Author Archives:
Case study: Increased Email Marketing Activity Drives Online Sales Up 58%
Did you know that more than 294 billion emails are sent daily?
How many unread emails did you wake up to this morning?
Email marketing is big business. In 2011, email marketing brought in an average of $40 for every $1 spent and this year, US retailers are expected to send more than 258 billion emails.
The ROI of Email Marketing
Well, a recent survey held by MarketingSherpa asked participants to estimate the return on investment (ROI) from their email marketing campaigns. The response was incredible, with marketers claiming an average ROI of 119%.
Schoffa, one of Finland’s fastest growing retailers for men and women’s dress shirts have seen their online sales rapidly increase since implementing a more frequent email marketing strategy.
Email marketing is a channel all marketers use, yet as much as 97% of businesses get it wrong. It’s common for brands to send one email to their entire subscriber list with a link to their home page and then expect sales to flood in. This is not the best approach to take and ultimately leads to a failed sales channel.
Email marketing is the most preferred channel
In April 2012, I wrote a blog post titled “Is email marketing still relevant in a world full of social networks?”. Due to increased social media marketing spend and an increase in the number of Facebook success stories, I came to the conclusion that email marketing was on its way out of the online marketing matrix.
I was wrong. In fact, a few months later, research came out that email was the most preferred method of marketing communication with more than 77% of consumers choosing email marketing as the preferred method of contact from a brand. The second most preferred method was direct mail with only 9%.
Lessons learned from the top 10 converting websites
One of the most insightful white papers I have ever ready is the Top 10 Converting Websites report from SeeWhy. The report explains why the top converting websites in the world are able to reach conversion rates of more than 35-40%! This is compared to the average conversion rate for an e-commerce site being 1-2%.
The reasons why sites could convert more visitors into customers include:-
- Provide excellent customer service
- Offer a wide range of products
- Focus on customer lifetime value
- Email marketing & Remarketing
By implementing the same strategy as Amazon, Office Depot and Pro Flowers (capturing the email address!), Schoffa was able to use email in a more strategic approach, which helped sales increase by more than 50%!
In the last 6 months of 2012, Schoffa sent 8 emails to their subscribers. During the first three months of 2013, Schoffa has sent out 14 emails. Your first response will be, how well are these emails performing?
The results of a sample of newsletters sent in in Q1 can be seen in the following table:
The statistics remain pretty consistent even though the frequencies has increased the subscriber base has grown.
What have we done differently?
- We now send out one email per week
- We send out the email on the same day and time each week
- The emails are more text based than image based
- The emails include a greeting and sign-off from the CEO
- The sender name is the CEO’s name
- The emails include multiple links to relevant sections on the website
The impact of frequent and personalized email marketing
The first quarter of the year has been exciting. Although the increased email marketing efforts were expected to produce great results, the overall performance has been beyond expectations. The results are as follows (compared to Q1 2012):
- Subscribers list has increased 31%
- Web traffic has increased 32%
- Online sales have increased 58%
- Average order value has increased by 245%
Capturing the email address of a web visitor is one of the first things you should focus on for your website. Once you have an email address, you can target more personalized offers to your reader, which results in higher customer satisfaction levels and increased profits. The days of ‘one-size-fits-all’ are long behind us and when implemented successfully, email marketing is quick, easy and highly effective!
How often do you send emails to customers? Do you think one email per week is too much?
Feel free to comment below.
If you enjoyed reading this post, you might also like:
How to Track Organic Keyword Goal Conversions in Google Analytics
Tracking revenue generated from each organic keyword is a common report ran by SEO’s for e-commerce stores. Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking is a powerful report that makes budget allocation a lot easier as you can see which channels generate revenue.
Lead generation websites are different. There is no on-site sale, no e-commerce tracking so therefore SEO’s need to be able to report the number of leads generated from their search efforts. The basic report in Google Analytics allows you to track conversion rate for any given keyword, but SEO’s also need to see which keyword generates the most leads by number, not a percentage. The following explains how to set-up a custom Organic Keyword Conversion Tracking Report that provides data on visits, organic searches, goal completions and goal conversion rate.
1. Goal Tracking In Google Analytics
Before creating this report, it is important to have goal tracking implemented. Without website goals, your analytics loses purpose. Whether your websites goals are sales, to capture leads or download a PDF product sheet, the goals of your website should reflect your overall business goals. Setting up goals will show you exactly how many goals were achieved but also how they were achieved and through which channels.
To create a filter, you can visit Admin > Account List > Analytics profile > Goals
The most common goal is URL destination. For example, if you want to track the number of newsletter sign-ups on your website, once the newsletter form is submitted, the “thank you” page URL is usually http://www.domain.com/thank-you. In this case, you would enter /thank-you and click save.
2. Setting Up The Keyword Conversion Tracking Report
To create the Organic Keyword Conversion report, you will need to visit Traffic Sources > Search > Organic and click Customize:
To create the report, you will need to add metrics to Report Content. The metrics you need to add are:
- Visits
- Goal Completions
- Goal Conversion Rate
- Organic Searches
Note: If you do not add ‘organic searches’, the report will include keywords from your paid search campaigns.
You will then need to add ‘keywords’ to the Dimension Drilldowns section (you can ignore ‘filters’).
You can now apply the Organic Keyword Conversion Tracking report to all profiles within your Google Analytics account and then click save.
3. Getting The Keyword Conversion Tracking Report Data
Once the report has been saved, the data will be presented.
The report will show keywords based on visits to the website. You can filter by goal completions and to view all keywords that convert, change rows from ‘10’ to ‘100’ found at the bottom of the page. As per usual, the report will automatically show data for the last 30 days.
4. Exporting The Keyword Conversion Tracking Report Into Excel
Once you have the data, you can then export the Keyword Conversion Tracking Report to Excel and filter the report by branded and non-branded converting keywords. You can also use this data to find any increases in organic leads and view the progress of your SEO efforts.
The Keyword Conversion Tracking Report is a simple yet powerful report you can create to showcase your SEO investment is paying off.
Do you have any tips for custom reports in SEO? Feel free to comment below.
How to create an organic keyword goal conversions report in Google Analytics Tweet this!
2013 advice from 7 world leading online marketing authorities
What will you focus on in 2013? We asked 7 online marketing authorities for their best tips. Here’s what they said.
 |
Brad Geddes | CertifiedKnowledge.org
|
 |
Rand Fishkin | SEOmoz
|
 |
Bryan Eisenberg | Best Selling Author
|
 |
Neil Patel | CrazyEgg & KISSmetrics
|
 |
Ben Jesson & Dr Karl Blanks | Conversion Rate Experts
|
 |
Stephen Pavlovich | Conversion Factory
|
 |
Linda Bustos | Get Elastic
|
What is your best marketing tip for 2013? Feel free to comment below.
Getting started with email remarketing campaigns
7 out of every 10 customers abandon their online purchases, resulting in over 300 billion dollars of lost E-Commerce sales each year. The top 5 reasons for abandoning are split between price and timing. If a visitor leaves the shopping cart and does not return within the first hour, the probability of them returning to complete the sale is reduced by 90%.
With 90% unlikely to purchase from your site within the first 60 minutes of leaving, this means you have a very small window of opportunity to make an impact. Executing an effective remarketing campaign is difficult and why only 26% of e-commerce sites remarket.
Remarketing to web visitors that abandon your shopping cart is at the top of US marketers activity list, according to E-Consultancy, One of the main reasons for this is a recent report from Forrester Research that found that remarketing emails can generate nearly 4 times more revenue and 18 times greater net profits compared with marketing using simply non-ntargeted mailings.
Shoppers that abandon your website are visitors that almost purchased from you. It’s no surprise that real time, personalized emails within the first hour at highly effective. The more personal and relevant the email campaign is, the more likely the shopper will convert.
Many shopping cart recovery emails under perform because they look either like generic promotional emails or automated messages. Based on research from SeeWhy and E-Consultancy, there is a formula to getting the best out of your remarketing campaigns. Here are five tips for effective email remarketing:
1. Send your email remarketing campaigns within the first hour of abandonment in order to keep your brand at the forefront of the customers mind. Remember, they almost bought from you.
2. Personalize and tailor each remarketing campaign to the abandoned shopperr. Address them by name and offer your support in helping the visitor purchase your product or service. They may have left due to a technical error and are in need of assistance.
3. Tell your customer when his/ her shopping cart will expire. Make it clear that you will save the product/ service and you are happy to keep it until X(eg. 30) days before you put it back on sale on the site.
4. Show which item is in the shopping cart to remind the abandoned shopper what they almost purchased. Provide a clear image of the product and support it with guest reviews within the email.
5. Make your call to action prominent and link directly to the saved shopping cart. You want your abandoned shopper to see where to click within the email and that they arrive at the shopping cart checkout page. Do not send your shopper to your home page. Make it as easy as possible.
As online marketers look to find new ways to generate traffic and sales, get ahead of your competition and implement remarketing. For best in class campaigns, each email sent will probably be your most profitable campaign, generating up to 100 times the return that you would expect from a regular email campaign.
How you seen a significant increase in conversion rate since implementing email remarketing? Please share your comments below.
Case Study: How CrazyEgg Heatmap & Overlay Reports Increased Conversion Rate by 51%
Softmedia, founded in 2003, is the world’s leading provider in penny auction software. On October 11th, they implemented CrazyEgg Analytics on the top five most visited web pages on their site. The goal was to identify areas for improvement on the website and increase lead generation.
CrazyEgg’s pricing is as low as $9 per month with a promise to “Increase your website’s conversion rate or revenues within the next 30 days… or your money back.”. With a low cost pricing model, Softmedia were happy to test the tool to see if conversion rate or revenue increased.
Theory
By visualizing problem areas on the website, we can remove distractions and increase form completion rates.
Findings
Twelve days after implementing CrazyEgg, Softmedia had collected more than 10,000 page views of data. Using the heatmap report, they immediately noticed distractions on the site that sent visitors away from the web form.
A “Do not click here” button was leading visitors away from the “request a quote” button (on the second most visited page) and by having a video demo on the contact page, the video acted as an incentive for users to be directed and navigate away. We removed these distractions immediately.
Providing these improvements were successful, traffic would increase to the inquiry form. The next step was to use CrazyEgg’s Overlay report. They wanted to make the form as simple as possible, without compromising the quality of the leads.
The overlay report allowed them to identify fields that are not being completed (note: not all fields are required). By removing fields that users did not complete and data that Softmedia did not use, they immediately improved the web form.
Result
The recommendations found from CrazyEgg heatmap and overlay reports were sent to the web development team. The improvements made to the site took 10 minutes and the impact was immediate. According to Google Analytics, the site conversion rate has now increased by more than 51%.
Conclusion
By removing distractions on your website, web visitors will be more likely to complete your on-site goals and thus increase the number of leads to your business.
CrazyEgg delivered on their promise and for $9, Softmedia were able to increase conversion rate and the number of daily leads. Have you used CrazyEgg analytics and did it have a positive impact on your conversion rate?
7 specific contact form improvements to turn visitors into customers
Having a contact form on your website allows a web visitor to get in touch with your business. People don’t like complex forms. They take too much time and require too much thought. Easy contact forms are proven to increase leads and conversion rates, which in turn leads to increased revenues.
During the last month I have worked with a software provider to help improve their websites online experience and contact forms. We made sure the contact form was readable, easy to complete and prominently featured on the site. The following improvements made to the form lead to a 170% increase in conversion rate and 277% increase in completed contact forms.
Make the form secure
Internet users are becoming increasingly aware of fraud and phishing techniques online. When entering sensitive information such as credit card details, users look for the trust and verification logos. However, personal information such as name and email are just as sensitive so we made sure that the page is secure with https:// and SSL certified. Don’t risk having IE or Chrome label the page as insecure. Next to the “send” button, we included copy that read “this form is secure” for added reassurance.
Reward good behavior
It’s now common practice to include inline validation (javascript) when a user does not correctly complete a field in the contact form (example below):
What is no common is a reverse effect of inline validation. Instead of presenting a negative validator we also improved the form to include positive validator. We reward the user when an action is completed successfully (example below):
In September 2009, research by Etre and Luke Wroblewski found that inline validation has a great impact on completed contact forms, resulting in:
- 22% increase in success rates
- 22% decrease in errors made
- 31% increase in satisfaction ratings
Using this data, we applied both positive and negative validators on the contact form.
Set expectations early
The human race is becoming more and more impatient. Everything has to be fast, whether it car repair or load times on a web page. We are time sensitive and completing a long web form may be enough to turn away a web visitor. The client’s contact form contains 15 fields, which at first glance may appear to require 5 minutes of time. However, the average time on page for completed forms was less than a minute. Using this data, we removed the previous copy above the form “Please fill out all fields carefully……” and instead used the following:
Avoid friction
One of the fields in the form asked for the users website. This is common amongst B2B sites and helps the client when assessing the possible best service to offer. However, when running a simple test we found that entering www.mysite.com was not working. Several tests were performed using different variations (www.mysite.com, mysite.com, etc) yet we were unable to proceed. The problem was the CMS setting for a valid website address including the http:// prefix. We immediately removed the prefix and to only include free range text in the field in order to make this form user friendly.
Capture email address early
The world’s top 10 converting websites send email campaigns to users who visit the site only to abandon the shopping cart (known as remarketing). An easy way to capture the email address before the booking process is to ask for it on your contact form early, and above the fold. Alternatively, you can ask for an email address on your home page, and offer incentives to sign up including a free e-book or white paper.
Only ask for what you need
There are millions of contact forms on the web that ask questions including name, email address, address, sex, etc. and so on. I was recently interested in signing up for a newsletter at a travel company and the sign up form asked me for my postal address. It didn’t make sense to me so I left and did not sign up. Do you really need a postal address when asking users to sign up to a newsletter?
In this blog posts example, we removed the following fields and reduced the form from 18 fields to 15:
- City
- Country
- Telephone
In 2010, Dan Zarrella of Hubspot found that when removing one field that, moving a total of four fields down to three, the conversion rate increased by 50%. If you can reduce the number of fields and only ask for what you really need, you could see an increase in completed forms.
Thank you page
Once a user has completed a form, don’t send them away with a generic “Thank you, we will contact you shortly” page. The Thank You page is under-utilized in almost every organization. Here are three suggestions on what you can do once a user has completed the form:
- Download a whitepaper
- Sign up to a newsletter
- Register to a webinar
Keep the communication going and complete two goals at once, both for you and the visitor.
Conclusion
Making your contact forms easy to use and complete should be at the top of your to-do list. In just under a month, leads and conversion rate has tripled and the number of users abandoning has decreased. A higher conversion rate means more leads, more sales and more success.
What else can we do to improve contact forms and is there anything I have missed from my list? Please comment below.
Sources
The four week SEO workout plan
In any organization, the basics are often overlooked. It’s much more fun to work on exciting projects such as launching a new website, instead of solving system issues such as reporting accurate data.
During the last six months, I have worked on five SEO audits and each organization has the same problem – The basics of SEO are overlooked (and ignored). Each audit, I approach the same way; I collect the data:
- Run site through Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- Review crawl errors in Google webmaster Tools
- Run site through SEOmoz
Each tools provides valuable data. In webmaster tools, there are usually a high amount of crawl errors found.
Instead of having a team that addresses these problems, resources are instead used for link-building, content creation and web design. While all important factors in SEO, yet if Google is specifically telling you it has problems crawling your site, why is there so little focus? If Google has problems finding your site, then chances are so do your potential customers.
Of the three site audits I have performed during the last two months, only one site has been quick enough to take action and addres the issues.. The audits usually have the same outcome; duplicate content issues, URL parameters and session IDs, crawl errors, etc. The site audit is filled with recommendations and suggested next steps.
The following screenshots are taken from Google Analytics Organic Traffic report between July 1st to July 30th. Can you guess which site implemented the findings from the SEO audit?
Site 1
Organic traffic decrease of 13% compared with June 2012
Site 2
Organic traffic increase of 10% compared with June 2012
Site 3
Organic traffic increase of 350% compared with June 2012
Congrats! You guessed it, it’s site 3.
I’ve made a note in Google Analytics for each improvement made using Annotations. Here is the list of improvements by date:
- Jul 10, 2012 Redirect implemented for non-www to www
- Jul 23, 2012 URL re-write, improved page titles and meta descriptions
- Jul 24, 2012 New page titles added to home, and destination pages
- Jul 24, 2012 /index redirected to /
- Jul 25, 2012 New navigation menu launched
- Jul 26, 2012 Google analytics goals implemented
- Jul 27, 2012 Improved internal anchor text
- Jul 27, 2012 Google analytics tracking script moved to top of the page
- Jul 27, 2012 XML sitemap submitted
- Jul 27, 2012 Crawl errors fixed – Reduced from 155 issues to 6 issues
- Jul 30, 2012 New meta descriptions added for top destination pages
- Jul 30, 2012 https pages now redirected to http
- Jul 30, 2012 Google Analytics tracking script updated (only one per page)
- Jul 30, 2012 New XML sitemap submitted for http URLs
In less than a month, organic traffic has increased by 350% (based on weekly traffic) and organic leads now account for 50% of total conversions, up from 3%. No link-building was involved and no content creation strategies implemented, just fixing the basics reported that are reported in webmaster tools.
Has your organic traffic increased since fixing the crawl errors reported in webmaster tools? Feel free to comment below.
Case study: How a company increased conversion rate by 390% in 5 months
Conversion rate is a metric that every web manager pays attention to. The number of visitors who convert on your site, whether it means signing up to a newsletter or purchasing a product in your e-commerce store is is highly important. Each web manager has a goal of increasing conversion rate. Experts claim conversion rate to be a science and that it requires an understanding of customer psyche and behavior, I disagree. This post will explain how one website increased conversion rate by 390%.
A multi-channel approach
At the end of the 2011, the global conversion rate of a travel company was 0.43%. At the start of the year, the conversion rate dropped to 0.20%. Travel industry professionals know that January is the busiest sales month of the year and we quickly set an action plan to increase our online efforts. The focus was to improve on-site SEO and PPC, increase email marketing activity, conduct usability testing and implement customer survey on the site. Each week we monitored our progress.
In February 2012, the conversion was 0.20%, with approx 30 transactions per week and revenues of approx €35,000 (value of €1.8 million per year).
The improvements quickly made an impact on the bottom line and as of today, the conversion rate is 0.98%, with approx 100 transactions per week and revenues of €120,000 (value of €6.2 million). That’s a 390% increase in conversion rate.
Revenue
Sales continue to grow to now more than €100,000 per week and year on year revenue is up by 31%.
Conversion rate
Conversion rate has increased by 390% since February
Travel is a very seasonal industry. However, the chart below compares this year’s increase with 2011.
2011 conversion rate between Jan-Jul was 0.34%.
Four channels to improve web traffic quality
Here are the exact steps we took to increase conversion rate as per each marketing channel:
Search Engine Optimization
- Sign up to SEOmoz and fix issus found under crawl diagnostics
- URL rewrite with user-friendly keyword URL’s
- Improved page titles and meta descriptions
- Uploaded XML sitemap to webmaster tools
We now rank top of the SERPs for our most competitive keywords
Search Engine Marketing (PPC)
- Signed up to Wordstream’s AdWords Performance Grader
- Improved ad texts using dynamic keyword insertion
- Included Trademark symbols in ad copy
- Launched site-links for all campaigns
Click through rates have increased by more than 700%
User Experience
- Launched 4Q customer survey
- Emphasized the benefits of booking online
- Added guest reviews to key pages
- Launched a pricing calendar
Users can now complete tasks on site much quicker
Email Marketing
- Newsletter sign up on front page
- Emphasized the benefits of signing up
- Monthly email marketing activity based on segmentation
- Personalized newsletters
High open rates and click through rates with low unsubscribe rates
Having a clear goal and focus
These efforts were not the result of a highly experienced online marketing team. In fact, the team that lead us to this remarkable achievement had no prior online marketing experience. Through self-educating, a clear direction and implementing like hell, conversion rates and sales have increased.
When this project was started, the goal was bring the conversion rate back to a minimum of 0.43%. By having a clear goal, online sales have tripled and the approach will now be rolled out globally and implemented on several websites, which potentially could lead to more than €42 million in increased sales.
How has your conversion rate increased in 2012? Post your comments in the section below.
Stop wasting your online marketing budgets!
Every day executives all over the world are making decisions based on bad data. Reporting accurate data is one the most important aspects of your business. You cannot effectively market your brand or increase revenues if you are reporting the wrong information yet companies do not prioritize accurate reporting. This blog post will look at the value of reporting accurately within your organization and help you spread this message internally.
35% of marketing budgets are wasted annually
In April 2012, Experian released a report titled „The data revolution – liberating lost budget“ that analyzed wasted spend to cost companies as much as £1 million in additional profits compared to those who accurately reported data.
Of the 900 companies surveyed, 55 per cent cited revenue generation as a driver for better data quality. Inaccurate data is forcing you to waste budgets and costing you profits. Further insight by Experian into inaccurate data reports:
- Globally, businesses estimate a loss of 6% of annual revenue due to bad data
- 89% of companies believe their budgets are being wasted due to inaccurate data
- 96% of organization view data accuracy as essential yet nearly one-third don’t enforce it
- 92% of business believe that some aspect of their data is flawed
- 77% of companies confess shortcomings in data quality have an effect on their bottom line
- 63% of respondents believe that up to 35% of marketing budget is wasted due to bad data
- In the US, businesses admit to losing 7% of revenue due to poorly managed customer data
Accurate data is a competitive advantage
With many brands struggling to report accurately, being able to analyze accurate data is now a competitive advantage. In 2012, only 15% of companies have set a target of 100% accurate data as a goal.
By generating timely and accurate data about your business, you can identify and prioritize existing problems. With more than £1 million in additional profits potentially being missed out on, your business can no longer afford to report inaccurate data. Viva la data revolution!
Have you improved your bottom line by reporting accurate data? Feel free to add your comments in the box below.
Source material:
- How to Stop Bad Data from Wrecking your Marketing Budget [November 2010]
- 20% of budget wasted by poor data [April 2012]
- The Impact of Contact Data Quality [August 2010]
- The Data Revolution: Liberating lost budgets [April 2012]
This post was written by Steven Macdonald. You can find more about Steven in the About Tribes section.
