The Move to 'User-Centered' Web Design

There hasn’t been one single client we work with that isn’t finishing up either a web redesign or in the middle of one. What the heck? Is there some sort of web design sale going on out there? Doubtful.

More likely is that Web 2.0 is finally reaching critical mass. And while there is still debate on what exactly Web 2.0 is, it seems to include at its core: user-centered design.

There has been a monumental shift in web design, moving from the notion that the more content you can expose your visitors to the better, (probably born from the concept that more content got you better SE rankings) to almost completely the opposite: now only relevant content is displayed. It might be the same volume of content, but today’s web redesigns seem to focus on segmenting this content out into bite size relevant chunks. Much less is now much more.

While we often use the pyramid below to define where clients are on their email marketing optimization evolution, the same pyramid could easily be used to map where you are on your web design evolution as well.

So maybe web design starts to look like this:

Web 2.0 = Segmentation
Web 3.0 = One-to-One Content
Web 4.0 = Right Time, Right Content to the Right Person

For now just migrating from Batch and Blast to Segmentation on your website is a huge advantage in itself. The web has always been the perfect opportunity to get visitors to self-identify what they are actually interested in.

So as you redesign your website, make sure you consider the pyramid above. Start with segmentation:

Use Content Tags in Eloqua (together with web tracking scripts) to identify pages or sections on your site that will allow you to drive much more relevant conversations. Since you now know where Bob has been on your site, you can deliver messages to Bob that match his specific online interests.

Leverage Your Contact Us page to gather segmentation data. If there was ever a place for a form, it’s here. Some companies still just list a series of email addresses or a main phone number as their segmentation method, but instead of just listing things like CONTACT US AT: sales@companyxyz.com, info@companyxyz.com or service@companyxyz.com, use a form to gather this type of information so you can leverage it in scoring programs, contact groups etc.

Leverage Subscriptions as a way of identifying what types of content visitors would like to receive. Don’t just say “Subscribe to our Newsletter”. Instead drive them to a subscription preferences page that allows them to pick and choose the exact types of content they would like to receive.

Use “ Quick Forms” to allow visitors to sign up for content similar to what is displayed on the page. I wrote about this in a prior blog.

Conclusion
Whether you are in the middle of a web redesign or planning a future one, evaluate each web page and ask the question, “does this page help drive further implicit and or explicit segmentation?

 
Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about Website Optimzation Best Practices

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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Sales Rejected Leads - What Now?

Marketing Qualified Leads: (MQLs for short) are leads that have been through your scoring/nurturing program and have scored high enough to warrant sales interaction.

No matter how accurate your scoring program is, no matter how relevent your nurturing programs are, sales will still reject a portion of these MQLs.

We often get asked what to do with these sales rejected MQL leads.

The answer really depends on why sales is rejecting the MQL in the first place.

WHY IS SALES REJECTING THE LEAD?
Let’s assume that the reason for sales rejection is NOT that their score is artificially high, that it is not due to the scoring program itself being out of whack.

Let's also assume that sales has actually communicated directly with the lead and discovered a red flag, which has caused sales to reject the lead.

I have outlined some of the more common red flags and provided possible solutions to think about for each:

The lead is interested but doesn’t have the budget –

1. Add the lead to a Sales Nurturing Program that includes promotions/discount programs/specific product advantages, etc. (This would be a marketing-driven campaign but the nurturing emails appear to have come from the sales rep, using their specific signatures)
2. Option 1: Add them back into the main scoring program - Reset their implicit score to 0
3. Option 2: Add them to a ‘Sales Nurturing’ scoring program

The lead is interested but doesn’t have the authority to make the purchase –

1. Find out who the right decision maker is
2. Add them to the main scoring program
3. Reset the original lead’s implicit/explicit score to 0
4. Adjust the scoring criteria’s “job Role/Job Title’ accordingly
5. Add the original lead back into the main scoring program, allowing them to manage their email preferences

The lead is interested in your company but is not interested in the solution they were exposed to –

1. Discover the correct solution
2. Add the lead to a solution-specific nurturing campaign
3. Option 1: Add them back into the main scoring program - Reset their implicit score to 0
4. Option 2: Add them to a ‘Solution-Specific Nurturing’ scoring program

The lead is interested but now is not the right time –

1. Verify correct area of interest
2. Add the lead to a solution-specific nurturing campaign
3. Option 1: Add them back into the main scoring program - Reset their implicit score to 0
4. Option 2: Add them to a ‘Solution-Specific Nurturing’ scoring program

The lead is NOT interested in your company at all (this would be highly unlikely if the scoring program is set up correctly)

1. Ask if the lead would like to globally unsubscribe?
2. If yes, do so
3. If no, verify area of interest
4. Add the lead to a solution-specific nurturing campaign
5. Option 1: Add them back into the main scoring program - Reset their implicit score to 0
6. Option 2: Add them to a ‘Solution-Specific Nurturing’ scoring program

Note: All of the above implies that it would take multiple implicit activities to get rejected leads scored high enough to warrant sending to sales again. Obviously if all it takes is filling out 1 form to get them to an A1 score, there is a problem with the scoring.
Next Steps:

1. Sit down with sales and come up with your own top 5 reasons why your sales team typically rejects MQLs
2. Develop a process for managing each scenario

Conclusion:
What to do with rejected MQLs is a highly evolved problem to have actually. For most companies this isn't even on the radar. So congratulate yourself for having a better problem than most!
Proper care and continued nurturing of these rejected MQLs at the level of detail described above takes planning but may well be worth the effort, especially considering the investment marketing has already made in actually getting them to the MQL stage in the first place.
Maybe we should modify the popular mantra, "No Lead Left Behind" and expand it to "No MQL Lead Left Behind".

 
Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about Lead Nurturing Best Practices


Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant


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You had me at 'Submit'

If there is one area of focus that will almost always get you a quick win, it’s forms.

Most B2B forms exist for 2 reasons:

1. They feed new leads into the database
2. They gather additional information about existing leads

Hard to imagine a more powerful (and inexpensive) marketing tool. Yet the typical form drop-off rate is well over 70%, maybe higher. That leaves lots of room for improvement and measurable results.

Quick Win #1: Shorten your form – now shorten it again
A good rule of thumb is to limit the # of initial fields to only those most people won’t fib about.

According to Marketing Sherpa, your best 3 ‘truth fields’ are:

· Name
· Email Address
· Industry

And if Industry isn’t important to your segmentation strategy, remove it and only have 2 initial fields. Remember, we’re just trying to get a conversation going – tough to do without an email address.
Quick Win #2: Tell them what you already know about themNever ask for information you already have. Leverage Eloqua’s form field pre-population feature as much as possible. In one recent test, 76% of all form submissions came from pre-populated forms.

Quick Win #3: Make it a Fair ExchangeI wrote about this in a recent blog. The concept is this: # of form fields = value of asset. Asking for 15 fields for a General Industry White Paper isn’t a fair exchange.

Quick Win #4: Get rid of the RESET buttonAccording to some reports, as many as 22% are still using this legacy button. Get rid of it and you should see a definite lift in form submissions.

Quick Win #5: Try making all fields optionalYea, I know this is a scary one but in one study, registration form submissions increased 15.38% when prospects were told registration was not required.

If you’re looking to make an immediate impact on ROI, I can’t think of a faster, easier and more cost-effective area of focus than your forms.

BTW: Don’t forget to benchmark your current form drop-off rates so you can track your success.

 
Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about Form Optimization Best Practices

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant
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Marketing Stimulation

Our tolerance of and need for stimulation has definitely increased over the years.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that TV shows realized they were losing the attention of the audience, so they began to move toward much shorter camera shots. The average shot went from maybe 10 to 15 seconds all the way down to about 1-2 seconds. Then the camera got jittery to add even more stimulation. Still this doesn’t seem to be enough.

I’ve noticed lately that both my 11-year-old son and my 14-year-old daughter cannot JUST watch TV. They actually get bored, even with jittery 1-second scenes.

They now need to be on their laptops while watching TV at the same time to be stimulated. It’s astonishing to watch. Yet they seem to have full retention of the TV show and full retention of what they are doing on the computer all at the same time.

The other night I walked into my 18 year old’s room and saw him holding the house phone on one ear talking to a friend, a headset on the other ear talking to fellow online Call of Duty gamers in the heat of battle, all while text messaging his girlfriend on his mobile phone. As a baby boomer I would probably blow up trying to do this. For kids it seems second nature.

How will we stimulate the next generation? Might we end up sending our marketing messages 140 characters at a time? Or by then will it be down to 4 characters at a time -- and jittery?

P.S. By then YouTube, Twitter and Facebook will all have merged and will be called, "You Twit Face". (courtesy of Conan O'Brian).

 
Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about the new B2B Marketing Ecosystem

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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The End of an Era

According to Sirius Decisions, B2B adoption of marketing automation systems will expand dramatically over the next five years, from less than 10% in 2005 to more than 50% by 2015.

While that’s great news for my career, does this mean that 50% of marketers will still not have evolved beyond Batch & Blast in 2015? God, I hope not.

The fact that you are reading this post means you have already evolved. Congratulations!

However, for those who fully intend on staying at the ‘homo erectus’ stage of their marketing evolution, allow me to offer my entries for the renaming of 'Batch and Blast' to something more relevant:

• Send and Mend
• Spray and Pray
• Gun and Done
• Spam and Ran
• Launch and Lunch
• Deliver and Quiver

If you have any others to add to this list, by all means, please comment. I'd love to add them.
P.S. I’m hoping this will speed up the inevitable extinction of an era.

 
Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about the new B2B Marketing Ecosystem

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

5 Rules for Effective Testimonial Use

In researching for this post I laughed when I saw this article: “How to write really believable testimonials!” Yikes – isn’t that an oxymoron? It’s no wonder we’ve become so suspicious!

Rule #1
Don’t fake them. We can tell.

Rule #2a
If you can’t get permission to use it, don’t just leave their name off. Even if it is real, leaving the name off makes it immediately fake.

Rule 2b:
Even worse, don’t just sign the testimonial. –CEO, Energy Company – [FAKE, FAKE, FAKE, FAKE…]

Rule #3
Don’t use it just because you have it.

“I thought your product did a good job.”
-Ernie Mattox, Pensacola , FL.

Wow, that would make me run out and buy it – NOT.

Rule #4
Use testimonials sparingly and strategically. If you have a bunch of testimonials on your website, keep in mind that their value tends to get diminished by quantity. Instead of posting them everywhere, ONLY post them on pages that are likely to cause anxiety – pages like form submits or shopping cart pages (thank you Marketing Experiments).

Rule #5
Make sure the testimonial is relevant. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen testimonials for product A on a Product B page.

It’s one thing when you say how great you are. But when someone else says how great you are (and it’s true, and you have their permission, and they are used sparingly. and they are relevent) that’s gold!

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

Successful Viral Marketing Tips

When viral marketing works, literally millions of new potential customers get exposed to you. It’s literally crowds spreading the word to other crowds on your behalf (hmm, that might make a good name for an eMarketing Blog :)

But unless your viral marketing campaign is exceptionally funny, exceptionally irreverent or exceptionally unique you won’t get that kind of volume. Oh but wait, there is a workaround!

2 years ago I helped create a heartwarming video honoring Mothers. It didn’t use flashy, expensive video. We hired a writer to create the story and I put it together using stock photos and stock music. It was launched 1 week prior to Mother’s Day and within 7 days it had spread to being watched and forwarded to well over 1 million people! It continued to spread long after Mother’s Day was over. So what made this viral campaign so successful?

• It leveraged a well-known occurrence (in this case Mother’s Day)
• The content was emotionally stirring enough to warrant forwarding it to others

You can watch the Mother’s Day video here:

Here are some exceptional tips and tricks to help make your viral marketing a huge hit!

Leverage Well-known Occurrences

• Leverage current news events. If you had done a viral campaign somehow tied to the Swine flu outbreak, can you imagine the volume of traffic you would have gotten? Whenever there is a major news story that you can somehow relate to your company, jump on it immediately with a viral campaign. Riding the coat tails of “in the spotlight” media exposure is a free ride to success.
• Leverage Major Holidays. Mother’s Day was a great holiday to launch this viral campaign because it is so cross-cultural. Celebrate your company’s independent thinking by leveraging Independence Day. Showcase how easy your product is to use by leveraging Labor Day. You get the idea.
• Leverage well-known Dates: Does your company provide tax services/software? April 15th comes to mind. Does your product save time? Leverage Daylight Savings time. Milestones in history are also great viral campaign accelerators. Is your product innovative? Leverage the anniversary of the Wright Brother’s first flight. Be creative.
  
  

Don’t Sell Anything

The kiss of death for any viral campaign. The whole purpose of a viral campaign is to get others to spread your brand, not for you to tell everyone how great you are. Still there are ways to do both. Here is a great example:

Blendtec makes hi-end blenders ($1,000). So how do you get consumers to buy such an expensive blender? You leverage viral marketing showing how indestructible they are. The now famous “Will it Blend” series shows what happens to iPhones, marbles, even a crowbar when put in the BlendTec blender. If you go on Youtube and search for “will it blend” you’ll see all kinds of things that have been chewed up in this blender. Not only are they funny but they PROVE how well-built these blenders are. Some of these have had over 4 million views! The series has become so successful that some companies are now paying BlendTec to chew up their products (Nike shoes for example). Who would have ever thought a viral campaign would evolve into its own revenue stream! Now that’s real ROI!

If You Can’t Be Funny Then Leverage Babies and Puppies

Once we realized how successful the Mother’s Day viral campaign was, we quickly built a Father’s Day version and launched it the week before Father’s Day. It didn’t see the same kinds of success as the Mother’s Day version, which leads me to believe that (and I could be completely wrong here as I have no factual data to back this up) that women tend to feed heartfelt viral campaigns more than men. IF this is the case then leverage babies and puppies. It is the viral campaigns that put a smile on your face that are the most successful. If you can’t be funny, then be as heartfelt as possible. Try and replicate the feelings we all get when we meet babies or puppies.

Above All, Be Entertaining

Think about the things you forward to other people. Aren’t they typically something you found entertaining? If you use this as your main objective you will find success with your viral campaigns.

To prove my point, check out last week’s most popular viral campaigns (according to Ad Age):

What do sheep have to do with Samsung’s LED TVs? Find out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3qvJgY9XQI

What do kid’s eyebrows have to do with Cadbury chocolate? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVblWq3tDwY

TMobile Makes you want to dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM

Ray-Ban uses a chameleon to showcase sunglass colors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMT1FLzEn9I

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant