The initial offer/gimmick is simply awesome, but it gets even better once you analyze your results.
Great to see a software company focusing on email lead generation and using information marketing to build relationships with relevant prospects.
Mementum
Conversion Optimization and Sales Growth Strategy
Donate?
Why does Lebron James have a donate button on his (obviously sponsored by Bing) site?
Seems out of place.
Update: Guess it’s for the Boys and Girls Club. That’s cool. Wish it was more than just a link to PayPal checkout, though. Many emotional drivers that could be tapping, but aren’t.
Testing the “Ultimate Button”
I recently tested Eric Graham’s Ultimate Button on my Dirty Copywriting squeeze page.
The implementation for the button isn’t the prettiest (I’m quite certain it physically hurt my designer to do it), but given Eric’s deep experience, I wanted the possible conversion boost if it was there.
Original version without Ultimate Button:
Alternate version with Ultimate Button:
Test Results
Original
Conversion Rate: 29.3%
Conversions: 129
Alternate (with Ultimate Button)
Conversion Rate: 29.3%
Conversions: 132
Observed Improvement: -0.17%
Chance to Beat Original: 49.4%
Conclusion
Interestingly, the button produced very little difference for this case. Traffic sources were quite broad, coming from both endorsed affiliate promotions and AdSense advertising.
While the current observed improvement is minimal to slightly negative, I have decided to add the button to my standard page template for now. I’ll definitely test button design further in the future, but for now we’ll end this test and begin testing more important elements, like the headline.
If you’d like to learn more about copywriting and website conversion, you should join the community at DirtyCopywriting.com.
(Apologies for the weird headline clipping. I think the YouTube video was giving hell to my screen shot plugin.)
A Direct Customer Quote That Shows the Importance of Email Follow Up
Quick question, after reading your newsletters for months now, I’m finally ready to buy
(Emphasis mine.)
You never know when a customer is going to buy. Most will pull the trigger early on, when their buying temperature is hottest. But not this prospect. Maybe she didn’t have the cash right away. Maybe she needed one last nudge over the fence; one more reason to justify the expense.
If you aren’t using email to stay in front of your prospect’s mind, you’re doing yourself a grave disservice. Sure it’s a lot of work. And no, writing the next email isn’t always the highlight of my day. But with the ease and ubiquity of autoresponder services, you need only write your series once, and it follows up with your prospects forever.
Marketing Roundup
Not specific to marketing, but it’s worth remembering that conditions are rarely ideal. Ken shares a personal story.
An Exact Target design tweak that increased sharing. Pretty cool how they observed behavior, then tweaked the design a second time to embrace visitor habits and increase sharing further.
And a copywriting post from yours truly.
A Little Reunion Tour
In the 60′s, Avis was hemorrhaging money as a distant contender in the car-rental market. Then they released their “We’re #2″ ad campaign…
… and doubled revenues several years in a row.
I wonder how the ad is working for Resume Tracker:
Marketing Round Up
Drayton Bird talks about “clearing your throat” in your ads and sales letters. Get to the point.
Looking to test different buttons on your page? Read Eric Graham’s recommendations for maxing your button test results.
Jimmy D. Brown discusses the multiple ways to monetize the same content (and why this lets you charge higher prices).
Easy Doesn’t Mean Good
But this transition will be good for businesses and brand marketers. Why? Because while it’s very difficult to gain access to a consumer’s email address, connecting with them via social networks is quite simple. Indeed, with Facebook’s 400 million members and 100 million daily mobile users, the network enables brands to connect with more customers than ever before–or, as Sandberg explains, “On any given day, you can reach twice as many people in the U.S. as watch American Idol–and that only makes up 30% of our global audience.
Emphasis mine.
If it’s so easy to connect, more people will do it. If it’s so easy, you’ll have every brand competing to “connect” with your prospects. Today we have email overload, tomorrow we’ll (apparently) have connection overload. Especially if it’s so easy.
Here’s the thing.
It’s OK if it’s hard to score your prospect’s contact info. That means it’s hard for your competitors, too.
And, if your prospect doesn’t give it up easily, then just think how powerful a gesture it is when she does finally fork it over? If it’s so hard to get, it sure must be valuable!
“Easy” doesn’t equate to “good” or “valuable.” Remember that when you’re thinking about your lead acquisition.
Overkill?
This is a very interesting and impressive demonstration of technology, but I wonder if Gatorade didn’t drop a pretty penny on over-engineered technology?
As in, what is the difference between those fancy blobs versus combining a few twitter search columns in TweetDeck with a couple good Google alerts flying into your inbox each day?
In something as emotionally driven as blog and social media conversations, I as a marketer see much more value in actually reading the exchanges happening. The dash board overviews don’t give you the real market/customer insights that will take a brand from 98% awesome to 98.5% awesome. You need to get down and dirty if you’re already at Gatorade’s high level.
But it’s still cool to see them not only experimenting, but actually acting on the data they’re getting.
Nice use of Unsubscribe Page
Nice use of an unsbuscribe page by Tiger Direct. So many companies waste the real estate and opportunity to monetize/engage (former) email subscribers.
Just because I exited your newsletter doesn’t mean I’m not interested in your site, products, etc.