February 26, 2008
SUMMARY: Most marketers would be thrilled with an SEO strategy that delivers a 240% improvement in Web traffic. But converting more of those visitors into leads is even better.
One marketer built on the success of an SEO campaign with tactics to maintain traffic and increase conversions. Includes a new content strategy with a link-building campaign and homepage design tests that lifted leads 58%.
CHALLENGE
Poland-based Argos Translations redesigned its website in 2006 with a search engine optimization strategy and saw a 240% boost in Web traffic. But Marketing Manager Michael Malik wasn’t satisfied.
“The increased traffic is great. It’s something you can show off to management. But more traffic doesn’t do anything for your business unless it converts,” says Malik.
Argos caters to businesses in need of document translation, foreign language voice-over talent and other services. Malik used keyword-rich content and enhanced page headers and description tags to boost Web traffic. But for 2007, he needed to develop other tactics that would keep Web traffic flowing while converting more visitors into leads for the sales team.
CAMPAIGN
To keep boosting Web traffic and convert more leads, Malik and his team turned to a new combination, including:
o New content
o Page design tests
o Additional SEO tactics, such as link-building
Here are the four strategies they used:
-> Strategy #1. Develop new language versions of the website
The company’s customer base is primarily US- and UK-based firms that do business in Europe, so their website was originally written in English. Malik wanted to branch out to Eastern European companies that needed translation services, so they created two new language versions of the website: Polish and German.
- To optimize the new versions, Malik and his in-house team of translators conducted Polish Web searches to identify key words and phrases for their services. The list was sent to a colleague fluent in German for translation into that language.
- They double-checked those terms with online services that help identify keywords. The process identified approximately 30 terms per language.
-> Strategy #2. Create new white paper to qualify leads
Next, Malik and his team developed a white paper that would resonate with their UK-based customers: how banks, airlines, telecommunications providers and other companies could capitalize on a recent wave of Polish immigrants moving to Britain.
In particular, the white paper focused on the best way to take advantage of this economic opportunity: Reach recent immigrants by marketing to them in their native language.
Visitors could read only a portion of the article online; they had to provide a name, email address and phone number to download a PDF of the entire article.
Malik identified key words and phrases from the text that would position the white paper on search engines, such as:
o Poles in the UK
o Polish immigrants
o Immigration in Britain
o British economy
Then, they used those terms in the page header and description.
-> Strategy #3. Boost incoming links from relevant sites
Search engines analyze the number and relevance of incoming links to help assign a website’s natural search results. To maintain the rankings achieved through the previous year’s SEO efforts, Malik increased the number of links back to the Argos homepage.
Here’s how they did it:
Step #1. Conduct searches on the company’s top 20 keywords and find the top-10 sites in the search results.
Step #2. Analyze all websites linking back to those 10 sites and identify the ones with the highest Google page rank.
Step #3. Send emails to the most relevant and highly-ranked third-party sites asking to trade links.
The email message was a straightforward explanation of the company’s intentions, saying Malik’s team had found the site on the Web and noticed it provided a link to one of their competitors. It then explained why linking to Argos would also be relevant and offered to trade links between the two pages.
-> Strategy #4. Test design and placement options for links to Web forms
Besides the white paper, Malik’s team used two other primary features to collect contact information from site visitors:
o Request form for free translation quote
o Online promotions, such as 20% discount for new customers, that require registration
They conducted several A/B tests to determine whether changes to the design and placement of those links on the homepage would boost conversion rates.
Tests included:
o Placing links in the top left, top right, center left or center right of the page
o Using an image of a cake, a flower or a piggy bank for the online promotions link
o Using a photograph of a man’s face or a woman’s face for the quote- request link
RESULTS
Malik didn’t expect another year of triple-digit traffic growth. But he didn’t want traffic to stagnate either — and the 2007 efforts paid off:
o Web visits increased 24%
o Page views increased 34%
o Bounce rate decreased 12%
o Time on site increased 46%
They also converted more of that traffic — their primary goal. Web leads increased 58%. “As happy as I was in 2006, in 2007 I was ecstatic for having leads go up,” he says.
The Polish and German versions of the page were big contributors to the traffic growth. Web traffic increased 30% month-over-month after launching those new versions and that increase has been sustained into 2008.
The white paper also provided a big boost, becoming the fifth most visited page on the company’s site.
Tests on placement and design options for its promotions and quote- request links showed that the center left of the homepage was the best location. The image of the piggy bank for promotions and a picture of a woman’s face delivered the best conversions.
The results of the link exchange program have proved difficult to analyze. Malik knows the campaign generated new inbound links for the Argos homepage, but he can’t be sure exactly how many because each time he checks Google to see new links he finds different results. He suspects the ever-changing nature of Google’s site-indexing program causes those fluctuations.
Malik has seen evidence, however, that new links are improving the site’s search engine rankings. Two months after launching the link-exchange campaign, the site’s rank for the term “localization services” improved from a top-30 placement to a top-10 placement.
The 2007 results demonstrate the value of building on SEO results. And Malik and his team have already identified a strategy for this year: they’re focusing on additional homepage design tests and techniques to further improve conversion rates.
Useful links related to this article
Creative samples from Argos Translation’s SEO Campaign:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/argos/study.html
Wordtracker - helped identify Polish key phrases:
http://www.wordtracker.com
Argos Translations:
http://www.argostranslations.com
From Marketing Sherpa
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?id=30349
Posted by copiasolaris under Case Studies | Comments (0)
December 14, 2007
SUMMARY: If your company has big plans for a product launch but a tiny marketing budget, Web 2.0 can come to the rescue.
Worried about the high cost of direct mail, email and telemarketing, a marketer turned to social networking, blogs and a four-figure search budget to debut a complimentary SEO tool to find leads. Includes seven strategies and results that surpassed all goals.
CHALLENGE
Startup company HubSpot began 2007 with very few customers for its new, Web-based online marketing optimization system. With those tools coming out of beta, Mike Volpe, VP Marketing, needed a promotional strategy to rapidly spread the company’s message and identify qualified prospects for the sales team.
Volpe worried that the high cost of traditional methods, such as direct mail, telemarketing and even email, wouldn’t deliver the best ROI for his small budget. Those methods also didn’t match the company’s emphasis on using search, social media and other online channels to attract potential customers.
“The whole premise of HubSpot is that the way people search for, evaluate and purchase products has changed,” Volpe says. “We focus on inbound marketing, and were trying to come up with a campaign to embrace that as a concept.”
Volpe and his team wanted to test a viral campaign that relied on blogs, social networking sites and searches to help prospects find and approach the company. But they knew they didn’t want to rely on a funny online video or some other typical marketing creative element to attract qualified leads interested in improving their online marketing.
CAMPAIGN
Volpe and his team created a new, online SEO tool called Website Grader, which automatically analyzes the marketing effectiveness of any URL and generates a free report. With Website Grader, the team hoped to create a pool of prospects for the company’s paid services, which are designed to improve the performance of websites.
First, though, Volpe needed to generate tons of traffic for the Website Grader website and then convince users to run a report on their URLs.
Here are the seven steps they followed to spread the word:
-> Step #1. Give bloggers advance peek
Volpe’s team focused their early efforts on making Website Grader an effective centerpiece of the viral marketing campaign. They needed to ensure that the tool was useful, easy to use and compelling enough for bloggers to share it with friends.
They turned to bloggers with expertise in online marketing and search engine optimization to help evaluate Website Grader and recommend improvements.
- Volpe’s team had spent several months monitoring the appropriate bloggers to keep on top of trends in the industry. Using Technorati, Google’s blog search and other tools, they identified and kept tabs on hundreds of industry bloggers.
- During their product-development period, they formed relationships with several of these bloggers by adding comments to their posts and participating in ongoing dialogues.
- When preparing to launch Website Grader, they contacted 100 bloggers, including those with whom they had formed relationships. They asked them to use the tool to run a report on a website and provide feedback on the process and results.
They specifically avoided the biggest, most popular blogs in the space. “They get a lot of inbound inquiries, and we didn’t feel like we had great relationships with them.”
- At this point, they did not ask bloggers to write a post about the tool — they only solicited feedback.
-> Step #2. Launch with blog mentions
After receiving mostly positive feedback from bloggers, they incorporated changes recommended by them. Volpe’s team was then ready to launch Website Grader.
- They replied to the bloggers who had responded to their initial requests for feedback, noting that their requested changes had been made and inviting them to write about the tool.
- They included links to Website Grader in relevant posts on their own company blog, such as a post analyzing the SEO performance of top venture capital firm sites.
-> Step #3. Promote tool through social networking
Big believers in the value of social media, the team submitted the Website Grader link to several social media sites.
- Volpe’s team sent the link to StumbleUpon, which allows members of the community to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on sites submitted. The more approval votes a site receives, the more it is forwarded to other members of the community who have expressed interest in that type of content. The process helps sites develop an overall approval rating and determine how prominently it is displayed on the StumbleUpon site.
- They bookmarked and tagged the site at Del.icio.us, where bookmarked sites are shared among members with similar interests and preferences.
-> Step #4. Post messages on discussion forums
Next, the team looked for opportunities to post messages about Website Grader on search marketing discussion forums, such as the Digital Point Forums.
They were careful not to create new threads or post blatantly promotional messages in these forums. Instead, they looked for places where they could include a mention of the tool as an answer to a member’s question, or as a relevant addition to an ongoing discussion.
“You wouldn’t walk into networking party and say, ‘Hey, let me tell you how awesome my company is.’ It’s the same thing online. You don’t cram your sales pitch down their throats.”
-> Step #5. Test paid promotions
As traffic to the site began to build with the blog mentions, social media exposure and links to message boards, Volpe and his team tested whether limited paid promotion would further boost traffic.
With a budget of approximately $5,000, they tested:
- Pay-per-click campaigns. Because search engine marketing is a competitive space in the pay-per-click universe, the team tested a series of low-priced, long-tail type keywords to attract Web users interested in site optimization.
For example, rather than bidding on broad terms, like “Internet marketing,” they bid on long phrases, such as “website marketing, search engine optimization, free report.” In addition to the click rate, they tracked how many of those clicks actually used the tool to generate a report.
- Paid promotion on StumbleUpon. The service allows sites that are already ranked by the community to pay for additional promotion through the service’s “Stumble” feature. It’s a button that lets members see a new piece of content relevant to their areas of interest.
When an advertiser pays for promotion, StumbleUpon delivers the link to interested users who click the “Stumble” button. Advertisers pay per visitor who lands on the site.
-> Step #6. Issue press releases highlighting data
To further raise awareness for Website Grader, Volpe’s team prepared two reports based on data generated by the online tool:
- The first report reviewed the SEO tactics employed by the top 20 blogs as ranked by Technorati. The report highlighted whether these sites were using important SEO techniques, such as description metadata and keyword metadata.
- The second report analyzed the SEO performance of presidential candidates’ websites.
They promoted these reports with press releases distributed through MarketWire, and by having their PR team approach a select group of bloggers and media outlets.
-> Step #7. Follow up with prospects who ran site reports
When users ran a Website Grader report on a URL, Volpe’s team used three techniques to qualify them as leads and follow-up to discuss additional services.
- Automatic email response. Website Grader visitors could enter their email address to receive a copy of their report. The outbound message that delivered results also contained a personalized note from the company’s VP of Sales. The VP invited the prospect to set up a time for a telephone call to discuss the results and potential improvements.
- Online registration. For users who chose to read their report results online, Volpe’s team included an offer on the bottom of the screen that invited users to receive a personalized expert review of their site.
The call-to-action featured the headline: “Need to improve?” It included a link to a registration page, where the prospect could enter contact information for follow-up.
- Sales team follow-up. Volpe’s team periodically reviewed all the sites being evaluated on Website Grader to find companies that seemed the best fit for HubSpot’s paid services, based on company size and other qualifying factors. Those sites were assigned to a sales rep, who followed up with an email and a phone call to see if they were interested in learning more about the company’s inbound marketing services.
RESULTS
Since launching Website Grader less than a year ago, the tool has become Volpe’s best source of leads and sales. “It has far surpassed any of the goals we had,” Volpe says, with the site so far generating reports for more than 150,000 URLs.
Volpe’s team has converted about 1,000 Website Grader users into leads for HubSpot’s paid services, and has already signed more than 30 new customers to contracts with a lifetime value of more than $250,000. At least 60 more opportunities sit in the pipeline.
Volpe’s sales team also uses Website Grader as a demonstration tool in all its sales presentations. After showing prospects how well their sites are optimized for search marketing, sales reps discuss ways their paid marketing services can help improve lead generation.
Carefully seeding the viral campaign through blogs and social media sites was the key to generating prospect interest. About 20 of the bloggers initially contacted wrote reviews of the tool, and interest from the blogosphere resulted in dozens more small sites each week including a link to the site. To date, that activity has generated more than 34,000 inbound links to the Website Grader website, boosting the site’s overall search engine ranking.
StumbleUpon members continue to rank the page highly, with the site receiving an 81% approval rating from the community. And at Del.icio.us, the site has been bookmarked more than 2,000 times, further boosting traffic and interest.
Paid promotions also proved a valuable component of the team’s marketing efforts: About 60% of users who clicked on a search advertisement used the tool to run a website report.
Creating reports based on the tool’s data also kept the campaign’s momentum going. Thanks to their two press releases, the team garnered write-ups from high-profile sources, such as Guy Kawasaki’s blog and PC Magazine.
Most importantly, they’ve created a viral campaign that’s relevant to the services the company provides, helping demonstrate the problem the company can solve for its customers.
“This campaign isn’t over, and I’m not sure it’s ever going to end. We’re constantly thinking about ways to enhance the reports generated by Website Grader,” says Volpe. “Three years from now, we may be talking about how we got to 1 million unique URLs, which is a response you’re definitely not going to get if you put up one funny video on YouTube.”
Useful links related to this article
Creative samples from HubSpot’s Social Media campaign:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/hubspot/study.html
Del.icio.us:
http://del.icio.us/
Digital Point Forums:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/
StumbleUpon:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
Guy Kawasaki’s blog:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/
Website Grader:
http://www.websitegrader.com/
HubSpot:
http://www.hubspot.com/
From Marketing Sherpa
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30261
Posted by copiasolaris under Case Studies | Comments (0)
August 16, 2007
SUMMARY: Digital print capabilities have made it possible so you don’t have to send out the exact same postal mail piece to each of your prospects. In fact, you can arrange products based on past purchase behavior and other data or even change the size of your mailer.
Reader’s Digest Canada has results from a new mailing where they tested four catalogs with varying levels of customization. Conversions increased as much as 74%.
CHALLENGE
Reader’s Digest Canada typically sees response rates that are one or two percentage points higher than the industry average for their catalog mailings of CDs, DVDs and books. But with better data mining technology and digital print capabilities, Mathieu Peloquin, VP Marketing, Product Lines, and his team were intrigued with the notion of customizing their print catalogs based on past buying data.
“We wanted to remove the barrier of ‘one-catalog-for-all.’ We wanted to test fully customized catalogs and determine how the variable model can impact the customer,” he says.
Peloquin wondered if they could increase sales enough to pay for higher printing costs by using past purchase information to create a truly personalized catalog for each customer. Could they make their catalog merchandizing operations act more like an analytics-driven ecommerce site?
CAMPAIGN
To begin, they set up three tests of varying catalog customization involving 47,103 customers who had purchased an item in the past 10 weeks. The number of consumers receiving each mailing would be different, as it was determined by how many fit the varying criteria for each test.
Because Peloquin and his team wanted to find the best ROI scenario, they tested catalog lengths of 16, 20 and 24 pages, as well as correlating, full-color self-adhesive sweepstakes product stamp sheets against versions without.
Moving forward, all three tests were measured against a control group of 15,701 who received a typical version of their non-personalized promotion.
The control mailing included:
o A 24-page, 5-1/4-by-8-1/4-inch booklet with information on 43 best-selling CDs
o A sweepstakes package with a letter/certificate that included the consumer’s personal information in black type.
They used only music items for the control group because that category had the widest margins and Peloquin wanted to establish a hard-to-beat ROI benchmark.
The tests involved an algorithm system that produced numerous product-affinity combinations and patterns. As a result, each test included a catalog populated with four personalized products based on most-recent purchase and/or affinity patterns (items bought by other consumers).
Peloquin didn’t want any changes in design to affect the findings, so they kept the same catalog layout for the control and test packages.
Here’s how they modified the test catalogs:
- Test #1A. Customized catalog, but no cross-sell
Peloquin wanted one package to help them see what kind of variations could be achieved without going too crazy with customization. The catalogs, which mailed to 10,468 consumers, used a handful of personalized touches.
Key elements:
o A 16-, 20- or 24-page booklet/catalog, with size depending on the number of products relevant to the customer’s history
o One product line — either CDs, DVDs or books — based on the customer’s most recent purchase
o Due to affinity purchase patterns dialed up by the system’s algorithms, products were placed inside the catalog in sequence of relevance
o A full sweepstakes package, including a personalized letter, prize offer and stamp sheets
o Product images in the catalog and on the stamp sheet were sequenced to relevance
o All items were printed in four color
- Test #1B. Simplified catalog version
Notable differences for this version included:
o No sweepstake elements at all — and, therefore, much less personalization
o Volume of the mail drop: 5,234
- Test #2. Customized package/cross-sell multiple products
This test allowed Peloquin and his team to create a package with hundreds of merchandising combinations that went to 15,700 consumers.
Key elements:
o Products based on previous purchases and an affinity pattern, but included items from all three product lines (CDs, DVDs, books)
o Items were sequenced based on affinity patterns
o A full sweepstakes package, including personalized letter, prize offer and stamp sheets
o The product images in the catalog and on the stamp sheet were sequenced to relevance
o Varying stamp sheet length based on page count
o The size of the catalog — 16, 20 or 24 pages — was decided by the number of products relevant to the customer’s history
o All items were personalized in four-color process
RESULTS
The results proved that even an old direct marketer like Reader’s Digest can learn new DM tricks. Indeed, the findings gave Peloquin and his team overwhelming reason to move away from the concept of “one-catalog-for-all.” Overall, their test results saw average sales lifts over the control package: 49% for Test #1A, 16% for Test #1B and 74% for Test #2.
Here’s how the response data broke down by product category compared to the control package:
Test #1A: Customized catalog without cross-sell (and one product line per recipient):
o CD buyers, 27%
o DVD buyers, 111%
o Book buyers, 45%
Test #1B: Simplified version (and one product line per recipient):
o CD buyers, 7%
o DVD buyers, 68%
o Book buyers, 9%
Test #2: Customized package/cross-sell multiple products (multiple product line offers):
o CD buyers, 35%
o DVD buyers, 78%
o Book buyers, 83%
Peloquin and his team also received very encouraging anecdotal feedback when it came to all three tests. “We heard comments like, ‘I could have bought every item in the book.’ So, those products really resonated.”
Going from a system of creating one catalog for all vs a digital template where customer behavior fills in the key spots wasn’t easy for Peloquin’s design team, but the results prove that it’s worth it to test. They still need to conduct another test or two to determine the exact size of the catalog. “We were near our ROI requirement. We are only months away from rolling out.”
Useful links related to this article
Creative samples from Reader’s Digest Canada’s catalog test:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/readersdigest/study.h
ml
Xerox 1:1 Lab - provided the technology for the variable catalog tests:
http://www.xerox.com/1to1lab
Terminal Van Gogh - handled 1-to-1 marketing consultancy and solutions for the tests:
http://www.terminalvangogh.com/
Exstream Software: - provided additional technology for the tests:
http://www.exstream.com/
Reader’s Digest Canada:
http://www.readersdigest.ca
From Marketing Sherpa
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30092
Posted by copiasolaris under Case Studies | Comments (0)
January 13, 2007
SUMMARY: As the Internet continues to radically change the book publishing industry, authors are taking it upon themselves to promote their works in whatever ways possible.
See how one author turned his collection of marketing stories into a best-seller with a shrewd and inexpensive do-it-yourself campaign using email, a video-linked press release and cross-promotions with other prominent authors and speakers to add a viral element. Best of all, the whole effort took only two weeks to launch.
Plus, how he managed to sell out the book’s first run and is now charging lots more for his speaking gigs.
CHALLENGE
“Being able to put ‘#1 Best Seller’ in your marketing is absolutely big,” says Dan Seidman, author of ‘Sales Autopsy: 50 Post-mortems Reveal What Killed the Sale.’ “One, it helps sell the actual books in the stores. Two, it aids you in selling your future books to the publisher. That’s why I needed to somehow, someway get the book on an important list.”
Considering the number of books released every week, the task of cutting through the competition is not small. And, due to some late-arriving creative materials and other mishaps, Seidman had to scramble to get his campaign ready after the October release of his new book, “Sales Autopsy.”
Still, Seidman knew he could capitalize on the modest success of his previous book, as well as on columns he had written in marketing publications. His notion of building a linking system with other authors would be rewarding … if he could get them interested.
However, one of Seidman’s top priorities: He wanted to spend no more than a few thousand dollars to promote the book. Could such a small amount of money compete against the bigger publishing houses’ million-dollar media campaigns?
CAMPAIGN
Although Seidman’s publishing house, Kaplan Publishing, did some marketing for the book, it wasn’t anything like the media blitz seen with major book releases. Armed with a list of contacts assembled from speaking and networking at trade events, Seidman wanted to reach out to other sales gurus who might be interested in cross-promotions.
He decided to employ an affiliate-styled system and went to work on getting other marketers, authors and speakers signed up for his plan. Here are the four steps he took:
Step #1. Build list of experts and send emails
First, Seidman hired an assistant to deal with online market research, answer the phone/email and other tasks. For the book’s release during the first week of October, they wrote a press release that included a link to a video presentation by Seidman.
After that, they pored through industry resource guides from organizations, such as the National Speakers Association, to unearth experts who might be interested in partnering for a promotional email.
Seidman followed up some of the emails with calls to help close on new partnerships. A few turned him down, but most listened to the pitch. To those who gave him a chance, Seidman detailed his concept of an ongoing cross-promotional relationship in which the experts helped each other advertise their writings, speaking engagements and other products/services (see example below).
In addition, partners were offered the possibility of making a sales cut off his book via their Web sites, which could be tied into the affiliate program at Barnes & Noble’s Web site, http://www.BN.com.
Step #2. Create publicity campaign
Next, Seidman hired a design specialist to develop the look and feel of his email campaigns and manage the Web site. For email, they went with a layout that included a dominant image of the front cover, a smaller picture of him speaking, several positive quotes from critics and excerpts.
Seidman and his team also created a special Halloween email promotion that incorporated images appropriate for the holiday. In addition, they kept the same design for the landing pages for both emails.
Step #3. Email the list
Seidman pieced together a list of 12,000 qualified email addresses. He accrued many of them over the years while others came from research and renting small files.
Nearly two weeks after the release, they emailed the list to promote the 192-page “Sales Autopsy.” Recipients were offered a 20% discount, as well as a free downloadable PDF or audio files from the experts who had signed onto his partnership program.
Email recipients were driven specifically to BN.com to buy the book, a measure to help those partners who were running affiliate programs.
Step #4. Leverage past exposure
Seidman wisely used a handful of past accomplishments in marketing the book. For example, he already had a print/online audience of 2 million readers due to regular contributions for publications such as Agent’s Sales Journal, Advantages Magazine, Leader’s Edge and Health Industry Underwriter, as well as jobs portal Monster.com.
He had also released a book in 2002 called ‘The Death of 20th Century Selling.” While not a top seller, the book created a buzz in the community. In addition, Seidman had written a 24-part comic-book series called ‘The Sales Comic Book’ and produced a video game called ‘Revenge of the Reps.’ The latter two are usually given away as promotions when he speaks at trade shows.
“Things like the comic book and video game have differentiated me from the rest of the marketplace,” he says. “They’ve let everyone know that I am not like all the other authors or speakers.”
RESULTS
Well, something resonated with Seidman’s audience, because ‘Sales Autopsy’ shot to #4 on BN.com’s best-seller list for all books (sharing time with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s highly-publicized memoirs) and sat at that spot for three days — Oct. 18, 19 and 20. What’s more, the book spent those same three days rated as the #1 business book available online at Barnes & Noble.
The video-linked press release and the initial recruitment email drew 22 author/speaker partners who went on to inform their opt-in databases. In the end, more than 700,000 recipients found a message about the book in their inboxes, and around 300,000 of those addresses were tapped again for the Halloween campaign.
Best of all, Kaplan Publishing sold out the initial 15,000-run in less than a month, and another 6,000 were sold in November.
“Someone told me that they saw my book at a Barnes & Noble in their city the other day, and it was still in the section for [store-recommended] business books,” Seidman says. “Because of the performance of this book, I think I have either tripled or quadrupled the advance I’ll receive for my next one. It has also allowed me to raise my speaking engagement fees by 67%.”
Not too shabby for an investment of less than $3,000.
Useful links related to this article
Creative samples from “Sales Autopsy” book launch:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/salesautopsy/study.ht
l
Martin Group - the company that handled the email and Web design for the book:
http://the-martin-group.com/
Dynamic Destinies Inc. - the company that helped with the affiliate strategy for the book:
http://www.destinies.com/authors.cfm
DSM Agency - Seidman’s publishing agent:
http://www.dsmagency.com/
Kaplan Publishing Inc.:
http://www.kaplanpublishing.com
Sales Autopsy:
http://www.salesautopsy.com
From Marketing Sherpa
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=29834
Posted by copiasolaris under Case Studies | Comments (0)
June 26, 2006
SUMMARY: Gorgeous Web site design, compelling testimonials and pages of scientific fact can only do so much. Many consumers — especially women researching healthcare options — won’t trust you enough to purchase on their first visit.
But, they might opt in for “10 Tips” via email.
Hear how one marketer tested an autoresponder series for new opt-ins. The campaign worked … until email filters started crushing delivery rates. Next, he tested in-house vs outsourced email delivery options.
See creative samples & discover test results:
CHALLENGE
“On so many sites, they try to sell you snake oil to lower blood pressure. They promise their supplements can,” says Ophir Prusak, Internet Marketer for InterCure Inc., makers of the RESPeRATE device.
When many of your competitors hawk products online as convincingly as possible that may not work, it pollutes the entire marketplace, seeding distrust.
Prusak and the Web team did the best they could to combat this. The site is cleanly and beautifully designed, featuring loads of testimonials, pages of scientific data, and “As Featured In” logos from such publications as The Washington Post, AARP and The Wall Street Journal. Plus, they promoted a “Save $45 Today” discount offer on the home page. Last but not least, the 800 number was manned 24/7.
Also, Prusak carefully restricted his media buys to highly trusted brand names, such as ads in respected mainstream medical email newsletters for consumers.
However, many visitors were leery, having seen nearly equally trustworthy-looking content at other sites.
CAMPAIGN
Prusak figured, if the site couldn’t convince consumers immediately, how about an ongoing educational effort via email? The campaign had three stages:
Stage #1. Gather opt-ins
Prusak added an opt-in offer to nearly every page of the site so no matter where you were when you decided to convert, the form was right there. The form used five best practices:
A. Copy: Instead of saying “Sign up for email” (which hardly anyone wants to do on a strange site) the headline read “Get 10 Tips to Lower Blood Pressure”, a benefit all visitors were likely to be interested in.
B. Form: The form was a form — not a hotlink to another page with a form — so people could sign up right away without any additional steps.
C. Submit button: Instead of saying “subscribe” which has taken on negative undertones for some markets (smells like a longer term relationship than new visitors may want), the nice fat button read “Submit”.
D. Usage clarity: Although the main offer was to receive tips via email for 10 days, Prusak intended to also these names a monthly newsletter until they opt-ed out or went inactive. Rather than assume permission for this, his copy carefully detailed it.
“In addition to 10 tips on lowering blood pressure, you’ll also receive occasional updates about RESeRATE.”
E. Privacy: Although RESeRATE’s site had a privacy policy posted at the bottom of every page, Prusak added privacy language and a hotlink to the email form as well so visitors could not miss it.
“Your email address is totally secure and will NEVER be shared, sold or rented. Privacy Policy.”
Stage #2. Create compelling and trustworthy content
With help from the rest of the marketing and product management team, Prusak developed the content for the 10 autoresponder messages that would begin the relationship. (Link to samples of all 10 below.)
Key — Almost none of the content was repurposed from the content-heavy site. “We’d rather give them something valuable than repacking information.”
Plus very little of the copy was a sales pitch. In fact, most wasn’t about the product at all. “It’s practical, helpful tips, for instance are you accurately measuring your blood pressure?” In addition, many of the hotlinks were not to RESeRATE’s site! Instead hotlinks were to respected brands such as the Mayo Clinic and the American Heart Association. “We’re showing that all of our information is from a respected source.”
At the very bottom of each message, Prusak posted the headline for “Tomorrow’s Tip” to keep interest high. He also had a simple involvement device with hotlinked “Yes/No answers, “Was this tip helpful for you?”
Stage #3. Fight deliverability battles
“About six months ago, we had a snowball effect,” says Prusak. The site had been live since 2002, but now at last it hit critical mass in terms of traffic and email opt-ins. Which was exciting, but suddenly more and more people started contacting RESPeRATE to complain that they had not received all 10 of their tips.
On the one hand, Prusak was thrilled they valued the content enough to care. On the other hand, he despaired that email filters were trashing his mailings.
All email had been broadcast using top-line software run on an in-house server. “Our email systems were very robust.” First Prusak signed on with an email certification service to see if that would help with delivery. It definitely did, but wasn’t a magic bullet to solve all delivery problems.
“Our core competency isn’t sending out email,” Prusak decided. “Maybe we should outsource this to a company that focuses on this.” However, the in-house systems were highly integrated into Web analytics and a lead tracking CRM system. The cost of time, energy, and cash to integrate an outside ESP into the same systems would be more than the CEO would happily sign off on without a lot of persuasion.
How do you convince a CEO to spend more money on email?
Although he realized he’d need a fairly high-end vendor in the end, Prusak didn’t want to invest his time and energy into researching options until he had clear purchasing authority. So, instead he decided to conduct a “proof of concept” test using two less complex email service providers that would allow him to run a test quickly and easily.
“We took a subset of our list and randomized it to make sure it was unbiased.” Although both the vendors imposed maximum send limits on new accounts (to prevent spammers from abusing their systems), Prusak was able to send enough email through both systems to get a statistically valid result. “I wanted at least 100 responses from each.”
After reviewing measured opens and clicks from both vendors, he was “skeptical” about the results. So, a month later, he ran the test again. This time he split the send between the vendor that had performed the best the first time, and his own in-house email servers.
RESULTS
Prusak says the site’s email offer is so popular that he’s well on his way to a list size in excess of a million names. The 10 Tips autoresponder has been “very effective” at helping to convert new leads into buyers.
“We have excellent responses. People have called us up and emailed us back that this is great information.” The yes/no hotlinks at the bottom of each issue also see mainly positive results. Interestingly, the autoresponders that get the best open and click rates are the first two (which is predictable) and the seventh (which has the most valuable-sounding subject line.)
The fact that a seventh daily email could do as well as a first day email is fairly remarkable, and it speaks to the fact that content really is king.
The delivery test results using an external ESP were far better than Prusak had dreamed they would be. “I just expected they would get a bit better, but one vendor got a 17% increase in opens and a 29% increase in clicks; and the other vendor got a 14% improvement in opens and 53% increase in clicks.”
Prusak expected the higher click rates because not all pens are measured, and also perhaps some of the previously filtered recipients would be more interested in the content than people who’d gotten all emails so far.
However, Prusak found the difference in click increase somewhat inexplicable to some extent because click rates should by all rights remain evenly matched (the content is the same once someone’s opened it.)
The second test between house servers and the best performer of the two vendors (the one with the best click rate), was won by the vendor. “Compared to internal results, there was a 5% increase in opens and a 35% in clicks.”
After convincing an initially skeptical management team, Prusak began his official search for a higher-end vendor for a complete integration. He’s narrowed the field to three, and will be making his decision shortly.
(Note: If you are a sales rep for an ESP Prusak has not contacted, please do NOT contact him. He’s not interested and a deluge of sales calls are sorry payback for graciously offering your story to MarketingSherpa. Thank you.)
Useful links related to this article:
Creative samples from RESPeRATE’s email campaigns
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/resperate/study.html
Sender Score Certified - the email certification service Prusak tested:
http://www.senderscorecertified.com/
Vertical Response - The email service provider Prusak tested that got the highest score:
http://www.verticalresponse.com
Constant Contact - the email service provider Prusak tested that did better than in-house:
http://www.constantcontact.com
RESPeRATE
www.resperate.com
From Marketing Sherpa
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=28523
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