Posts Tagged eBrand Media
eBrand Media shares site redesign tips that will increase conversion rates
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
You’re spending real money driving traffic to your website but what kind of results do you have to show for it? Are your visitors leaving the site quickly? Are people abandoning their shopping cart before they’ve ordered? Are you having difficulty identifying the problems?
The industry standard conversion rate is 3%, which means that 97% of the traffic to a website isn’t sticking. Of course there are a number of reasons why this may be so, but most commonly, we’ve discovered that the majority of sites we’ve worked with, and that numbers in the thousands, are impediments to, rather than facilitators of sales.
An e-commerce site shouldn’t be a challenge for the customer, no matter the size of the product array. It shouldn’t be a spook house of dead-ends, false staircases and hidden doors. A basic understanding of the psychology of the online shopper; their interests, attitudes, opinions, and behavior, along with a concession to the fact that the internet is a super highway where people are searching and scanning quickly would lead to better site design. It’s important to understand what makes your audience tick, click, and stick.
We all suffer from a form of cultural ADD which means that we’re restless. The mouse, and better computer hardware, gives us the ability to move and groove from site to site. Take a look at your site, does it make it easy for a guest to find and get what they’re looking for? Or is the shopping process a series of frustrating friction points and irritants?
Click on the “Continue Reading” link to find a case study, shared with us by one of our partners, where one company increased their conversions with a simple redesign.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Website Optimization, eBrand Media on April 9th, 2009
eBrand Media uses seven proven strategies to heighten e-mail marketing efficiency
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
E-mail marketing is still one of the most powerful marketing, and relationship management, tools available. Even if you’re already inlcuding e-mail marketing as an important part of your media plan, I think, you’ll find the information contained in this blog to be of great interest.
SUMMARY: If your marketing team is forced to do more with less, consider tweaking your email strategy and expanding it into other areas. Below we’ve outlined 7 strategies that come directly from Case Studies and how-to articles.
Strategy #1: Use best practices and basic tests
In short — the basics work. Before expanding your emailing marketing to other areas, make sure that it is strong. Follow the industry’s best practices and test continually.
Applying the basics to an unrefined strategy can yield significant results. Erick Barney, VP Marketing, Motorcycle Superstore, related that sentiment after getting a reliable analytics system to measure and segment email.
Here are a few changes his team made:
o Scrubbing the list – removing names that bounced three consecutive emails increased deliverability by 30% after just five sends.
o Frequency – the team previously mailed once a month and tested more frequent sends, up to once a week. They eventually settled on a twice-a-month send, which boosted revenue over 100%.
o Day of week – the team found that the best days to send promotional emails were Mondays and Tuesdays to give them the most amount of time before hitting the Saturday brick wall.
o Subject lines – benefit-oriented subject lines worked best, and complimentary shipping outperformed the “lowest price guaranteed” phrasing.
o Segmenting the list – the team identified eight customer segments to whom they would send customized emails. Open rates doubled (38.6% from 18.5%), and clickthrough rates more than tripled (20.6% from 6.2%).
Posted by Tom Polanski in E-mail marketing, eBrand Media on March 6th, 2009
eBrand Media counts ten trends transforming marketing measurements
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
I found this article in our library, and thought you’d find it interesting. There are at least 10 mega-trends that are collectively transforming media and marketing measurements as we know them:
1. Digital network adoption. Mass adoption of the Internet and digital networks is fundamental, if obvious. Their impact on how we share and manage information is now perhaps the most significant influence on the evolution of metrics, among all that follow.
2. Attention erosion. Our networked society has resulted in massive increases in consumer choice and, from a marketer perspective, an erosion of attention. Many economists postulate that we’re undergoing a transition away from an economy based on shelf space to one based on attention scarcity. From a measurements perspective, there are two major implications: first, there is a growing demand by marketers to tap into measurements to embrace this shift. Second, many data collection and measurement methodologies–such as surveys–are susceptible to the very same attention scarcity. In market research circles, this is often referred to as the “continuing drop in panel participation and response rates.”
3. Speed of measurement. The near-real-time intelligence delivery that characterized the Bloomberg terminal is permeating nearly all facets of marketing measurements. Even if measurements are not delivered instantaneously in a slick, colorful dashboard, the expectation of faster data and actionable insights is growing. Speed is a competitive advantage.
4. Democratization of data and analytics. There was once a time when access to vast piles of market-research data and processing power was contingent upon huge budgets. While that’s still true in many cases, digital networks have made more data more accessible–even sometimes to the point of open-source or free. An interesting manifestation is the growth of free metrics services like Alexa, Google Trends and BlogPulse to understand Web behaviors. These services are not heavy-duty market-intelligence tools, but nonetheless are valuable, directionally significant and influencing perceptions and decisions around the things they report. Don’t forget Google Analytics and Salesforce.com, which are offering low-cost marketing and CRM dashboards that any company can implement overnight. (Disclosure: BlogPulse is an R&D platform and demonstration tool from my employer.)
5. Observational measurements. In digital networks, people often passively emit both anonymous and identifiable gestures, whether it’s visiting a Web site, programming a TiVo, commenting in a public discussion forum or a host of other activities. Observational research techniques–sometimes called digital ethnography–are not a replacement for more overt data-collection methods, like face-to-face surveys, but they are an important addition when attempting to obtain natural, unprompted insights into the behavior of customers and prospects.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Trend Tracker, eBrand Media on March 5th, 2009
eBrand Media shares how to increase conversions by assuring customers.
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
eBrand Media has always been a strong proponent of keeping a security symbol in the homepage “hero” spot. Every site guest arrives with a degree of anxiety and their anxiety level increases exponentially as they move further down the shopping funnel towards the cart. Every friction point should be removed for the purpose of bringing form and function together to create an online store that is positive, easy to navigate, pleasant to be in and conducive to frequent and extended visits.
Clarity, clarity, clarity, and if you think you’ve given enough clarity, give some more.
The prospect of identity theft has led the majority of online users–53 percent–to stop giving out personal information online, according to a study released by Consumer Reports WebWatch.
Additionally, 30 percent of the consumers surveyed reported reducing their overall use of the Web, while 25 percent say they no longer make online purchases, according to WebWatch. The report, “Leap of Faith: Using the Internet despite the Dangers,” was based on a survey of 1,501 online adults.
Even those who continued to shop online reported taking precautions. Fifty-four percent of online shoppers said they now are more likely to read a site’s privacy policy or user agreement than in the past–while 29 percent say they shop online less frequently than before.
The results show a growing concern about identity theft, said Beau Brendler, director of WebWatch. “There’s been a pretty steady drumbeat over the last three years about it,” he said. In addition, the wave of headlines about security breaches at databases has led consumers to rethink how to best protect their personal data, he said.
A previous study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project also revealed that consumers had changed their online behavior, partly because of security concerns. The Pew study, “Spyware,” concluded that fears of spyware and adware had driven 48 percent of Web users to stop visiting certain Web sites.
In keeping with this theme we’d to share a valuable case study with you that we came across in our virtual library, obtained from a leading marketing journal.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Growing a Business, Home Based Business, Small Business, Start a Business, eBrand Media on March 3rd, 2009
Other aspects of the Facebook phenomenon
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
Over the years we’ve compiled a large database of contacts who did not respond to our attempts to engage them regarding our services. Last month we decided to try and connect with these, “not viables”, through the social media site, Facebook. We weren’t expecting much. However, much to our surprise, 98.2% of those business contacts, those who already had Facebook pages, people who wouldn’t return an e-mail or a voicemail, accepted our invitation to be “friends”; thereby allowing us access to intimate details about their lives, families, and friends.
To be clear; we didn’t, and still don’t, try to hide the fact that we’re marketers; it’s right there on our Facebook page under the “Info” tab. We were, and still are, stunned by the positive response to our invitations. Why would they do that? Why invite us into their private worlds when they wouldn’t, otherwise, give us the time of day?
Maybe people just automatically respond to a “friend” request. There’s a likelihood that the branding process we initiated with our repeated attempts to contact them achieved enough of a familiarity where that person felt they probably knew us. I suspect that there’s no easy answer. However, Facebook has succeeded in creating a positive experience which, in turn, breeds trust. Another key driver may be the need, particularly when times are tough, to feel good about ourselves. Membership in a community and the accumulation of lots of friends, who without fail will post positive comments about our pictures, and musings, is a way to do that.
Speaking of which; we’ve yet to see a negative comment from, or directed to, any of the hundreds of people who are now in our circle of “friends”. This attests to the power of “Social Proof” which means we determine what is correct by what other people think is correct. The downside is that, as Walter Lippman put it, “Where all are thinking alike, no one is thinking very much.”
Posted by Tom Polanski in Ethics, Opinions on February 18th, 2009