Private (Email) Lessons

June 4th, 2009 Chris

As I’ve mentioned on many occasions, what works and what doesn’t is often a complete mystery when it comes to on-line marketing. I’m sure it has to do with how our brains are wired and we respond to one stimulus versus another.

The best that I (and most on-line marketers) can prescribe is to do these three things: 1. Test, 2. Test, 3. Test some more. That is the best (and often only) way to figure out how to optimize your marketing efforts. And of course steal ideas of people that have done the testing for you!

So this week I thought I’d share a couple of my lessons learned from recent email marketing testing…

Lesson #1 – Subject Line

I hate to actually share this since the more people that do this, the less effective it will be… We did an experiment where we put the source of the email on the subject line of our newsletter blast. You’ve probably seen a few in your inbox like this.

Specifically, we tested Subject: [Engage] Engaging Ideas versus Subject: Engaging Ideas.

Turns out that by putting the [Your Company Name] in the subject line, we found open rates increased by over 5%.

I can rationalize these results with my own observations that emails with this consistent subject start stand-out from the other clutter in your inbox. And as users become more used to seeing it from you, they are more likely to automatically open them.

Of course the downside is that if you spam your users to much, they are also more likely to automatically ignore your emails with this method. So, as always, always try to give your readers something valuable every time you hit them…

Lesson #2 – Embedded Links

Virtually every call to action with email marketing involves a user clicking on a link. And of course we always try to make it look pretty by having the actual link URL behind the scenes. It makes the email easier to read and allows a more directive call to action – ex. Click here now!

But what about folks that have been programmed to not click on links in emails due to security concerns? What about those people that have screwed up their MIME settings and when they click, it just opens a browser but doesn’t go to the specified URL (my browser was like that for two months recently…)?

What we’ve started to do is include both the embedded link as well as an explicit statement of what address to go to. Here’s a recent example:

The results: we receive about 10% of the actions from people that copy and paste the link in their browser versus those that simply click the embedded link. That’s 10% of folks that we wouldn’t get otherwise.

Well, that’s it for today. More testing to follow…

Got some of your own test data – leave a comment and share!

C.

Posted in E-mail, Marketing | No Comments »

More Pretty…

March 18th, 2009 Chris

Last week I went to a conference for users of the CRM package we use here at Engage. It’s called Infusion and in the last couple of years it gathered a base of over 2500 small businesses.

I say CRM but it’s really much more and provided an integrated platform for our marketing, sales, ecommerce, etc… And the conference was fantastic with lots of great info on Internet marketing (using their tool of course…).

I was pretty excited by the almost 100% improvement in our Newsletter landing page conversion rates as I mentioned last week. Then, at this conference, I got even more ideas of how to improve it.

So off to work I went and made the following changes:

Specifically, as you see above, we did two things:

1. We moved the sign-up box to the top on the right so that it was above the fold. That is, it could be seen without scrolling down. We also put a red box around it to make sure it stands out.

2. We put the benefits on a coloured background to make them stand out.

The other thing you’ll notice is that the page isn’t particularly pretty, just more pretty than it used to be. You are witnessing the extreme limits of my graphic design capability. But it’s pretty to the user in that it gets their attention and gets them to focus on the key benefits to them as well as their call to action. Even if it’s not that slick graphics-wise.

OK – so what are the results… Well, according to Google the new page is converting 40% more than the previous revision (which was performing 100% better than the original).

All pretty simple changes to make the page, well, more pretty.

The other lesson here is to continue to come up with variations, test and measure the results. It’s amazing what an hour invested here or there on a little experimentation can do for your results.

C.

Posted in Web Site | No Comments »

Pretty Persuation

March 11th, 2009 Chris

Like many micro-businesses, we use the Internet to add to our prospect base – basically getting people to come to our site through various mechanisms and sign up for our newsletter. Whether it be a referral from a partner, someone reading one of Colleen’s articles or Google Adwords – we take advantage of their visit to try and get them more engaged with the business.

We do this by offering them a free newsletter subscription and a ten day eCourse. That is, ten emails in ten days, each with a great sales tip. All they do is give us their name and email address and we’re off to the races.

The page where we make this sweet offer is often referred to as a squeeze page in that we are trying to squeeze their interactivity down to a specific call to action (and only that call to action). In our case – it’s that Newsletter and eCourse sign-up.

As you may suspect, our goal is to maximize the number of folks that sign-up and so we look at the conversion rate – the percentage of those that visit the page that do indeed sign-up.

And figuring that out is half art and half science. I say half art as, often, the stuff that influences visitors to sign-up is not intuitive. It’s tied to psychology and what motivates us to take action. And it is generally to complicated for me to figure out. That’s where the science comes in.

Just like advertizers that conduct all sorts of market testing, the key to maximizing the conversion rate of a squeeze page is trying different approaches and measuring the results. For example, one thing that we’ve found that improves conversion rates is providing more graphical cues on the page. Here’s an example…

We took that squeeze page for sign-ups and added the following graphics:

To measure the actual impact, a great tool is provided with Google Adwords (although only measuring traffic that comes from Adwords – still very useful). It allows you to measure the effectiveness of different versions of your squeeze pages. It does so by randomly sending Adword clickers to one of your pages and keeping track of the conversion rates of each.

So what did the extra graphics do on the page conversion rate. Lets compare the original page (Original) with the new one (Variation 1):

As you can see, adding the graphics almost doubled the conversion rate from 8% to 16%! That ultimately translates is a halving of customer acquisition costs and doubling of sales! All by adding some graphics…

It’s worth taking a look at where you are asking customers to make decisions on your web site and asking yourself, is it pretty? And then test the heck out of it…

C.

Posted in Marketing, Web, Web Site | 2 Comments »

Dead Right

March 4th, 2009 Chris

In my life in the corporate world, we were very sensitive of the competition. Fighting for scarce customer resources meant that we had be very aggressive at battling those that were trying to eat our lunch.

Often, the fervor spilled over to pretty-over-the-top dissing of the competition. I specifically remember putting up pictures of competitive CEOs and superposed shots of our own management team punching them in their respective heads. It got the sales team rev’ed up and more confident to go do battle.

Despite the energy spent bad-mouthing them, one thing was always true: we never dismissed the competition. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent is critical to beating them. And it requires the acknowledgement that the competition is doing somethings better than you.

While admitting that you were being beaten on a particular front was a little tough on the ego, it was critical to understanding what lessons you could borrow from them and what counter moves you could mount. The alternative was to live in a self-absorbed fantasy land – one in which business continues to suffer while you tell yourself that you’re the best… Not good.

That’s why I was shocked late last week by the response to one of our marketing pieces. An email we sent out discussed the need to be an effective presenter/speaker as a sales professional and referenced Obama’s recent visit to Canada. Specifically, it cited his ability to inspire and motivate – a fact that anyone objectively must concede he’s good at, regardless of your politics.

Well, some of the response was the most viceral I’ve seen in my life. Here are two examples:

 I believe you should keep your political opinions to yourself as this so-called president is destroying the America we once new. If successful, he will eliminate any motivation to be self sufficient and take risks to become successful. He’s ordering us to redistribute our wealth to those who are irresponsible. He will destroy our health care system with rationed health care. I am really tired of seeing this usurp in the news and watching the stock market tumble every time he speaks. I would say he is far from being inspirational! He is a sociopath, terrorist, liar, and agitator. Furthermore, I compare the likes of him to the anti-Christ! His loyalty is not to the United States but to his home country. I am not alone; 20 states are currently in the process of using their sovereignty to resist the federal government’s efforts to spend this Country into oblivion.

and…

You, ma’am, must be on some serious hallucinogenic drugs. Obama is burying our grandchildren’s generation in debt, with his “inspiration” and ‘motivation”. You Canadians may embrace socialist tenets, but America, even as bad as our economy is now, is a great capitalist-based country. For instance, why do you think your countrymen come to the US for state of the art health care? Because our capitalist innovations keep or medicine at the worlds forefront. Please don’t use the Obama inspires and motivates analogy with me – he just taxes and spends.

Now, Colleen is always respectful of such responses and politely responds that we, as business professionals, need to take lessons from the strengths of others, even if we don’t like them or their business. And typically those that write these emails don’t respond.

Let me, with a bit more force, reiterate Colleen’s point:

• Oh, extreme right-wing reader, let me point out that there is much to be learned from Obama, even if you don’t like his politics. Especially as he just kicked your party’s ass all over the country. Surely in his record fund raising (from those that make much less than the average republican supporter), record crowds, record public approval ratings, etc… you may find a lesson that your party could use to be more successful in the next election.
• “Anti-Christ”. Are you joking? It is pretty sad when you refuse to believe that the competition has any strengths and, instead, attributes any success to the work of Satan. Good grief.

For clarity, my political beliefs actually do not align with Obama and that’s OK. I can look at what he does well and think – wow, we could learn something.

And – as a complete tangent and in a humble defence of Canada’s health care system (and that used by every country in the industrialized world, apart from the US) - our system is based on the believe that everyone has the right to medical care, not just those that can pay for it. To fear-monger about such a system is just that – fear mongering… Here are a few stats for your consideration:

• Canadians live longer than Americans. That includes the average for white, affluent Americans (to counter an argument made in very bad taste by a particular TV pundit).
• American infant mortality is twice that of Canada.
• Per capita we spend 1/2 as much on health care than in the US  (combined public/private).

OK – sorry, I guess that was a bit of a rant. But to reiterate, politics is not very different than business. And in business, we study our competitors to learn their strengths so we can copy and counter them, and we learn their weaknesses so we can capitalize on them.

As an old boss of mine used to say to me: you can be right or you can be dead right. By being arrogant and not believing your competition has any strengths you can learn from, you’ll be dead right – and you’ll be broke.

C.

Posted in General, Marketing | 1 Comment »

Press 0 to speak with an operator

February 19th, 2009 Chris

I really like the movie Contact. I’m not sure exactly why: could be the sci-fi aspects of meeting aliens, could be the techno-stuff in building a really big machine, could be Matthew McC???ney (two words: dream-mee, or at least so Colleen tells me).

Anyways, one of the central story lines of the movie is that us little humans spend a lot of money and time to try to make contact with our brothers from a different primordial soup. And believe it or not – I see a lot of parallels with web site development.

My philosophy with our use of the web has changed significantly in the last two years. Originally, my dream was to develop a bunch of web functinoality and content, and let it loose. I’d just put my feet up on the desk and watch the cash roll in.

Today, I have a very different view. Instead of the primary goal being to get people to purchase something off the web site while we rest comfortably in bed, our ultimate goal is to get people to make Contact!

Why? Well, I’ve noticed a few things:

• The more prospects feel like there is a person behind the business, the more likely they are to purchase.
• The more prospects feel like there is a person behind the business, the more they are willing to spend.

I think that shouldn’t be a big surprise. For most adults, this ecommerce stuff is relatively new (last ten years) and we basically trust people, not web pages.

So now, our web site objectives are aligned with that philosophy. The primary goal is to provide information as effectively in order to maximize the number of qualified buyers who take the next step and contact us.

What do I mean by effectively:

• Simple – make it easy to find the information based on who they are and what they need
• Efficient – be able to get to the information they need as quickly as possible
• Interactive – engage the user in order to deliver information visually, aurally and with words (readilly?)

And when I say take the next step and contact us, we want to provide as many mechanisms as possible:

• Call (toll free of course!)
• Email / Contact Us
• Live Chat

On the LiveChat front, I previously mentioned our implementation. I have to say that it has been great. Just in the last week, Casey in our office has closed over $1,200 in sales using Live Chat. That just paid for the service for the next 15 months. And by providing a mechanism to quickly get questions answered, it’s enabled or accelerated countless other sales.

Now – don’t get me wrong! I still love on-line sales that don’t require human intervention. We have several products that continue to sell very well and deliver great value to the customers. Our view of them strategically has evolved to be in line with this new philosophy. Instead of the dream of building our entire business around these autonomic sales, we see them as gateway products that introduce customers to our business. They are the first step in engaging with the business which hopefully leads to larger sales as they get to know us.

So, down here in South Beach, I’m feverishly working on a substantial redesign of our web site in-line with these objectives. Simplified structure, even more interactivity, more role-based content.

Take a look at your web site – how easy it for your prospects to press 0 to speak to an operator?

C.

Posted in Marketing, Web Site | No Comments »

What, are you wacked?

February 4th, 2009 Chris

We did something crazy the other day. Something particularly foolish given all the doom and gloom of the current economic situation. We raised our prices.

Why did we do it? Well, to make a long story short we confirmed three things about new, higher pricing:

1. We are competitively priced
2. We provide substantial value
3. We are aligned with the way we were selling

The first one is sometimes hard for us in our micro-business. There are many, many competitors out there with different slices/niches of the sales training business. But we can get a sense of the pricing of those that offer similar services and products, ensuring that for what we are offering, we are in the right ball park. Oddly enough, there is a fair bit of consistency (at least in our market).

This is a bit tough for me. I’m used to getting out powerpoint slides with granular analysis of competitors pricing at different volume, studying discretionary discounting, etc… And maybe I’m making excuses for not getting that gory. It’s just that we’ve found our market for our services there is a lot of price elasticity so along as you’ve got good value, you can charge appropriately.

A good example of this is the speaking business. There are speakers that are $1,500 a day and there are speakers that are $30K an hour. In that spectrum of prices you get different value – speakers who are more engaging, more entertaining, more famous, more impactful, etc… And there is good business volume through out that entire range. So the key is maximing speaking fees based on your return-on-investment to the customer.

 That’s a long winded way of getting to my second point. That is, value is king.

So when I said we raised prices, how did we do it? We took each of our services and added additional value. For example, in Colleen’s base level coaching program, we went from one web class a year to four. That has tremendous value and more than compensates for the price increase. And, showing again the importance of managing costs, we can do so with no incremental costs to the business. So that price increase is pure profit (good for us) and the customers get even more return on their hard-earned dollar (good for them).

Finally – one of the most profitable things we did was align what we sell with how & where. For example, when Colleen speaks at an event, she used to offer our base coaching program. That it, our cheapest offering and the same one we sell on-line.

Then we realized that this was nuts. Here is our greatest asset – our sales queen – up in front of a live audience and she’s only selling the base offering. We changed that at the beginning of January and now Colleen sells her mid-tier package (at it’s new even-more-value price). Low and behold, our sales quantities dropped by about a third but the package is over four times the price. So, we’re far ahead.

So, to make a long (too) story short, by taking a look at how you can add more value without increasing your costs and ensuring that you align the offering with how you are selling it (or vice versa), you can raise your prices and make more money. Even in today’s economy.

C.

Posted in General, Pricing | No Comments »

I’m Back and Interactive

January 22nd, 2009 Chris

After a long holiday break I’m back. And my New Year’s resolution is to be committed and regular on the blog. Not a great start give it’s the 22nd…

Anyways…

Last fall, Colleen and I heard a guy speak at a conference. His name eludes me but what he said didn’t. He started a very successful on-line dating site and his advice was to focus your efforts on getting people who visit your web site to interact with you personally as quickly as possible.

That stuck with me and just a few days later, I saw a talk about Live Chat. It was a shameless sales pitch, but I couldn’t help but think that there would be a lot of value in proactively asking visitors to your web site if they are finding everything they need.

In case you’ve not experienced it, live chat is like instant messaging, but for the web. You can chat back and forth with an operator in a browser window. It can be initiated by the site visitor or by the operator.

I couldn’t help but think about the analogy of a retail store. Would you have a brick and mortar store without any sales clerks. No one to help shoppers find what they need or answer any questions? That would be insane.

So we bit the bullet and have now implemented live chat on the engageselling.com site. And the results have been great. We had such a reaction in the first couple of weeks that I had to go in and limit the number of simultaneous chats as Casey (in our office) was going insane trying juggle five conversations at once.

And one of the features we really like is that if you stay on a given web page for a certain amount of time (ex. 2 minutes), you are automatically prompted to see if you have any questions. Just like in a real shop!

We’ve even made sales with the chat.

Long and short, we’re going to be doing several things to make our on-line presence more engaging and more interactive – so we can quickly move from a prospect only browsing to a potential client interacting with us personally.

<rant>

OK, while I’m talking about live chat, I must share my frustration with some of the vendors servicing the entrepreneurial market. The gentlemen I mentioned above who was pitching his live chat solution was charging $3K plus $80 a month. It came with scripts and set up instructions along with the on-going chat service (the actual back end is hosted in most solutions). Long story short, he got everyone riled up, because live chat makes sense, and made a bunch of sales.

I tend to not make impulse purchases when it comes to the business (or in our personal life according to Colleen) and so while she was half way to the stage with her credit card in hand, I said Whoa. Instead, I did some reseach over two evenings and found that what the gentlemen was selling at the event did have industry leading features but he was reselling someone else’s service.

I found and contacted the service directly (god bless google) and got the exact same service for no money upfront (vs. $3K) and $79 per month.

The moral: always shop around… (the way I figure it, Colleen owes me $3K)

</rant>

C.

Posted in Marketing, Web, Web Site | 1 Comment »

The Bad Economy Can’t Kill the Beast

December 18th, 2008 Chris

We run a 1 Oct to 1 Oct fiscal year. That means that we are about to wrap up our first quarter of the new fiscal year. We’ve been nervous for the last couple of months – concerned about all the economic turmoil and its impact on the business.

We’ll the results are in and there is good and bad news, and an important lesson.

First the bad. In the biggest lines of income, year over year, sales are a bit down. We’re not particularly surprised as the biggest bucket, custom training, is one of the first places that organizations cut when they are concerned about their numbers. Relatively big ticket discretionary spending is usually the first to go.

The good news? Over the last year we’ve leaned into (aka invested) in additional lines of income. Coaching, events, web class are areas that we put some sales and marketing behind. Heck – even I got off my ass and did some training (however, that was a mistake, ad passim).

The results – we’re up year over year, met our targets and will be closing one of our best quarters.

Now, let me knock on wood and hope it’s not just luck – but I don’t think it was… It was a direct result of creating additional revenue streams so that if our mainstays are impacted, it’s more than compensated for by others.

Now – anyone that worked with me in my former life knows that there is a huge concern when people start to talk about doing multiple things. What’s the word – Focus! The old adage that you can’t do anything well if you do too many things.

I still agree with that – hence why I feel my own forays into training were a mistake. That didn’t leverage our existing assets and distracted me. But that’s different than creating new streams of revenue by new creating products and services that leverage common assets. In other words, stuff that doesn’t take that much work to tailor or modify and deliver in a different way that will be valuable to customers.

Now – just because it doesn’t take a lot of new product or service “development” doesn’t mean that you can skimp on sales and marketing. That’s the resource that you have to manage and ensure you’re giving each of your “lines” an opportunity to succeed.

Oddly enough – it’s a very different constraint than I’m used to dealing with. In the technology world – the conversation on resource constraints is often about development resources. Here, at least in our micro business, we work hard to make sure that’s not the case. And ultimately that is our way of ensuring focus.

Here’s a challenge: grab a beer or glass of wine over the holidays, put your feet up and think of one additional way you could generate additional revenue next year – without creating a new product or service from scratch. Then, repeat – at least the first bit…

C.

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