incentive is defined as an appealing element you introduce to stimulate a desired action. That action might be a clickthrough, or to fill out an online form, or even an actual sale.

And the incentive has a key objective – to “tip the balance” of emotional forces from negative friction elements to positive to achieve conversion.

Here’s a chart from the MarketingExperiments Landing Page Optimization course illustrating that concept:

Here’s the thing with incentives, even if they are free – some are better than others. Depending on the goal of the offer, the incentive might be a free webinar, or a free computer mouse, or $100 off of a training session. The possibilities are practically limitless, so the key is to test incentives. All too often companies will try one incentive offer then quit. For any offer, an “ideal incentive” probably exists – you just need to keep testing until you find it.

Related Resources

Become a Certified Professional in Landing Page Optimization

Dances with Science: Are you better off not A/B testing?

Landing Page Optimization: Clean air or a free backpack? (Which is the bigger incentive for Sierra Club members?)

Internet Marketing: Landing page optimization for beginners

Fellow marketing managers, commiserate with me for a moment. I’m sure you’ve been in a similar situation. You’re given a new marketing initiative that you know little to nothing about. For some it might be Twitter. For others, maybe landing page optimization. My intimidating hill to climb, was the webinar.

While preparing for today’s MarketingSherpa webinar about email relevance and deliverability, and researching for the past couple of months on webinar creative practices, it became more evident to me that a clear marketing strategy was needed in order to produce better webinars in the future.

Highlighted below are the six tactics that I found successful for creating a clear webinar strategy and currently impact the way I plan, create, and promote MarketingSherpa webinars. And if you’re a MarketingSherpa member, we even have a complimentary Sample Webinar Plan that you can download.

Step #1: Know your deadlines and deliverables
Early communication with the sponsors, clients, and presenters is key. Email them and introduce yourself laying out a timetable for future meetings and deadlines. Once you know the key dates and information (webinar date, presenters, and topic), work backwards from the date of the webinar and set up target dates for completion. Important dates to remember include:

• Landing page setup and review
• Launch calls
• Presentation deadlines
• Dry runthrough

I highly recommend you set up a launch call to review these deadlines and discuss any concerns as well as present an overall webinar outline for a suggested topic.

Step #2: Map out an effective marketing plan
Once you have confirmed the target dates and deliverables, you can begin to create a marketing plan. This plan should include your plans on promoting the event (emails, banner ads, social marketing) along with key dates and deadlines. The difference between a good plan and much better plan is in the details. The more specific you can be with target audience, goals, and call to action, the more effective your plan will be. When this is completed, send it to all the parties involved (including your sponsors and presenters if applicable) so they can see the plan details and discuss plan specifics.

Step #3: Create relevant webinar copy for target audience
Relevancy is the key. If your audience feels that the webinar subject and email copy is relevant to their needs then you will be more successful in engaging prospects. As Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director (CEO), MECLABS always says, “Clarity always trumps persuasion.”

Shy away from vague statements like “leading,” “best” and “most.” Be specific. For example, “Homepage Design: The five most common pitfalls and how to overcome them” Subject titles and copy that are specific may be enticing to a smaller audience, but most of the time this audience is highly interested and therefore a better lead. Always include a good call to action and use this line of thinking when creating copy, “If I am the ideal prospect, why should I attend your webinar?”

Step #4: Apply marketing promotions across all channels
Using a number of highly targeted email blasts from in-house and sponsors lists, along with banner ads, you can bring in a significant amount of attendees. However, when marketing for our last webinar 2011 Top B2B Marketing Practices: From Lead Generation to Marketing Automation, it was the social media activity (Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs) that drove an additional 200-250 attendees within a week of the webinar. When tweeting, make sure to begin to establish the Twitter hashtag you plan to use to live tweet during the webinar.

Many companies do a number of webinars a month and using every avenue possible to create buzz is crucial to a webinar’s success. I’ve found that the sweet spot for marketing is two weeks to the day before the event.

Step #5: Preparation precedes power – practice and execution of the webinar
No matter what webinar platform you use (GoToWebinar, WebEX, ON24) it is imperative to learn the basics of these programs before you begin using them. Spend some time watching the “best practices” training presentations, and reading the FAQs and how-to sections many of these platforms offer.

Knowing the tips and tricks of how each of these platforms function will be critical to avoiding “Uh oh” moments. Familiarize yourself with the important functions, like polls, registration questions, follow-up emails, and reminders.

Also, familiarize yourself with Twitter. Establishing a Twitter hashtag, and having at least one person from your company live tweeting during the webinar, is a great way to drive conversation and interaction and also gauge the sentiment of your audience in real-time.

Bottom Line: Your preparation will give you the power you need to execute the webinar and the practice will give you the peace of mind.

Tactic #6: Follow up and review – continuing the conversation
Once the webinar has concluded, it’s important to keep the conversation going. Sending a follow-up email containing the slide presentation and any special offer material you promised is only one part of the conversation. The second important part is keeping them engaged with other webinars, articles, books, classes, and events that apply to the topic of the webinar. Think of Amazon, “Those who attended a webinar like you also found this interesting…”

It’s also important to review how the webinar went. Spend an additional five to ten minutes getting feedback from the speakers and monitoring the Twitter hashtag after the webinar concludes. This feedback will help you in making improvements in future webinars.

Related resources

Marketing Webinar Optimization: Five questions to ask yourself about webinars

B2B Marketing: Take established tradeshow best practices and adapt them for an online audience with virtual events

Members Exclusive: Download your complimentary Sample Webinar Plan