The "Thank You" Page

Continuing the original discussion, excerpt:

I’m having a hard time swallowing your assertion about the “we don’t want to work for your business” thing. BRANDING hard-to-get and BEING hard-to-get seems to be a fine line that for most businesses (even hoity-toity ones) marks the difference between success and obscurity. BEING inaccessible goes against the goal of for-profit business doesn’t it? Even if a business seeks to brand itself as exclusive and expensive, its goal is still to slam as much of that high-end business through the doors as it can in order to maximize profit (I’m of course exclusing the hobbyist or anyone with goals other than business growth).

Great points about artificial and real scarcity!!

Let me clarify my thinking RE “goal is still to slam as much of that high-end business through the doors as it can in order to maximize profit” – In the case of the “hoity-toity,” I would expect a very real inversion in medium- to long-term profitability if they do in fact move more units than what allows them to hold on to the exclusivity image. In other words, they’ll kill the brand.

I know I’m stating the obvious here, but my point is that such companies would figure out where the inflection point lies, and indeed limit the number of units sold.

For example, they’ll release a fixed number of units, e.g., a limited edition of an automobile. I expect they would pick that number in concert with the price point (predicting where demand and supply curves would meet, given a brand-safe number of units to be sold). They can also do this in several rounds of releases, as they have with cell phones and game consoles–creating temporary scarcity. Of course, a high price point itself can much of the “exclusivity” work.

From the optimization point of view, once the above parameters are established, you can still optimize for maximum revenue. You can also test into the right price point and the “limit” of a limited edition.

Mitch Rezman wrote a comment in a discussion on Marketers on Twitter Linkedin group:

I thought I was beginning to understand Twitter – but I don’t. I follow 2000 people. I see people following tens of thousands of people – even with software how can you pull meaningful messages from those you’re following without devoting your day to Twitter?

@Mitch Rezman – I am assuming you don’t actually follow 2000 people. :) You’d probably need several hours a day just to make sure that you read their tweets and linked content.

Twitter and Facebook have created a new vocabulary that’s sometimes at odds with the common vernacular. This is not just a problem of language, it’s a reflection of gaps in the technology’s ability to meet human needs.

I think it’s where we get a glimpse of future social networking tools that will solve these inconsistencies. In other words (and rather unimportantly), this is going to be Twitter’s undoing. :)

Original URL: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/analytics-testing/focus-groups.html

Experienced researchers, including those that regularly work with focus groups, know how difficult it is to orchestrate a focus group study that would produce realistic predictions. … >> more

A cloudy crystal ball
When you are developing a new product, you have little choice. My team was recently involved with a Web design company whose client was a major CPG (consumer packaged goods) manufacturer that was rolling out a wholly new product category. … >> more

Would you buy a product that doesn’t exist with pretend money you don’t have?
This experience underscored the fundamental problem with using focus groups to decide what people are willing to buy. When it comes to purchase decisions, we cannot expect consumers to be able to imagine a buying situation so perfectly that their make-believe decision would be identical to a real-life one. … >> more

Real time, real-world data
Rather than ask these people to imagine a purchase situation, we can observe them making an actual purchase. … >> more

Do vs. If
Behavioral data is necessarily aggregated above the level of individual preferences and sentiment. … >> more

Making the business case for testing
On Wednesday, we’re devoting an entire web clinic to not just our latest online marketing optimization discoveries, but a behind-the-scenes look at how one marketing manager implemented a culture of testing across her enterprise organization. … >> more

Tom Slage started a discussion on MarketingExperiments Optimization Linkedin group:

Do you have to sacrifice the best web conversion optimization techniques when promoting a “distinguished” brand?
Some decision makers feel they must maintain a certain gravity on the web, meaning they steer away from conversion optimization techniques like email opt ins, simplified design, strong calls to action, etc. Certain of my campaigns involve sending users to landing pages that have a LOT of text and don’t lead the user’s eye to the clear CTA. Is that necessary? Must you lose some of the gravity (which seems to equal verbosity) to create a highly converting web presence?

Great question, and I think it points to a theme that has developed over time around the science of optimization. I am asked numerous times at industry events and at clients’ offices about very narrow tactics, like “how many bullet points should we have in an email message.” Marketers are still looking for best practices, while the technology and past research allow us to do much better: come up with a solution that fits each situation uniquely. Sure, start with five bullet points, but test 3 and test 10. I don’t know which one would perform best, and more importantly, I can find a bunch of other problems with that email that are hurting the click-through rate far worse than the number of bullet points.

I think the situation you are describing is reasonable in the sense that a brand may well be built on this “we don’t want to work for your business” attitude. Some brands thrive on making it difficult to buy. So getting away from the specific tactics, I would look at the bigger picture, and first answer a simple, but critical question: What is the objective?

Is it (1) to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to buy the product? Then you need to optimize for the easiest possible process. Depending on the motivation level of the visitor, you may need to spend more or less effort communicating the value of the offer and logistics of the process to her.

However, if the objective is (2) not to get a sale, but to increase the appeal of an exclusive/esoteric brand, then the buy process isn’t what you should be optimizing. Again, depending on the motivation of the visitor, the focus is on communicating the value and meaning of the brand, or on specific lifestyle connections. // The brand doesn’t even need to be particularly exclusive or esoteric. It just needs to have quite a bit of cash behind it–a broad branding campaign can certainly work, but it can’t be as incrementally effective as, say, landing page optimization. To get to any effectiveness, a critical mass must be reached through significant effort and expense. That’s why Nike can afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on drilling “Just do it” into people’s heads, but the same campaign would make no sense on a $250k budget. Anyway, I digress. :) //

In both cases, the general optimization principles do apply, but apply for different objectives, and therefore tactics will be different.

Original URL: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/analytics-testing/social-media-measurement.html

The topic of social media measurement is almost as hot as the topic of social media. With only a few years of consistent data, we still remain in the shadow of the econometric models of the olden days, built for measuring the outcomes of PR and branding efforts.

The novelty and uncertainty of the field certainly haven’t stopped the burgeoning cottage industry of self-inaugurated gurus. This combination of ambiguity and hucksterism might scare off the ROI-driven marketer.

Now I am certainly not a social media marketing nay-sayer. Like most marketers, my gut tells me that there’s great opportunity here. However, the scientist in me demands evidence. And in business, evidence is ultimately in the ROI.

Do ROI and Social Media go together?
I was quite perplexed by one author’s argument that while social media marketing creates value, it may not deliver an ROI. … >> more

What Marketers Tend to Do

Using principal component analysis, he was able to paint a different picture from the more flat utilization frequency account. … >> more

ROI vs. non-ROI Metrics
Altogether, even though the non-ROI metrics are not all plotted next to each other, they stand in stark contrast to the more traditional and ROI-based ones. … >> more

Measure what matters most
What concerned me was how poorly some of the metrics that I would consider critical for marketers, like Leads Generated (for B2B) and Sales Conversion (for everyone) compared with measurements like Network Size and Sentiment, which haven’t proven to be predictors of bottom-line outcomes. … >> more

So how do you determine the ROI of social media?
In today’s live web clinic, MarketingSherpa’s Research Director, Sergio Balegno, will join me in discussing how the value of social media activities can be derived from bottom-line results, giving business-level meaning to intermediate metrics like Quality of Commentary. … >> more

Kate Shopper started a discussion on MarketingExperiments Optimization Linkedin group:

Web optimization best practices vs dynamic content… friend or foe?
My web optimization rules for maximum conversion would include a single call to action, as few distractions as possible (‘dont let your visitor think for himself’as Flint would put it)… My main objective of the site is to offer the visitor content relevant to them, keep them engaged and, when they are ready, push them through the buying cycle – with the ultimate goal of registration and lead score. This dynamic content may include relevant downloads, call to register for something really ‘hot’ or subscribe for updates about a specific topic etc…. ie negates minimizing distractions etc…. help?

Hi Kate. Both relevance and focusing your visitors on the smallest possible number of objectives will help increase performance.

Offering your visitors multiple ways of engaging with your company is not a bad thing. It just needs to be balanced against confusion created by competing objectives. A page may perform well with multiple calls to action (e.g., home pages necessarily have many CTAs), as long as it provides clear guidance to the visitor as to which CTA is the most appropriate in his/her situation.

This clarity can be established with enumerating the key ways to engage (e.g., “here are three ways you can search for products in our catalog”), prioritizing the CTAs visually and by allocating markedly different amounts of real estate (based on relative value of different visitor actions/clicks), and providing a smaller number of mutually exclusive self-selection links (e.g., “Oil&Gas Industry click here, Agriculture Industry click here, etc…”).

Fundamentally, the concept of “competing calls to action” is not equivalent to “unsupervised thinking.” If you can “supervise” your visitors’ thinking around multiple calls to action, you will help them engage with your site.

An excellent test would be to reduce the number of calls to action to ones that are most relevant, and calculating the resulting difference in performance. It will be critical to establish the right KPIs, and especially to understand the relative value of different visitor actions (e.g., is a download twice as valuable as a registration for a webinar?). Hope this helps!

Original URL: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/internet-marketing-news/facebook-groups.html

The greatest social media challenge marketers say they face is getting their target audience to engage and participate. According to MarketingSherpa’s 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report, 64% of marketers consider it a very important challenge to achieving social marketing objectives. … >> more

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a chance to send email
The knee-jerk digital marketing tactic is: hey, let’s send a note to all of our friends. … >> more

For a true friend, look a little deeper than your list
I would suggest deeper-reach strategies, starting from understanding your target audience and getting involved in related Facebook Groups. … >> more

Understand what Facebook functionality will naturally (and free of charge) carry your message
In social media in general (and on Facebook in particular), retention and new member generation are very tightly related. … >> more

Original URL: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/research-topics/email-marketing-optimization.html

As I try to be informative and give back to the Twittersphere, one of my email-related tweets was picked up by a Florida marketing agency that services several metros nationwide. With our Email Optimization clinic series underway, I was more than happy to provide an analysis of a broad-spectrum campaign that they had planned. Luann, their president, was as excited as I was about making a Twitter connection. … >> more

The fundamentals: Optimizing thought sequences
In optimization, our objective is not to create better design or copy. Our objective is to affect different thought sequences, and design and copy are our tools. A useful way to examine the thought sequences we need to address is through three simple questions that arise in the mind of the email recipient immediately, whether consciously or unconsciously: … >> more

Communicating Efficiently: Make it an easy read
The body of the email appears singularly focused on its graphic design and a clever visual way to represent what you do. … >> more

Communicating Value: Make it clear why you are the best choice
Again, there is no real headline here. … >> more

Communicating Action: Make it clear what to do next
You don’t want to leave this up to the recipients to figure out. … >> more