The Conversion Scientist ARCHIVE™

Science by Email

It’s Time to Get Your Email On

August 31, 2009 on 10:30 pm | In Email Marketing | Comments Off

Would you believe that e-mail marketing is still in its infancy?

A couple of graphs from MarketingSherpa drive an important point home about the use of e-mail for marketing. It works, it has always worked, and it will continue to work. You just have to know how to use it.

In this graph, "Emailing to house lists" falls behind "Web 2.0 (social network marketing)." However, since fewer marketers are reducing the use of house list email, it should be #1.

I’ll go so far as to state this:

If you don’t have your email marketing efforts nailed, you have no business investing in social marketing.

Social marketing has its place, and is not a fad. But, we know so much about good, permission-based email marketing, that it is criminal to ignore it. Don’t let superstitions drive your marketing strategy.

MarketingSherpa has some choice interpretations of this graph:

Those that see the effectiveness of their email programs diminishing are much more likely to have short-sighted organizational attitudes toward the tactic.

Organizations with investment-oriented views of email reap the rewards. They have higher open, click and conversion rates. In addition, they are much more likely to have a metrics-based grasp of how email works for them. Those with the "email is free" view, on the other hand, are more likely to fall into the group that doesn’t track conversion.

It is so easy to measure email’s effectiveness, that I would argue that you can’t call yourself a marketer if you’re not watching your results. We call you a spammer.

You’re not marketing if your not measuring.

Essential for any Considered Purchase

If all of your customers buy spontaneously on their first visit and never buy again, then you may not need to invest in email marketing. I don’t know of any business like this.

If your customers take weeks or months to come to a purchase decision, you cannot ignore email. Email is the biggest social network on the planet. Even retirees use email.

Your House List is the list of people who have given you permission to enter their inbox. This means they want what you have, and should be given every opportunity to opt out.

Email Isn’t Promotional, It’s Social

Don’t use email purely to promote sales and discounts. Use it to educate, inform and entertain. If you have a blog, send your most interesting posts via email. Most of us aren’t using RSS. Email is your ticket to growing your blog readership.

Then simply advertise in your own emails.

Get Started Now

It does take time to build your house list, so start now. Email can be fun if you’re sending content that reflects your passion for your company, your industry and your brand.

Then you can start investing in the smaller, less intimate social networks out there.

Science by Email

Personas Can Mean Bigger Online Projects

August 26, 2009 on 9:52 am | In Developing Personas | 1 Comment

The power of fake people

Imagine your most important customer, let’s call her Melissa, walking into your meeting room and laying the law down to your manager, telling them exactly what she wants from your Web site.

Now imagine that she’s not just your most important customer, but a representative of hundreds or thousands of your customers. Would she be able to change minds and influence decisions?

This is the power of Melissa. She is your Market Segmentation Study personified. She is your analytics report in a skirt. She is legal counsel for your creative team and a force to be reckoned with.

Melissa is an example of a persona. She represents the desires and fears of a large number of your prospects and customers in the most human and compelling way.

She isn’t real, but she will seem more real than any chart you can concoct.

Why Personas Have So Much Power

Roy H. Williams puts it best.

"Your business has three or four customers living at thousands of different addresses."

Get to know them and they will lead you in the right direction.

Personas provide three power points that will help you focus your marketing and advertising dollars, and justify more spending.

You can Relate to People More Than Data

Melissa has a name, a face and a story. She is the perfect age, has the right income, and the ideal home environment to represent large numbers of your customers. With each little decision that marketers and business people make each day, you can ask, "What would Melissa do?" Each time you’re asked to make changes to your messaging, media, or offers, you can ask, "Would Melissa want this?"

You will relate to her as a marketer, manager, owner, CEO, Vice President or agency. This means better decisions, defendable positions, and consistent execution. Melissa is good.

Personas Create Consensus

The process of creating personas must involve anyone who would "know" Melissa. She is the personification of data, sales experiences, product research, customer support calls and personal experience. To make her whole, you must involved these functions in her creation.

Then, when budget time comes around; when knee-jerk initiatives seek to copy a competitor; when programs are proposed that are questionable, everyone will remember Melissa when you invoke her name.

Personas Turn Your Focus Outward

In any organization, it is easy to turn inward; to focus on the next product or the next campaign. Too many marketing conversations begin, "How can we get our message out more?"

Melissa changes the conversation.

"What could we do to get Melissa interested faster?"

"Why isn’t Melissa visiting the site?"

"What does Melissa need to know to go ahead and buy?"

These questions are fundamentally different. They are outward looking. Everything from strategy to copy to design will open to Melissa like a flower, and she will react.

The Key Components of an Online Persona

I’ll be covering the key components of an online persona in my SXSW Panel, provided you vote for it and it gets accepted.

I’ll also show you some of the decisions personas have influenced for my clients.

Give the panel idea your vote and then attend SXSW Interactive 2010.

Science by Email

This is How You Prioritize Your Social Media Strategies

August 23, 2009 on 10:09 pm | In Social Marketing | 2 Comments

Social Media is not just about creating more Awareness

There are some very specific things you want to accomplish when you engage your prospects and customers.

• You want them to use your product, service or communication.
• You want to help influence their opinion of your product, service or communication.
• You want to help them talk about your product, service or communication.

This is the Social Media Cycle as defined by Dave Evans. It has two distinct parts:

1. The pre-purchase funnel

2. The post-purchase funnel

The Social Funnel includes both the traditional and post-purchase funnels.

It is important to define “purchase” for the sake of our conversation. Your customers may only have “purchased” a communication, paying with their time, attention and contact information if they want to continue the conversation. So, downloading a sample is modeled as a “purchase” in this scenario.

Just as it takes a series of “conversions” to move a prospect through the traditional sales funnel — to Awareness, then Consideration, then Action — you must likewise move them through the post-purchase funnel.

Yes, you have to convert a buyer into a user.

Then you have to help them form an opinion. Social media is great for this, because others’ opinions will shape their opinion. Focus on strategies that reveal what others are saying about your service or brand.

Finally, you must convert those with an opinion into talkers. Provide ways for them to share their experience. They will, in turn help you:

1. Convert more users into opinion holders
2. Direct new prospects to your funnel, often starting them in the Consideration stage

Would you like to know which social strategies lend themselves to each of these conversions? Would you like to know how to measure your success in the post-purchase funnel?

Vote for my SXSW Panel “What is your Social Conversion Rate?” Then attend.

Your vote will help educate business owners and marketers on a model that will make social media more helpful and interesting for all of us.