An Easy Way to Increase CTR by 55%?

An interesting SMB study recently released from GetResponse revealed up to a 55% increase in promotional email CTR if social media links were also present in the email.

In fact the more social media links you include, the higher the click through rate increases, according to the study.

3 social media icons or more: 11.20% average CTR

2 icons: 9.30% average CTR

1 icon: 8.7% average CTR

No icons: 7.20% average CTR

So going from no social media link icons (7.2% CTR) to adding 3 social media icon links (11.20% CTR) actually increases average click thru rates by 55%, again according to the study.

The study also found that when adding just one social media link:

Twitter offered the highest CTR: 10.2%

Facebook: 9.1%

MySpace: 8.7%

LinkedIn: 7.20%

Digg: 5.30%

(Hmmm...the fact that LinkedIn was so low tells me this study was likely from SMB B2C companies)

Also what the study didn’t mention was whether or not the increase in CTR was actually caused by recipients clicking the social media links themselves, thereby causing the uplift in CTR.

Either way, it seems to be a likely candidate to do some quick A/B testing yourself, especially since marketing automation vendors such as Eloqua provides such a easy way to add these icons to your emails.

I’d love to hear any metrics from any testing you do or have already done in this area.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about Social Media Marketing

Steve Kellogg

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

-Join me on: Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Photo from ymedialabs.com

Everyone Wants a Discount!

How many times have we bought something and then realized we could of gotten it cheaper? The avoidance of this pain and embarrassment is what typically fuels our need for discounts, often more than the need to actually save money.

In B2B, many sales reps rely on discounts near the end of the sales cycle as a way of getting stalled leads to take action. For example, it’s the end of the quarter, they are close to making quota but need more sales on the books quickly to make their bonus.

Many marketers however realize that as soon as the “D” word is mentioned, it immediately changes the game. The buying decision process moves from a pragmatic, long-term needs-based evaluation, to a short-term emotional decision. And while the sales rep is happy he/she's made the sale, C-levels need certain margins to keep the Exec Team happy. Isn’t there a way to make the sale and keep the margins higher?

SiriusDecisions recently offered this advice:

•  Avoid turning to financial levers and discounts too quickly and look at “information voids” which may be causing deals to stall.
• Try leveraging tools such as online savings calculators, gap templates and feature/functionality side-by-side comparisons as stimulus offers, which successfully match the needs of the prospect.

By delivering these types of assets at the right time, you will help satisfy the emotional needs of the lead by proving that your product/service will solve their problem and eliminate their pain. If you don’t have these assets, create them ASAP.

Eliminating long-term pain (right solution) is far more valuable than eliminating short-term pain (right price) and the better your assets are at communicating this, the further down the funnel your leads will go, and usually the more loyal they will become.

BTW: Offering a discount too soon is often more harmful as it raises several concerns to a potential buyer:

1.  “I don’t even know if I want your product/service yet, why are you already offering me a discount?”
2. “Now that you’ve given me a discount, what else can I get?"

Apple doesn’t do discounts. You want an iPad? iPhone? MacBook Pro? You will pay retail for it – but it offers a proven long-term solution.

Apple has done a great job training consumers that retail is the price everyone pays. There are no discounts to be had. Still, despite this, Apple managed so sell over 2 million iPads in less than the first 2 months since its release.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about lead nurturing

 Steve Kellogg

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

-Join me on: Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Images by: http://fordesigner.com

There's No Such Thing as a "Pretty Good" Alligator Wrestler

While this statement is a great starting point for many topics, if you define the alligator as Data and the wrestler as Data Management, you see where this post is going. You either have really good data management or you live with bad data.

We have found that customers that leverage data quality tools generate an average of 260% more leads per month.

Bad Data Hurts You
Like the wrestler who never really perfected his technique, you can get seriously hurt by bad data. And it’s not just the reporting that gets fouled up, it’s the loss of confidence in those reports, and ultimately the loss of confidence in you to provide accurate information that does the real damage. Once trust in data is lost it is extremely difficult to regain it. You typically have to prove yourself over and over again before any confidence returns.

It’s Not Bad Data, Just Bad Processes
Salespeople fill in fields in their CRM with any answer, just because they are required. Form fields are open text fields instead of pick lists, so anything goes.

6 Steps to “Really Good” Data Management
After surveying other colleagues both internally and externally, (thank you Astadia and Eloqua) the following Best Practices were identified:

Step 1: Establish a Standardized Data Set
Collectively establish and agree on a list of standard data fields. What fields do you consistently need to capture? Once you establish your master set of fields, make a Data Dictionary out of it. Convert to pick lists wherever possible – avoid open text fields, since there is no way to consistently score, report or segment on them. Spread the word that this is the Standard Data Set.

Step 2: Enforce the Standardized Data Set at every Acquisition Source
Review every data acquisition source and convert the process to the Standardized Data Set dictionary. Forms, list uploads, you name it.

Step 3: Append Incomplete Data fields
It’s hard to target a marketing campaign to specific Job Functions if the field is only 10% complete. Append those fields that are important for segmentation and/or scoring first. Then focus on filling in the remaining blanks.

Step 4: Build a “Data Washing Machine” to clean existing bad data
Normalize as many fields as possible. Start with all the open text fields you always wanted to leverage for scoring and/or segmentation but couldn’t.

Step 5: Merge and Purge
Clean up your duplicate records and build a process that requires a search for existing records prior to creating new ones.

Step 6: Keep the New Data, Discard the Old Data
Aging plays an important role in overall DB health. According to Eloqua, Lists older than 1 year have a decrease of 25% in open rates and 12% in CTR. Create active and inactive contact groups and treat appropriately.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about data standardization best practices

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

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5 Lessons in Subscription Management

The #1 reason people unsubscribe is because they receive irrelevant emails. So assuming you have your segmentation in place, the next step is to focus on subscription management. Rather than just having subscribers globally opt out, providing the option to edit their own communication preferences is considered a best practice.

But what categories should you offer? Preferences by industry, by product type, by type of offer (newsletters, events, product updates, etc)?

Lesson 1:
I’ve seen subscription preference pages that first ask for Job Role, Industry, # of employees, etc. Understand that “Manage Your Preferences” is different than “Update Your Profile”. And while trying to combine both on the same page is very tempting, it usually results in a very busy and often overwhelming form. If it takes longer than 15-20 seconds for someone to update their preferences, you run the risk of subscribers simply checking the “Unsubscribe from All” checkbox instead.

Lesson 2:
Offer an easy way to manage their preferences AND/OR update their profile, but not on the same page. Here’s an example of helping subscribers understand the options:

The one suggestion I might make to the screenshot above is to consider changing the label: “Update Your Profile” to something like “Update Your Career Profile”. This reduces potential confusion as to the difference between Update Your Profile and Update Your Preferences, which could easily be construed to mean the same thing.

Lesson 3:
Make it easy to update both. Avoid the back button. Include a link on the Preference page to also update their career profile. Add a link on their career profile page to also update their subscription management preferences. Back button = bad. Same page link =good.

Lesson 4:
Deciding which subscription preferences to offer depends on the types of content you actually send. If you sell very few products/services you might break it down simply by type; Newsletters, Events, Webinars, Product Promotions, etc.

For those with multiple products or solutions or verticals, you’ll need to identify which core segments you typically send different content to and break it down that way. Is your content geo based? Industry based? Solution based? Product based? A good rule of thumb is to mirror the main menu options you have on your website. Is your site broken down by Geo? Solution? Product Type? Industry? Managing preferences in parallel with website navigation helps keep things in parallel.

Lesson 5:
Don’t use “Update Your Career Profile” as your primary driver to obtain/update explicit information. Keep in mind most people will never see this page unless they are about to unsubscribe and stumble upon this as they update their preferences. Better to gather this type of information through progressive profiling.

This doesn’t mean you can’t ask for additional information on this page. But make it optional, pre-populate as many fields as you can and wherever possible make the fields picklists. Finally make it clear why filling in the fields will benefit them. Try using a headline such as: “Updating your career profile helps us deliver more relevant and timely information.”

SUMMARY
Apple’s new iPad is the latest device your customers can now use to receive your emails. Together with iPhones and other smart phones, these devices have become so personalized that “invading their space” takes on a whole new meaning. People are becoming much less tolerant of non-relevant emails.

Making it easy for them to establish their preferences reduces the dreaded global unsubscribe. And since they’re already in “updating” mode, making it easy for them to also update their career profile is often an easier sell, as long it’s crystal clear what’s in it for them.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about website optimization best practices

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

-Join me on: Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Segmenting the Zoo

Photo by E.G. Bucknell

Let’s say you sell wild animal food and you have a new line of vitamin-enriched foods to announce. Your target market includes all the animals in zoos.

Obviously you wouldn’t send the same announcement out to the whole database. Lions will be interested in learning about the benefits that pertain to them, while flamingos will be interested in relevant benefits to them.

So while you could send a completely different message to each of the 1,857 different animals, is this practical? How do you decide which segments are worth creating and targeting?

 Segmentation Best Practices:

Does your segment meet all of the following criteria?

• Is this segment possible to produce? Do I have (or can I get) the implicit/explicit data to even capture them?
• Is this segment accessible? Do I have their contact information?
• Is this segment worthy of a different message than others?
• Is this segment fairly stable? Do the members move in and out of this segment quickly or do they remain fairly dormant?
• Is the segment substantial enough to be profitable?

If the answer is NO for any of the above, targeting your message to this group is probably not worth it.

Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about marketing segmentation best practices

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant
-Join me on:  Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Social Media: The Next Big Content Discovery Tool?

• 80% of companies are now using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees. 

• YouTube is now the 2nd largest search engine in the world. It is also fast becoming the World’s largest product review site.

• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 brands are links to user-generated content.

• 78% of consumers trust peer-to-peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertisements

SEARCH is a significant reason to adopt a formal social media strategy.

In fact in the near future, social media my drive an entire paradigm shift in the way we conduct search. Content may begin to find us through social media networks, rather than the other way around.

For the complete story, check out this enlightening and entertaining Social Media Revolution video on YouTube.

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

Steve Kellogg

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

Would You Buy a Ferarri if You Lived on a Dirt Road?

In a blog by Brian Steel posted back in 2008, he asked this same question.

2 years later, this is still a very relevant question to ask. The point being that your “Ferrari” (Marketing Automation tool, CRM tool, BI Tool, etc), once configured will look gorgeous and powerful in your driveway, but if you want to get the most out of it, you’ll have to:

1. Insist the team really learns how to drive it (Training)
2. Pave the dirt road (Develop new processes and infrastructure to support/service it)
3. Have an up-to-date map of where to go (Discover the best destinations that will make the road trips both successful and satisfying)

If you’ve never raced before, take advanced driving classes (training). If you’ve never paved a road, hire a reputable paving company (consulting). If you need a map, hire an experienced guide (consulting).

It’s all part of “Ferrari” ownership.

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

Steve Kellogg

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