Why Contextual Marketing Is The Next Big Wave In Customer Conversion

Quick question.

Do you remember the 2002 blockbuster movie Minority Report starring Tom Cruise?

In the movie, Tom Cruise walks through a mall while escaping from the police where he is greeted personally by advertising billboards: “John Anderton! You could use a Guinness right now!”

In a later scene, another advertisement is even more target-specific: “How did those turtleneck sweaters you purchased work out for you?”

The movie Minority Report showed an extreme example of contextual marketing

The movie Minority Report showed an extreme example of contextual marketing.

While the movie is set in 2054, we do not have wait to see the marriage of technology and media. Of course, the technologies shown are not possible right now, the essence of this scene is already possible.

What is the essence?

It is using the convergence of technology and media to provide a context when marketing to consumers.

Simply put, it is marketing the right thing, at the right time, to the right person.

This is the Holy Grail of Marketing. Contextual marketing.

Contextual marketing is a way of offering targeted advertising to the user based on user identity and content searched by them.

It is worthy mentioning that Google is what it is today because of Adwords and Adsense, which was one of the early platforms to offer highly targeting contextual advertising. The advertisements themselves are served by automated systems where the advertisement has direct correlation with the content being viewed on the browser.

Imagine that you’re browsing through a sports website for latest news on your favorite football club. Suddenly, you see an ad popup which displays club merchandise that you can buy. Wondering about a vacation in Europe? You might start seeing ads offering the cheapest flight tickets to France.

You may have recognized this happening already in your daily life. Contextual marketing is a big wave in marketing on which you can surf. Here’s how.

In this article, we will use the 5W1H approach, namely who, what, why, where, when and how.

As we said earlier, contextual marketing is marketing the right thing, at the right time, to the right person. First we shall focus on the why.

Then we will focus on finding the right people and where they are – the who and the where.

Then we will move on to finding the right message and the right time- the what and when.

Lastly, we will figure out how to deliver the message- the how.

What Is Contextual Marketing & Why Is It Important?

To see the difference between contextual marketing and traditional marketing, it’s important to understand how context causes this differentiation.

Can you guess what is the difference between their approach? Marketing before context is product-centric while contextual marketing is customer-centric

Contextual marketing is powerful.

  1. It is adaptable to device driven market and shifting consumer lifestyles
  2. It is an alternative to mass marketing and advertising, which is like shouting in a megaphone, hoping consumers to come to you
  3. Relevant marketing is sent to individuals at the right time, in the right place, and retrieved from whatever device they want drives customer retention, creating new sales and adding depth to your campaign
  4. It empowers the consumer instead of leaving it to the consumers to sift through the internet noise. You send precise, relevant and targeted information to consumers. It also feeds the ever increasing need for instant gratification among consumers. You would be marketing stuff that they love.
  5. It uses real time data and location intelligence, helping build user profile and buyer behaviour analysis, both of which facilitates increased and intelligent interaction between brands and consumers

Factors in contextual marketing and some real life examples

Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of contextual marketing, let us first understand what context is.

Quote from Helge Teno says "Context or Contextual is the cirecumstances that form the ssetting for an event, statement, or idea and in terms of which it can be fully understood."

Definition of Context or Contextual quote by Helge Teno.

Context always changes, more so in this world of ever increased connectivity and change. With the proliferation of smartphones, the factors which define context has increased. Especially in the context of marketing.

What are these factors?

Factors that influence context: Time of Day, Language, Channel Preference, Device, Past Behavior, Purchase History, and Location.

Factors that influence context. Source

The graphic above illustrates the wealth of data that can be harvested for contextual marketing. All of these elements are currently being used by big brands and corporations alike.

Take Amazon for instance.

Amazon has perfected the art of using the information it gathers about us to present information at just the moment we need it, and in a way that feels helpful but not obnoxious.

How do they do it?

  1. Email reminders that items were left in our shopping cart
  2. Online suggestions of items similar to those we are considering
  3. Online reviews by others who purchased items we are considering
  4. Email reminders of sales specifically targeting items we’ve expressed interest in
  5. Email notices when new titles become available from authors we’ve purchased from

A fun example of contextual marketing is the ad tweeted by Oreo during Super Bowl 2013. During the Super Bowl power outage in 2013, at 8:48pm, the company used Twitter to push out an ad which said, ‘You can still dunk in the dark.’  It was a smart, funny and an inexpensive move to link their brand to the awareness of the moment.

Instant contextual marketing from Oreos during a Superbowl blackout

Instant contextual marketing from Oreos during a Superbowl blackout.

How To Implement Contextual Marketing

Implementing contextual marketing requires you to embrace and adopt a fascinating intersection of data, automation, mobile devices and social media. Let us discuss these elements in detail one by one.

Mobile and contextual marketing

While contextual marketing can be implemented in any platform, mobile deserves a special mention. The increased convergence of smartphones, apps and social media have led to the biggest explosion of data ever.

The most important factor in mobile contextual marketing is found in the name: Location.

According to a Pew Research Center survey, an overwhelming 74% of adult smartphone owners ages 18 and older say they use their phone to get directions or other information based on their current location. Over 50% of consumers are willing to share data to have a better shopping experience, according to a study by the e-tailing group.

Combine location with past history and user profile and there is much data to be mined,  harvested and used for marketing.

Let us see some of the elements of contextual marketing in mobile

When you are searching

Google coined a term in 2015 called micro moments to capture the impact of mobile on our search behaviors. Micro-moments are moments when consumers use their mobile devices to decide where to go, what to do, and what to buy.

This nicely dovetails with the statistic that 68% of smartphone activity is conducted outside homes.

In the mornings, we are in a rush to get to office and would like to enjoy a coffee before the commute. In the evening, we are more likely to want to have snacks. This would trigger a search for ‘Coffee near me’ in the morning and ‘Snacks near me’ in the evening.

Based on these behavior-based contextual  triggers, restaurants can cater to both the needs by customizing the suggestions for different times of the day for different people.

In 2016, Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, a 90 year old consumer packaged goods brand, used predictive mobile advertising based on beacon data to target shoppers who were due for a shopping trip, as indicated by their weekly store visit habits. Using this data from a number of users, the brand was able to send them offers just before they were predicted to visit the store.

The campaign achieved a ROI of 3.2x, with a 25.3% increase in post-engagement purchase intent and 55% increase in average brand awareness.

Wouldn’t you like to have such numbers in your campaign report?

Takeaways:

  1. Keep track of consumer’s micro moment activity and location.
  2. Customize your value proposition as per the time of the day and needs of the consumer.

What are the advantages?

  1. You send the right messages when the consumer is most receptive, which translates to sales
  2. You eliminate wasted impressions
  3. You can pause the campaign when consumers are not susceptible to suggestion.

Where you are searching

As location changes, so does the context.

Most mobile apps have now a built in location feature. The key is to mobilise the ever changing location data to target (or not to target).

Take the example of Google Now.

Using data from search history and location, their app Google Now is a perfect example of targeted marketing. By recognizing repeated actions a user performs on the device like frequent locations, commutes, search queries and other information, Google Now is able to display more relevant information in the form of specialized cards.

These cards cover a multitude of information like traffic and transit times, restaurant reservations, location reminders, nearby attraction, public transit and much more.

Another example that comes to mind is the recent proliferation of apps designed for events.

Tribeca Film Festival, New York’s annual film festival leveraged beacons to keep festival attendees up to date about event happenings, ticket sales and promotions.

Deploying beacons around and inside the event venues, they were able to have a real time, data driven and targeted interaction with the people. App-holders who walked by bus shelters and out-of-home ads (equipped with beacons) with the app open on their device, received notifications alerting them that they could purchase tickets straight from the app.

On the other hand, beacons at the venue were used to push contextual notifications such as the ones asking attendees for their feedback on a particular film when they exited the screening. In addition to that, the film festival also used beacons to offer merchandise discounts by deploying them at the ticket counters.

Takeaways:

  1. Link real time location data and relevant information to serve the consumers.
  2. If you have an app for your brand, make sure your contextual marketing strategy is leveraging the real time data of consumers.

What are the advantages?

  1. You are able to offer more precise services to consumers.
  2. You can decrease consumer annoyance and fatigue.
  3. Precise and targeted services drive brand loyalty.

Who you are

All the automation and fancy software will not help you if you do not know your consumer. As explained earlier, people are willing to give you data if it helps improve their consumer experience. You get a wealth of data on your customers everyday, through your stores, newsletter signups, and loyalty cards.

Leverage this by first consolidating and using all the information into a user profile. This can be combined with mobile app data to offer more targeted experience.

Let’s say a consumer buys a pair of pants from your store. Based on their cart history and purchases, you can send an offer for shirts that will go well with the trousers via app push notification when they are in the vicinity of your store. Mobile apps can also be used for in store contextual marketing and personalization.

This also leverages the who, the when and the where, all of the elements of mobile contextual marketing.

The dark side of context

While we have been harping annoyingly on data, there is one major issue we haven’t addressed.

Privacy.

Several surveys have pointed out consumers’ willingness to share data for value. The key is providing value in return. People don’t mind sharing their data if it results in a better shopping experience.

While the current consumer climate favors your efforts for contextual marketing, it is critical to maintain a balance between privacy and relevance.

  • Make sure you own your data.
  • Give no access to third parties.
  • Be transparent with your consumers over data usage.

Conclusion

Now that we have gone through the elements of contextual marketing, let us round it up in the form of actionable takeaways:

  1. Consolidate and harvest both static and real time data of consumers
  2. Analyze the data to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses
  3. Translate the insights from the analysis to craft a targeted campaign

And before we wind up this article, we would like to give you one last tip.

Constantly test your campaign.

Contextual marketing, while new in implementation and scope, is still marketing. And like all endeavours, it needs continuous improvement and learning. It is more of an iterative process that gets you closer and closer to your goal.

So keep learning, keep growing, be helpful but not annoying.

What has been your experience in contextual marketing? What has and has not worked for you? Share your thoughts so we can all learn from each other.

Vaibhav-Kakkar

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How Mobile Ecommerce Will Profit This Holiday Season [Infographic]

Mobile ecommerce is transforming online shopping, especially during the holidays. Here are some eye-opening statistics in an infographic.

Most businesses are giving away their mobile visitors. Either they don’t provide a mobile-friendly experience or they have a responsive site that doesn’t give mobile visitors anything different.
This is an opportunity for you. Mobile visitors will be one of your fastest-growing segments. However, the mobile experience is unique and mobile visitors want something designed for their on-the-go, thumb-driven searching and buying. Those businesses that deliver a special mobile experience for their visitors will steal many holiday shoppers this year, and more next year.
If you are on the fence about adopting a mobile app as part of your marketing strategy, take a look at what mobile commerce will mean to businesses this holiday season.
Bizapps Holiday Infographic

1
92% of Consumers Shop with Smart Phones

With 9 out of 10 Americans owning a smartphone, it’s understandable that 92% of consumers will search for holiday gifts using their phones. Mobile ecommerce is here, and it’s here to stay.
People nowadays have to cope with busy, crazy lives and they search for ways to save time. How often do you hear people stressed about Christmas shopping? Mobile apps give consumers opportunities to simplify their lives, and the number of active mobile shoppers taking advantage of that simplicity continues to grow.

2
Time on Mobile Increases During the Holidays

November and December are the best months for retailers to increase their mobile revenue streams. These two months see more sales than other months, and 47% of customers prefer using a mobile app for shopping during this time of year. In fact, for the first time in history, smartphones and tablets have higher online penetration than desktop computers.

3
Mobile Generates Revenue

This year, Black Friday ecommerce sales hit $3.34 Billion, with mobile sales topping the billion dollar mark for the first time in history. Consumers spent an incredible $1.2 Billion via their mobile devices, a 33% increase from 2015.
Surprisingly, despite this continued growth in mobile commerce, 98% of companies still lack a mobile app designed for expedited customer shopping.

4
Mobile Apps Can Influence Every Part of the Sales Funnel

Small retailers often underestimate the importance of mobile apps—especially during the holidays. They certainly make shopping much simpler, but the benefits that they offer regarding affordable marketing and customer engagement cannot be overlooked either.
To put it simply, 71% of online shoppers prefer searching for products in retail stores using their app. Creating a pleasant shopping experience is important for businesses of all sizes. Think about your shopping habits. You are not the only consumer who searches for products online before later purchasing them. Everyone wants to save money, and mobile apps are a great way to make sure you are getting the best deal out there this holiday season.

Conclusion

If there is any time of year where businesses can’t afford to ignore mobile commerce, it’s the holiday season. As the trends continue to shift toward mobile, you cannot afford to overlook its potential.
If your mobile sales are under-performing, contact Conversion Sciences for a free consultation, or if you don’t have a mobile app, come check us out at Bizness Apps. Check this out if you need last minute holiday marketing ideas for ecommerce.

andrew-gazdeckiAndrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Bizness Apps — making mobile apps affordable and simple for small businesses. We’re a do-it-yourself iPhone, iPad, Android & HTML5 app platform that allows any small business to simultaneously create, edit, and manage mobile apps without any programming knowledge needed. 

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How Google Reviews Drive Conversions for Local Businesses

When we talk about “conversions” we’re usually talking that moment when someone buys something, completes a subscription form, or signs up for an online service. Everything is done online. For a locally-focused business with a physical location, a conversion is that moment when someone calls them or visits.

It’s not as easy to measure.

When someone searches for your local business, Google offers a “local three-pack,” three listings that best fit based on the keyword searcher enters and their location. As you might guess, these results are hugely important to your success.

Google local search results before and after introducing the 3-pack SERPs

Google local search results before and after introducing the 3-pack SERPs.

The local three-pack listing can actually list your Google reviews along with your business name and your overall rating. All of this is displayed right there in the SERPs (search engine results pages). If you have positive reviews, this can get your business chosen over competitors. But how often do people click on your listing, visit your website, or pick up the phone based on your reviews?

I recently analyzed over 22,000 Google local listings to see just how much power Google reviews have over search engine rankings. What I found surprised me.

Google reviews affect search engine visibility. Google reviews are displayed right there in the SERPs.

Consumers who perform local searches are ready to buy and act quickly.
Consumers who perform local searches are ready to buy and act quickly. Consumers put stock in online reviews.

Though we can’t prove exact causation without more data from Google, I think we can tell how Google reviews likely affect purchasing decisions for local businesses.

Local Search Conversions and Click Throughs

Before we get to the local search stats, I need to mention that the convergence of search rankings, conversion, and content has to be deliberate. If a potential customer finds you on Google, sees an appealing title and description for your location, they can’t be taken to a website that is thin on details or appears irrelevant to them. They’re not going to convert — to call, visit or buy.

Your content has to keep the promise your local search rankings make.

I liked this quote from Winston Burton in an article for Search Engine Land:

“Understanding and making sure you have the right content based on intent at all stages of the user journey can greatly improve your conversion rates. If you serve end users with something that they need in “the moment” — whether they are researching something, thinking about doing something or looking to purchase something — your chances of improving conversions will greatly increase.”

And, as it turns out, local searches are all about “in the moment.”

The last from-the-horse’s-mouth data we got from Google itself tells us

50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their phone visit a local business within 24 hours.
50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their phone visit a local business within 24 hours. 34% of consumers who performed the same search on their computer or tablet similarly, visited the business within a day.

Local search ranking has a direct effect on getting people on your website, through the door, or on the phone.

That same Google report stated that 18% of local mobile searches lead to an actual sale within one day.

We don’t have any newer data from Google itself, but we do have studies from other organizations.

Examples:

  • 61% of searchers find local results more relevant than non-local search results, according to Resource.com
  • 3 out of 5 consumers search for local businesses on their smartphone, according to ReachLocal
  • More than 2.6 billion local searches are performed every month, and the number is growing, according to SmallBusinessCommunity.com

Even if this widely-cited data is dubious, we have better sources that tell us just how big local searches are, and just how quickly local searchers act.

But do they click on the local three-pack that contains those aforementioned Google reviews?

Clicking on the Three-Pack

Since we don’t have any data that comes directly from Google, we have to use studies from other parties.

I came across two valuable studies in regards to Google’s local three-pack, which has still been around for less than a year.

Casey Meraz published his study at Moz, and Mike Ramsey published his study on his own website, Nifty Marketing. They both used relatively small sample sizes and heat map technology, and their findings weren’t exactly the same. There were some commonalities, however.

In the Moz study, Casey analyzed several different SERP layouts. I want to focus on his findings for “The Snack Pack with Organic Results Underneath,” as it’s the most relevant for many local business searches. That’s not to say your audience won’t find any other SERP layouts, and you can find the rest of Casey’s analysis in the linked post.

The research found:

  • 44% of people clicked on the first listing in the local three-pack
  • 8% chose to load “more local results”
  • 29% clicked on the organic listings
  • 19% clicked on the paid results

When there’s an organic listing above the three-pack (but under the paid search results), that CTR sees a dramatic decline. In the test that showed an organic result above the local three-pack, it received 68% of the clicks, while the local three-pack only garnered 8% of clicks.

He performed one more test, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Next, let’s dive into Mike Ramsey’s research results over at Nifty Marketing.

Mike also used heat maps to test click through rates. He studied the CTR results for ‘Boise Injury Lawyer’ and ‘Provo Storage Units’ on both mobile and desktop.

In each of his results, organic came out on top.

Desktop:

  • 49% of people clicked an organic search result
  • 28% of people clicked a paid search result
  • 24% of people clicked in the local three-pack

Mobile:

  • 47% clicked an organic search result
  • 31% of people clicked a paid search result
  • 18% of people clicked in the local three-pack

As you can see, there’s a clear difference between Mike’s study and Casey’s study, even though they were posted only seven days apart. The studies used different groups of people. Mike studied and recorded results for both desktop and mobile CTRs, where Casey just mentioned he recorded from “different devices”. Casey personally interviewed, tested, and recorded ten people selecting a bail bondsman from a Google search.

Because these were two different studies, each using a relatively small group of people, the actual numbers are different. You also have to keep in mind, the three-pack and its surrounding SERPs can appear vastly different for different searches, and on different devices.

These two studies do, however, have one thing in common: reviews.

From Casey:
“However, another item of interest is that the listings with reviews got the clicks. The third listing, with no review stars, received zero clicks in the local 3-pack. Additionally, it’s worth nothing that most of the local-centric clicks land on the business name itself. These clicks no longer lead straight to your website or even your old Google+ page, where you still controlled the information to some extent. These now take you to a map page, where other businesses are displayed and where users can read your reviews.”

Casey’s referring to the third part of his study, which displayed the local three-pack with organic results underneath, but the key difference this time is that some listings featured reviews and some did not.

In those results:

  • 40% of people clicked an organic search result
  • 33% of people clicked a three-pack result
  • 13% of people clicked a paid search result

Results with reviews got more clicks. In addition, he conducted several in-person click tests, where he gave participants a goal and observed their results. In each of his tests, reviews seemed to attract the most clicks.

Mike also found reviews seemed to be a big reason for clicks in the three-pack, especially on a desktop.

Image Credit Mike Ramsey local listing study at Nifty Marketing

Image Credit: Mike Ramsey local listing study at Nifty Marketing

People are paying attention to those Google reviews, but how much do they actually care about reviews?

Consumers Trust Reviews

When it comes to consumers and online reviews, we thankfully have a wealth of information available.

The statistics from these studies show why people tend to click on the local listings with review stars, and why they might choose those listings over the organic results.

Since it’s both recent and reputable, I want to share some findings from Myles Anderson of BrightLocal, who published an eye-opening study last summer.

BrightLocal found:

  • 33% of consumers regularly read online reviews for local businesses
  • 59% of consumers occasionally read online reviews for local businesses
  • 8% of consumers do not read any online reviews

In addition, BrightLocal found the number of consumers who read online reviews for local businesses is increasing.

They also found some pretty compelling statistics based on a local business’ overall rating:

  • 13% of consumers will consider using a business that has a 1-2 star rating
  • 87% of consumers won’t consider a business with a wealth of bad reviews
  • 94% of consumers will consider using a business with a 4 star rating

It’s common sense, but it’s nice to put a number to it.

Additionally, they found 80% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal, word-of-mouth recommendations.

Last month, I conducted my own Google survey: 54% of the respondents read online reviews before buying from a local business.

That’s huge.

Luckily for you, your Google reviews are displayed right in the SERPs.

Reviews and Search Engine Visibility

Data used in local listing study

Data used in local listing study

Before I read any of these studies, I knew reviews were a big deal for my own marketing clients. But I wanted to know more.

Remember that research I mentioned in the beginning of this article? I wanted to know how Google reviews might affect search engine visibility, so I personally analyzed 22,032 local listings.  This is recent research that focuses on Google’s three-pack, as any research concerning the former seven-pack and 10-pack are no longer valid.

My methods weren’t complicated. I went from SERP to SERP, counting the number of reviews in the first and second three-packs in Google’s local listings. With the help of my two oldest sons, we put the findings in an endless spreadsheet. Then, I analyzed the data and shared my findings.

Frequency of reviews in search engine results

Frequency of reviews in search engine results

Here’s what I found:

  • The listings in the first three-pack have an average of 472% more reviews than the listings in the second three-pack.
  • The top three local listings have more reviews than the next three results, nearly twice as often.
  • 63% of the time, Google’s local three-pack contains the listing with the most reviews.
  • A listing in the top three Google local results has an average of 7.62 reviews, compared to just 1.61 reviews in the second three-pack.

Google reviews seem to have a real effect on search rankings, and the listing with the most reviews seems to come out on top. The three-pack is thought to be an unpredictable landscape. It’s hard to optimize your site to appear in local listings.

Now that you know Google reviews matter for ranking in the three-pack, there’s much less guesswork involved. And, as a bonus, reviews are good for much more than just search results.

Key Takeaways

  • Google reviews matter for ranking in the local three-pack: The first three local results have 472% more reviews than results 4-6.
  • Consumers trust online reviews: 80% trust online reviews as much as personal, word-of-mouth recommendations.
  • Google reviews make a difference when it comes to local listing CTR: In both CTR studies presented in this article, the local listings with reviews outperformed the listings that did not feature reviews.
  • Consumers find local searches more valuable than non-local searches: 61% of searchers find local results more relevant than non-local search results.
  • Local searchers make quick purchasing decisions based off of their search results: 50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their phone, and 34% using a desktop computer, visit a local business within 24 hours.

We can’t claim causation here, but we can claim a strong correlation. Google reviews give local businesses a fighting chance in search. They matter for ranking in the local three-pack, and consumers tend to click on local listings with reviews.

Organic search isn’t going away anytime soon, and you’ll always need to optimize your content for conversions. Even if you have a plethora of great reviews and strong rankings in the local three-pack, you won’t convert many of your clicks without conversion rate optimized content.

Google reviews are huge for search engine visibility for several reasons, and search engine visibility is vital for getting potential customers to your website. Once they’re there, it’s your job to convert them.

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Testing Email Can Be Misleading (How to Avoid Bad Decisions)

I’m fond of saying that AB testing, or split testing, is the “Supreme Court” of data collection. An AB test gives us the most reliable information about a change to our site. It controls for a number of variables that can taint our data.

Things change over time. You might make a change to your site at the same time that a competitor runs a sale. Was it your change or the sale that was responsible for a drop in transactions on your site? AB tests eliminate such issues by serving variations over the same period of time.

Things change among visitors. Generally, visitors coming to your site from an email campaign are more likely to buy than visitors from search ads. For most businesses, mobile visitors convert worse than desktop visitors. An AB test can make sure that the “mix” of visitors is the same for the each change that is tested.

Plus, the AB test gathers data from real visitors and customers who are “voting” on our changes using their dollars, their contact information and their commitment to our offerings.

And our AB tests can lead us astray.

Testing Email: Open Rates & Click-Through Rates

When testing email, open rates and click-through rates don’t give you the true performance of your emails. They also don’t let your team take credit for keeping the accountants busy.

We recently did an analysis of one of our e-commerce client’s email campaigns. They had been testing how the “disclaimer” line in their emails was affecting purchase behavior.

The “disclaimer” is the first line in an email. It typically says something like “Having trouble viewing this email? Click here.” The reason this line is important is that most email clients now show the subject line and the beginning of an email in the inbox view. Here’s an example from my Gmail promotions folder.

The first line of your email is as important as the subject line.

The first line of your email is as important as the subject line.

One assumes that, if these messages are working, they will be reflected in a better open rate. It turns out not to be true.

So, we tested different versions of this text over the course of 23 emails. The Open Rate predicted which would generate the most revenue in less than half of them.

As a predictor of revenue, click-through rate didn’t fare much better, calling the revenue winner in thirteen of the tests.

Revenue-Per-Recipient Puts Marketing In The Money

When we talk about monetizing a list, the metric we like is Revenue-per-Recipient.

It is calculated as:

revenue per recipient is email revenue divided by email delivered

It tells us how much spendable revenue we’re getting from each member of our list. To look at it another way, it’s an estimate of the value of each person on our list.

With proper analytics, we can measure this for the whole list, particular segments of the list (customers vs. new subscribers for instance), or for different treatments in a split test.

Measuring it requires some discipline and a bit of analytics work.

Getting To Revenue-Per-Recipient

The key to getting the Revenue-per-Recipient (RPR) number is tying email clicks to transactions. This may require some help from your friendly IT department.

Configure Your Analytics Package

Most e-commerce companies will be pumping the results of each transaction into their analytics software. If you’re generating leads for your business, your analytics system can track new prospects for you as well.

We talked last time about tracking phone calls generated by your site. Done right, you can track the number of calls made by email clickers.

Do the work necessary to get reliable reporting of sales or leads into your analytics package. Once this is done, you have what you need to calculate the impact of email on the bottom line.

Mark Your Email Traffic

This is where the discipline comes in. We need to be able to identify the traffic generated from each email drop. This is done typically by adding special parameters to the links in the emails that come back to our site.

What you add to you add to your URLs depends on your analytics package. Google Analytics has a set of standard parameters. An email link, properly tagged might change from:

http://buyschtuff.com/halloween

to

http://buyschtuff.com/halloween?utm_campaign=halloween-special&utm_source=subscriber-list&utm_medium=email

When someone clicks on this link, Google Analytics will know that it was from the email talking about the Halloween Special, that it was sent to the Subscriber List, and that it was clicked from an email.

I have found that it’s important to add the date of the email drop as well, and this can be added to the campaign description. Here’s the format I use.

http://buyschtuff.com/halloween?utm_campaign=halloween-special-20131029&utm_source=subscriber-list&utm_medium=email

Many email service providers offer integrations with popular analytics packages, such as Google Analytics. They will add these tags automatically for you. The only down side is that the campaign names they choose may not be as easy to read. Mailchimp sends Google Analytics campaign names like “934f31ce51-Webinar_Follow_up_Email_10_31_2013.”

Readability is important.

We will want to be able to identify performance of individual emails when we’re testing or sending to specific segments. We will soon want to be able to marry our email service provider reports with our analytics reports. Readability will be key.

Power Reports

This process gives us the ability to see the revenue each email produces directly. Here’s a report taken from Google Analytics.

Track your emails to the dollars.

Track your emails to the dollars.

For any of the emails in this kind of report, we can pull the number of recipients from our email service provider. This gives us our Revenue per Recipient for each drop and an overall number.

Revenue per Recipient accounts for list size and revenue generated.

Revenue per Recipient accounts for list size and revenue generated.

In this example, we got 37 cents for each member of our list. However, we can see that this number is skewed by the first one, delivering a whopping $1.20 per recipient.

Don’t be concerned that 37 cents sounds so small. RPR numbers are rarely exciting in their magnitude.

A Word For B2B Lead Generators

It may not seem that this will work for lead generators, especially those with long sales cycles. Nonsense.

As lead generators, we should know the value of a lead to our business. For our purposes, how we calculate it is less important than being consistent. Lead value is calculated by New Customer Revenue/New Leads.

We could calculate it once based on last year’s numbers and use it for all emails until you calculate it again.

We could calculate it every month by dividing the past month’s new revenue with all new leads from the past three months.

You should choose the method that you can justify, and that delivers a consistent RPR month over month.

Power Process Tip: If you can calculate the true value of a lead for your organization, you can calculate your value as a lead generator in terms everyone understands: dollars.

Optimizing Revenue-Per-Recipient

There are two ways to increase your Revenue per Recipient, both of which are best practices in email marketing.

  1. Increase the revenue your list is generating. Duh.
  2. Decrease the number of recipients. What?

Like trees in the winter, it’s important to prune and shape your list. Those who have never opened a single one of your emails should be dropped. In fact, many email marketers drop non-openers every 90 days or less.

It’s scary, but it’s good business.

Of course, we all want our lists to deliver steady revenue growth. This comes from understanding the offers, subject lines, email copy and landing pages that make the most money for the business.

It’s relatively easy to test emails. Just remember to test to the dollars using RPR.

A Final Word About Accuracy

This method doesn’t take into account the revenue generated when your emails create non-click demand. You don’t get credit when recipients see your email, but call, come to your store, or visit your site through other means. Nonetheless, RPR this is a valid measure of the dollar impact we are having on our businesses.

It’s time to stop boring people with how good your open rates and click-through rates are. Tell them what each and every person on your list is worth in dollars. When you track the results of your emails down to the dollar, you track your own value down to the dollar.

Portions of this article first appeared on Marketing Land.

21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks to Skyrocket Conversions

21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks

Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.

  • 43 Pages with Examples
  • Assumptive Phrasing
  • "We" vs. "You"
  • Pattern Interrupts
  • The Power of Three

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Video that Converts: How the Brain Processes Video

Video is powerful. It can work for our business or against it. Here’s why.


I want to talk a little bit about how the brain processes video information.

Where is video processed in the brain?

Our eyes are at the front of our skull. Strangely enough our brains process video information at the back of our skull. This is called the visual cortex. It’s interesting that the visual cortex lies at the back of the brain when you think about what happens.

When you see an image – a picture – what happens is your eyes take that information in. They actually cross over and then they deliver the information to the back of the brain. The visual cortex takes that image and pulls it apart. Part of it is sent to the part of the brain that can check for edges and angles. The part of the brain that understands faces will be sent facial information. If you think about it like this, every picture that comes in through your eyes is like smashing a bottle of information against the back of your head.

Watch all lessons in this series on converting with video.

How the brain deals with video images.

What happens when we think about repeated images like video? Imagine throwing 30 bottles a second against the back of your viewers skulls. That’s the kind of information that they’re processing, and a couple of things happen. Number one, they’re getting a lot of information, so you can really deliver rich messages using video. But they’re also filtering. They’re having to average things out, so subtle details will get lost.

Respect video

In this series, we’ve talked about using things like motion to keep viewers attention, to keep them focused so that there’s less of this filtering. But understand that when you’re using video, it’s a powerful tool both because it floods the brain with information and contexts. If the message that you’re sending has a negative angle to it, you could be doing more harm than good. Think about the kind of data that you’re sending to your viewers when you do your video, and make sure you’re sending the things that will not be averaged out, and that will not give them a negative impression.

See the Whole Video Series

Video Mini Course

 

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How Motion in Business Videos Affects Viewer Attention

Video is powerful. It can work for our business or against it. Here’s why.


I want to talk a little bit about motion and video. The human brain is wired to check out what’s going on if something moves in its field of vision. So, for business videos, this means that we can draw their attention to the video and hold it if we continue to move things.

Watch all lessons in this series on converting with video.

Why the human brain is drawn to motion

The reason that the human brain likes motion is, because as we evolved, we associated motion with: a) something we can eat b) something that was going to eat us c) something we can mate with. Those are all very high-priority things in the lizard brain portion of our anatomy.

Making motion work in business videos

We can use that in our marketing to hold people’s attention. What kind of motion am I talking about? Well, in an eye tracking study we did, we found that: number one, people are drawn to faces and so, for instance, somebody who is moving their hands in the video, that was not sufficient to draw attention away from the face. But if you held up a prop, like a book, that would draw their attention away.

Likewise if you have a long period of somebody speaking to you like this – and in video today, a long period is like a minute – then you need to find some way of moving things around. Something as simple as this pan, is enough motion to re-engage the visitor, and keep their attention on the message that you’re delivering. Even though I’m talking, and my mouth is moving, I’m not perceived as moving until something else happens. Snap away, snap closer, snap to the left, snap to the right, pan. These are all great tools.

Motion during the call to action

One thing to be certain about here, is that if you’re using motion during a key part of your video, for instance, a call to action in which you want them to look at the page that the video is on, you should stop the motion. In fact if you could put a static image up of some sort, as you’re saying, “Go, and fill out this form,” then you will have a higher conversion rate according to our studies.

Watch all videos in this series

For more, visit our Free CRO Training Masterclass videos.

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How Faces Influence Video Marketing

When you put people in your video marketing, something unexpected happens.


The Human Brain Loves Eyes

I want to talk a little bit about eyes and the importance of eyes in video marketing. First of all, the human brain loves eyes. We’re drawn to it, we want to look at it. And this can be really helpful in your videos if you want to keep people engaged in listening to the message. But it can also have a dark side in that it draws the attention away from something else that might be important. Let me give you an example.

Watch all lessons in this series on converting with video.

When Eyes Hurt Your Conversion Rate

Let’s say you have a video on a landing page, and you want people to watch the video, get the message, and then take action on the page. At the point where you ask them in the video to take action on the page, if you have someone there looking at them, engaging them, they are less likely to look away and see the message on the page — either the form or the button that you want them to click on the landing page.

My recommendation is use eyes and heads – human beings – to keep people’s attention. But when you go to make the offer, consider shifting away to something that’s more static, something that doesn’t move, and something that doesn’t have attractive eyes on it.

 

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How Conversion Optimization is a Brand-Building Investment

It can often seem that conversion optimization conflicts with brand and image marketing. In some cases, this is true. A recent infographic from the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Online Master in Business Administration program (NJIT) got us to thinking about the importance of branding to any conversion optimization effort.

How a Conversion Scientist Thinks of Brand-Building

For the purposes of conversion optimization, brand is critically important. If we’re talking about a landing page, a website, an email or an ad, brand can communicate some important information in the blink of an eye.

For us, brand is a container for trust, credibility and authority.
For us, brand is a container for trust, credibility and authority. Brand marketers will tell you to put the company logo and tag line on every communication. A Conversion Scientist uses brand symbols primarily to communicate authority and credibility.
A brand symbol is a hook on which brand experiences are hung. Conversion Sciences has benefited from its brand symbol — the lab coat — and we work diligently to hang positive brand experiences on this symbol when we write, teach, and speak. We give lab coats to our clients so they can associate our business-changing results with this important brand symbol.
Companies who have invested in brand recognition over decades and have protected their brand symbols have a significant advantage over less-known brands. These brand symbols communicate a complex set of impressions quickly.
From a budgeting standpoint, building brand is very expensive. It requires paying for millions of impressions with little expectation of short-term increases of revenue. It also takes time.
We believe that conversion optimization is a brand-building activity. Conversion-based brand building works on the assumption that there is no better brand experience than finding what you are looking for. As you improve the conversion rate and revenue per visit of your website, you are, by definition, giving your visitors better experiences. These experiences are associated with your brand symbols and build brand quickly and powerfully.

Brand Building in Digital Environments

Because conversion optimization relies on data, and since digital environments are data-rich, these digital environments are ideal for conversion-based brand building. Your investment in optimizing online properties is an investment in brand.
The infographic acknowledges that there are three moments in the buying process when companies come into contact with new and existing clients.

There are potential touchpoints with new and existing clients before, during, and after a purchase.

There are potential touchpoints with new and existing clients before, during, and after a purchase.


Each of these can be optimized to increase conversions and sales.

        

  1. Before purchase, using proper navigation, search and “affordances” to guide the visitor to their desired outcome.

    2.     

  2. During purchase ensuring that completing the transaction is intuitive and surprise-free.

    3.     

  3. After purchase optimization influences up-sells, repeat purchases, and enables sharing.

Be Careful with Consistency

The infographic tells us that “Consumers Expect Consistency” across channels and devices. This is a lie.

90 percent of customers expect their experience with a brand to be the same across every marketing channel

90% of customers expect their experience with a brand to be the same across every marketing channel


Consumers expect consistent quality of experiences and consistent use of brand symbols. However, our testing shows that they want very different experiences when they are in different contexts. Desktop visitors want a more intense experience with more choice and deeper information. Smartphone visitors want immediate access to solutions.
Quality experiences across devices become a consistent builder of brand value.

Optimizing Touchpoints

There are different kinds of people coming to each of your touchpoints. They are often the same person coming in different modes.
Search Engine Watch tells us that certain types of searches are more common on Bing than on Google – finance and automotive for instance. You probably already know that mobile iOS users behave differently than Android ones, but have you made the connection about how their searches differ?
Ninety-seven percent of Millennials touch at least two devices every 24 hours, and many of them interact with even more devices.

Millenials are multi-device creatures.

Millenials are multi-device creatures.


That’s a lot of opportunity for touchpoints just from search.

Social media platforms prime visitors in different ways meaning online experiences must be tailored to each. For example, Instagram is poised to be a better organic marketing option than Facebook for many companies.
Screen Shot 2015-11-25 at 9.58.22 PM
Customers expect to find you on all of the major social media platforms, but how much effort should you use in maintaining your presence? Our answer is to be only on those platforms for which you have the resources to optimize the experience. The default social experience may negatively impact your brand.
Each platform has a distinct purpose that should dictate how much time and money you must invest in it. Your most important task when you invest in new digital marketing is to go back to the original concept of branding, no matter how complicated contemporary marketing may seem. Your new and existing customers will know what to expect from you based on past experience, and today’s experience is tomorrow’s past experience.
Thanks to NJIT’s MBA program for sharing.
NJIT-MBA-Branding-Across-the-New-Digital-Environments-Infographic

Feature image by Hanna_Elise via Compfight cc and adapted for this post.

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Developing a Maximum Viable Non-Product (MVNP)

The inventors of Lean Product Development graced us with the concept of the MVP — the Minimum Viable Product. The idea is that you identify the absolute minimum feature set necessary to test the validity of a product, and then you launch it.

When it comes to validating ideas, conversion optimization tools make you leaner than Lean. You’re ultra lean. You’re 45-days-in-a-lifeboat lean. You’re hide-behind-a-flagpole lean.

Instead of building an MVP, we prefer to build an MVNP: the Maximum Viable Non-Product.

The idea is that you identify the absolute maximum feature set without actually building anything, then you launch it.

While we’re not in the business of validating markets per se, we do spend a great deal of time building facades, fronts, simulations and prototypes to see what will make a website more productive before we invest.

This is why the entrepreneur creation company Tech Ranch asked me to present to their Venture Forth entreprenuers on the topic of market validation.

I summarized my presentation in a column for Marketing Land entitled Using Conversion Optimization Tools to See if That Product Will Fly. Listen here.

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The main reason we like the MVNP concept is that, if you spend all your money building an MVP, what will you use to test your ability to market it. How many good products have been killed simply because the market never heard about them.

The testable market is defined by your ability to reach your addressible market.

The testable market is defined by your ability to reach your addressible market.I think it’s more important to figure out if you can market an idea to an audience cost-effectively than to find out if people will use it.
In my column, I talk about:

  • The role of secondary and primary research.
  • The role of qualitative and quantitative research.
  • The difference between the total market, the addressable market and your test market.
  • How to design an MVNP.

Listen now and go to the article to see the visual aids.

Feature image by Hans Gotun via Compfight cc

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How to Use Humor in Video to Increase Online Sales

Everybody wants to be the llmpany that came up with the brilliantly clever video or ad or Tweet that got shared by millions. The one where, if you dare to admit you haven’t seen it, everyone else at the party will jump on you demanding, “You haven’t SEEN it?” But here’s the thing: While there are many companies that have made such ads that quickly translated into rapid sales, other companies with viral videos and other funny content never increased their sales at all, despite millions of shares. The bottom line is humor can create sales, but it has to be done right.
Unfortunately, it’s so easy to do it wrong.

Inc. published case studies on two products. One, the Orabrush, was designed to remove the tongue bacteria that cause bad breath. Inventor Dr. Robert Wagner was only pulling in about $30 a month, selling 10 Orabrushes, until he created a funny video. Within six weeks, Orabrush sold about 10,000 tongue cleaners (and gave many away free). Within two years, the company sold more than a million Orabrushes online and the video was viewed more than 15 million times. You can now buy the tongue cleaner at stores like Walmart. What was so great about the video was that, in addition to being funny, it clearly explained what causes bad breath and why the Orabrush is the best solution. It also had a call to action and a free Orabrush for responding.

In the same article, though, the reporter talked about EZ Grill which made a video in which it grilled various smart phones to see which would last longest. The video quickly got over a million views but didn’t translate into sales. There might have been a lot of reasons for this.

  • The focus was more on the phones than on the grill.
  • There was no explanation about why one would buy a portable grill or what made EZ Grill a better option.
  • The video revealed the little aluminum grill’s occasional inferno-like action.
  • There was no connection to the company’s website or any other outlet, so consumers had to figure out where to get one on their own: friction.
  • There was cognitive dissonance between something high tech, like smart phones, and the music, which sounded like something from a Charlie Chaplin movie. Cognitive dissonance can be good or bad. In this case, it was difficult to tell who the audience was or what they should do.

The truth is, humor is complicated. Consider that most comedians will work a joke over and over before they bring it to audiences. Nielsen reports that, in the U.S. and Europe at least, 50 percent of people surveyed rank humorous ads as most effective. But myriad studies have failed to find a direct correlation between a funny ad and widgets flying out the door. A study on funny Superbowl ads showed that sales didn’t immediately go up on the products with the funniest ads. And yet we all know about the ones that worked. The Dollar Shave Club, which got 12,000 people to sign up for the service in the first 48 hours after they first aired their comic video, for example. So what makes the difference?

The first rule of humor probably should be:

1. Don’t Forget to Sell Your Product

A great example of this is Poo Purri, a company that makes a spray with essential oils that traps the odor of poop in the bowl. Really, hard to imagine how to sell this product without humor. But here’s a company that uses cognitive dissonance perfectly. It’s a visually attractive video of a gentile, British, girl-next-door, in elegant clothes, sitting on a toilet talking about the basest human functions.

But this video tells you exactly how Poo Pourri works, where to find it, what its Amazon rating is, has a “click here” call to action and a money back guarantee. The result was a 13,000 percent increase in visits to the site and more than double the company’s revenue.

One reason humor works is that it engages the brain in such a way that people kind of forget they’re being sold to. They might share the video over and over, watch it over and over, never realizing that they’re cheerfully and voluntarily propagandizing themselves and spreading your message. That’s because, from a scientific standpoint, humor provides all kinds of payoffs for the brain.

According to a paper published by the Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute, the beginning of a joke triggers your frontal cortex—the executive part of the brain—to look for pattern recognition. The minute we sense a joke is coming, we perk up. We pay attention, look for the payoff. And if the payoff is good, we’re flooded with good feeling neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin and endorphins. These are the neurotransmitters that flood us when we’re in love or we accomplish a challenging goal. At the same time, laughter decreases stress hormones like serum cortisol or epinephrine. So just by the act of being funny, your blog, email, video and other content can reach through the screen and make customers feel good. That’s power.

A study on How Humor Breaks Resistance to Influence, conducted at a university in the Netherlands, show how humor distracts audiences from the fact they’re being sold to. Especially if the humor doesn’t tackle the sales goal head on. So it prevents the target audience from throwing up walls against being influenced.

Normally, any content that might cause us to spend money or make a decision triggers all kinds of defense mechanisms: skepticism, criticism, refusal to be moved. That’s especially true if we already have resistance to the brand. Humor has the effect of distracting us from resistance. And, the study said, even if consumers don’t consciously remember the association between the brand and the thing that made them laugh, it will positively impact brand perception and influence buying.

2. Distract Your Audience From the Hard Sell

One company that uses humor to distract is Yesware, which sends out the email below to customers who haven’t responded to sales pitches. The humor in it, of course, softens the fact that the email is essentially saying “What gives?” Typically, Yesware reports, replies to follow up emails are around 21 percent. But not this one:

This humorous email had a 46 percent response rate

This humorous email had a 46 percent response rate

But to make people laugh, you have to know your audience.

3. Be Relevant to Your Audience

Ikea wanted to boost its sales in Singapore and Malaysia. The trouble is, Singapore and Malaysia are crazy about technology and Ikea is a very low-tech company with furniture you build yourself. Its primary marketing tool is a paper catalog, which is about as low tech as they come. So, just before the release of the iPhone 6, Ikea posted a video that spoofed its own catalog.

Its commercial video used an Apple-like asthetic to show the simple navigation of its paper catalog

Its commercial video used an Apple-like asthetic to show the simple navigation of its paper catalog, touting catalog’s “eternal battery life” and “tactile touch technology you can actually feel.”

With The Ikea “bookbook”, the ad said “each crystal clear image loads instantaneously….”
It was the only commercial video that made it to Time Magazine’s top 10 viral videos of 2014, with 12 million views as of the end of 2014. The video—which was created BBH Asia Pacific marketing company—increased sales .8 percent in Singapore and 13 percent in Malaysia. A case study by London branding and marketing firm, Cream Global, showed the video also garnered articles in Time, WSJ, Buzzfeed, The Daily Mail, Mashable and more. It got nearly 500,000 share on Facebook. More than 6,000 people uploaded photos of themselves with their bookbooks on Instagram. Ikea’s revenues have climbed every year but global sales in 2014 were up nearly six percent from the previous year.

By contrast Ranker has a votable list of brands that try too hard to connect with the millennial generation, including Welch’s “Pour ‘em a glass of LOLs” and a myriad of brands who ultimately killed the expression “bae.”
Ikea’s ad did something else that is crucial to humor in content, it was self-deprecating. Making fun of others in ads just communicates that you’re mean-spirited. Take political ads, for example. But making fun of yourself engenders affection.

4. Be Self-Deprecating

Dissolve makes stock footage. Just showing how pretty their stock footage was would only serve to keep them in competition with every other stock footage company. But Dissolve decided to spoof itself on the fact that stock footage is designed to create mental associations that may or may not have anything to do with the actual product. The blatant honesty was surprising and funny. During the Generic Brand Video launch week, visits to the site increased by 9x and signups and sales revenue both increased by 6X.

Dissolve's self-deprecating humor about stock photos being generic worked well

Dissolve’s self-deprecating humor about stock photos being generic worked well.

Sam Elliott, in his gravelly, dead-pan voice nails the intention of the pictures of happy, beautiful people and scenery to influence viewers’ perception about the product being sold: “Lest you think we’re a faceless entity, look at all these attractive people. Here’s some of them talking and laughing and closeups of hands passing canned goods to each other….” As the saying goes: “It’s funny because it’s true.” It also communicates a sense of transparency and humility on Dissolve’s part.
The video generated articles in Fast Company, Ad Age, Adweek, Mashable, Gizmodo, Mediaite and TIME, according to the Shorty Awards where it won Best of B2B.

One of the brilliant things about the Dissolve video was that, while it was making fun of itself, it was also making the case that its beautiful footage sells powerfully. And it included a link to the company’s website.

Humor is difficult. Just listen to a lineup of comedians and it’s clear that some people know how to do it and others don’t. Poo Pourri founder Suzi Batiz said in several interviews that some of the writing for that first viral ad made her cringe. But it worked. So find someone who knows how to do it right, and don’t forget that the whole point is to get people to buy your product or service.

About the Author

Susan Lahey headshotSusan Lahey is a journalist, copywriter, author and all around multipotentialite wordsmith who loves to write about brave people doing cool things.

Feature image by S.Hart Photography, licensed through Creative Commons and adapted for this post.

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