Internet marketing is back – with a vengeance. Witness the 330 exhibitors and 12,000 attendees – the most ever – at this year’s ad:tech New York show on November 6-8. With a fresh crop of buzzwords every year, ad:tech consistently delivers substantive advice on the real problems marketers face.
“Consumer engagement” was this year’s buzzword — it even has its own blog, www.consumerengagement.blogspot.com. Your web site only has it if it generates an action by the viewer, Ze Frank, creator of ‘The Show” (www.zefrank.com/theshow) explained. “This means just pressing a button, whether it’s leaving a photo or typing a comment.” Commenters are more highly prized than viewers. And those clicks should begin a conversation. As Bob DeSena of mediaedge:cia put it, “A successful conversation is one where the second time you meet me you don’t ask me my name.”
Some email tips: stay away from images at the top of your email; try to turn your logo into a font; ask subscribers to put you on their white mail list as part of the opt-in process; keep emails simple: here’s who we are, what we want to do and what we want to know about you; leverage the “thank you” page in your shopping cart: a DoubleClick survey found that 50% of customers expect a vendor to recommend where they should go next.
In a session on metrics Jim Sterne of targeting.com noted that what you most want to measure is your audience and what they want. Simple questions can deliver the answer: Why did you come here today? What was your experience?
“Who still tracks hits?” Sterne asked. “Or have you finally realized that “hits” means “how idiots track success.” Sterne likes email marketing “because it’s so measurable: transmissions, openings, clickthroughs, forwards, unsubscribes, and sales.” “When someone unsubscribes, pay attention,” he said. When one vendor increased the monthly frequency of emails from five to twelve, sales went up, but so did unsubscribes. The campaigns ultimately proved unprofitable at that frequency and many customers were lost.
In another session, Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop, cited a JupiterResearch finding that broadcast email ranks fourth in performance after lifecycle and triggered-event emails. The best open, clickthrough, and conversion rates come from emails based on web site clickstream data. These campaigns can cost up to 2.5 times more than broadcast—because they involve using web analytic tools to apply data about pages viewed and search keywords used–but they can deliver up to nine times more revenue.
Want to increase revenue per visitor? Jonathan Mendez described how Otto Digital revamped the audible.com home page to improve conversions. They used multivariant analyses to find the mix of features that generated the best results—and increased revenue 55%. Particularly surprising was when they found the mix that generated a 30% increase in revenue per visitor: 98% of that increase was tracked to the inclusion of the Verisign logo. You can read the entire case study at www.optimizeandprophesize.com.
PT thanks New York-based marketing consultant Rich Kelley (richkelley@nyc.rr.com) for this report.
