May 29, 2009 by phase3communications
Congratulations – your customer has received your message and followed you to your website or landing page. Unfortunately, this isn’t the end of your company’s marketing message. There are many web design elements that will either add to or detract from your customer’s experience – and your campaign’s effectiveness:
Titles On Web Pages Should Make Sense – The title attribute is one of the core elements of a website. In between the <title> and </title> tags should include a clear, concise description of your website. A title such as “Bob’s Lawn Service” rather than “Bob Mows Lawns for Residents and Businesses” eliminates unnecessary wordiness and remind your customers of your company’s brand.
Forget the Flash Intros. Flash introductions on landing pages have become very popular in the past few years. This is a trend that you shouldn’t follow. For a potential customer, your landing page intro is just one more barrier between your customer and making the sale.
Under Construction Pages – If your page isn’t ready, don’t post it online just yet. We’ve all seen examples of “coming soon” and “under construction” pages that seem to take forever – customers will appreciate finished content on your website. If you are updating your site, use a “last updated” stamp on each page so that visitors will realize that new content is on its way.
Make Your Websites Viewable For All – Although many designers and graphic artists use 1024×768 or 1280×1024 for their screen resolution, the majority of computer users still have their screen set at 800×600. Visitors who must scroll horizontally because of an oversized website will quickly become annoyed and may abandon your website.
These ideas will help you clearly convey the message that you are trying to share with your customer. Contact Phase 3 Communications for more help creating your landing page today.
Posted in Landing Pages, Marketing Solutions, Understanding Your Customer | Leave a Comment »
May 22, 2009 by phase3communications
Marketers are no longer concerned simply with whether or not their e-mail or direct mail message is successfully delivered to their customer – relevancy is becoming the number one priority as businesses seek to nuture customer relationships. Even though many marketers are still using e-mail blasts once a month, the rule of thumb that “content is king” is now a core focus for the marketing community.
Whether sending direct mail with personalized URLs, e-mails to all of your clients, or communicating with your clients through another medium, these three main parts of ROI should be tested and measured frequently: opens, clicks, and conversion.
Opens – The subject line (for an e-mail) or emphasized message (in a mailer) is the first thing that a customer will see. At this point, the reader will decide whether or not to open the message or explore further by visiting his/her personalized URL. Keep your message clear and concise, offering a title that is relevant to your customer’s wants and needs.
Clicks – Once you have reached your captive audience, what happens next? Your layout, messaging, incentives, and call-to-action should all be measured to make sure that your customers are decoding the message you are giving them. If the incentive, message, or any of the elements of your message are not relevant to the customer, your message is not reaching your audience.
Conversion – As the most important element of your message, the landing page, is where the customer sees the big picture of your company or product and ultimately makes a purchase decision. Test this to make sure that the page is specific to the email offer and has the right incentives for users to take action.
Contact Phase 3 for help with your next personalized URL or landing page project today.
Posted in 1 to 1 Marketing, Direct Mail, Landing Pages, Marketing Basics, PURLs, Understanding Your Customer | Leave a Comment »
May 12, 2009 by phase3communications
Continuing from last week’s post, here are three more factors to discuss which lead to direct-marketing success. Remember that as with all other forms of marketing, you will reap more benefits by putting in more effort. Contact Phase 3 Communications when you’re ready for a more in depth discussion about direct marketing, pURLs, or other print solutions.
Report Only Key Metrics While Accounting For Everything. Most businesses want to measure for everything in order to know where the money goes. But on a day-to-day basis, only pay attention to the most important metrics. Dig deeper when needed, but generally speaking, e-mail open rates and website visits are not something that needs to be checked daily.
Measure How Much You’re Spending. This measurement gives you a quick indication of your marketing efficiency. For example, if you spent $20 and made $200, that’s a 10% expense-to-revenue (E:R) ratio. If this ratio is over 25%, you’re spending too much. If this happens to you, it’s time to look for a better message or a more effective form of advertising. Personalized messages have a higher response rate and stronger leads – this may be a viable option for you.
Measure Your Performance. Direct marketing often leads to response rates as high as 10% – why should you expect anything different? Consider it this way: with a 2% response rate, 98% of people are throwing your message in the garbage. Give customers a targeted message offering a compelling incentive, and these rates will continue to shrink.
As you try some of these tips and apply them to your business, let us know how they work. If there’s anything we can do to help, be sure to let us know.
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May 8, 2009 by phase3communications
In the midst of trying times, marketers have no time to cower from taking action. Now is the time for effective messages and focusing marketing spending towards direct marketing in order to measure and recognize successful returns on investment. Here are some important points that you can leverage for marketing success. Each one is uniquely important – the time you spend implementing these ideas can be very rewarding.
Use An Effective Media Mix. Your future clients are a part of many different individual networks. In order to successfully reach individuals with different media preferences, it’s important that you are part of more than one media channel. A pURL is one example of how this is done – it allows a company to deliver their message through e-mail, direct mail, and through the use of a personalized website.
Devote Time To Caring For Your Customers. The best positioned brand can quickly fail after a day of unsatisfactory customer care. In addition to measuring conversion rates, average orders, and ROI, measure the number of unhappy customers you currently have. If there is a customer service issue, it’s better to know this sooner instead of later.
Keep A High Quality Database. Having a lot of little errors can pose a big problem to your company’s efficiency. Look at the 80/20 rule: if 20% of your customers amount to about 80% of your revenue, why not spend more on your best customers? A clean database will give you this information and help your company thrive.
We’ll keep going with this article next week – make sure to check back for three more important factors that lead to your company’s marketing success.
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May 1, 2009 by phase3communications
Paper prices are continuing to rise and postal prices are following suit – on May 11th the price to send mail will go up once again! Panelists at the American Forest & Paper Association’s Annual Paper Week conference recommend variable data printing as a remedy to some of these concerns. Here’s why:
Response Rates Are Higher. According to New York’s Direct Marketing Association, the average response rate for mass-marketed direct mail is 1%, compared to a 14% average rate for personalized print offers. This higher response rate can likely be attributed to a younger shopper’s preference of highly specialized customer service.
Your Peers Are Doing It. A TrendWatch Graphic Arts study showed that 7% of catalogers see variable printing as a sales opportunity, and 17% say that their use of the technology is increasing or staying the same. In addition, 28% of commercial printers are doing variable printing inhouse while 40% are doing it through outsourcing. In addition, 38% of creative professionals say they have produced a variable-print job in the past 12 months. As we continue through this recession, these numbers will continue to skyrocket.
Emotions Are Flying. The Chapel Hill, NC-based marketing consultancy Yankelovich’s survey shows that print media can capture emotion more effectively, which transfers into a higher brand awareness and loyalty. When faced with a decision, many companies would much rather reduce the size of their catalog and customize their offerings instead of eliminating their catalog altogether.
Are you ready to try variable data printing for your next project? Talk to Phase 3.
Posted in Direct Mail, Marketing Solutions, Understanding Your Customer, Variable Data Printing | Leave a Comment »
April 28, 2009 by phase3communications
Landing pages are crucial for your company to make the best possible first impression and gather necessary information from customers. They are one of many parts of a company’s clear and precise marketing message. Here are some tips to maximize your landing pages…
1. Research Your Visitors
Find out what your audience is trying to find and what kind of offers work. Keep your customer profile in mind when you create these pages and keep everything “on target”.
2. Match Your Website
The landing page and the corporate website should match. This shows visitors that they have arrived at the right place.
3. Remove Unneeded Elements
A landing page is NOT your homepage. Landing page visitors come expecting a very specific message, and any distraction will take away their attention from what you are trying to communicate.
4. Lead Your Visitor’s Eye
Lead the eye along the page towards the conversion exit using typography and color to your advantage. By using whitespace, large copy, and graphics, your page will seem much shorter than it really is. Place the important content close to the middle and keep your user’s attention at the focal point.
5. Keep Forms Maintained
Use technology to keep your forms optimized. Allow the user to tab around fields and auto-populate any fields that you can. Don’t ask for city/state/province if you have already asked for a zip or postal code – this is unnecessary information.
6. Remove Navigation
If possible, remove the navigation bar. If these links have nothing to do with your message, get rid of them!
7. Test, Repeatedly
After you have finished your design, test your landing pages with a small group. Ask your design team if the page is focused and if the message matches the advertisement. Have you reduced all distractions?
Landing pages can be extremely useful when implemented correctly. Contact Phase 3 Communications when you’re ready to include these ideas in your company’s marketing mix!
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April 20, 2009 by phase3communications
After experiencing the benefits of a personalized URL campaign, many times marketers will find themselves stuck as soon as they sit down to create a new outgoing message. Touching your prospect with that additional article, posting, or newsletter section is important because this is why the customer or prospect is interest in the first place – because of the wealth of knowledge that you offer. After a customer clicks on their own personalized URL, here are some ideas for content that can be included:
1) Highlight awards and rave reviews – Customers are very interested in knowing that the businesses they choose are doing well and are competitive among their peers. Whether you recently won an industry award or you’re the best hamburger joint in your city/town, your customers will trust you even more knowing that you have been recognized.
2) Customer of the month – As you survey your customers to see if you’re fulfilling their needs, select success stories to highlight. Communicate with your customer to make sure that they’ll allow you to feature them, promote these stories on your website and within their own personalized URL. This is great advertisement for you and the customer, and it allows you to take a more personable approach to your business’s marketing.
3) Offer your expertise – Create a weekly topic within your newsletter or mailing that helps customers solve a problem with the help of your advice. Give quick, short steps on the entrance page with hopes that the customer will dig deeper into your site to read the long version.
These tips will help you better connect with your customers. Remember to use more than one outlet for your messages – merging print, e-mail, and online marketing will help you to cover all of the bases while delivering a clear, concise message. Learn more about one to one communications and personalized URLs (PURLS).
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April 14, 2009 by phase3communications
As companies continue to look for ways to cut cost and maximize the return on their marketing investments, more and more companies are sending e-mail messages as their advertising medium of choice. For better success and measurement of these messages, marketers need to stop and look at these fundamentals before moving forward with their campaigns.
1) Correctly Assess Open Rates
Albert Gadbut from Direct Marketing News notes that “less than 25%” of all e-mail readers choose to view an e-mail’s images. In order for an e-mail to be counted as “opened”, this option must first be selected. With this in mind, your e-mail open rates might be far higher than what you had previously thought! Getting a customer to open an e-mail and view pictures brings us to our next point…
2) Build Customer Trust With a Clear Message
If your company’s brand is not already established and clear, building a stronger brand image will also build trust in the eyes of your customer. As money and time permits, marketing firms and advertisers should strive to use both online and offline marketing solutions that deliver a clear, consistent message. Online banner ads, print ads, or direct mailings can help your company achieve this goal.
3) Use Quality Offers To Increase Open Rates
Once your branding has been maximized, it’s important to consider quality offers and promotions to help raise the open rate of an e-mail. Among the questions that an advertiser should be answering for the customer is WHY they should open the e-mail or visit your website. An enticing offer will quickly answer this question. With these tips in mind, have you considered pURLs as your next marketing solution? A personalized message with a compelling offer will solve many of these problems and build trust through a meaningful relationship with your customers.
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April 1, 2009 by phase3communications
How effective is your marketing?
The answer to that question can mean the difference between business success and failure. In this age of accountability, you need to find new ways of measuring marketing performance and driving growth.
How should you measure?
Your marketing message is a specific promotion that must drive people to perform a specific task: to buy the shoes, to take the test drive, to sign up for the newsletter. But you may lack the data you need to understand what will prompt them to take that action. By deploying 1:1 Marketing, you can measure the impact of your campaign and apply what you learn to future marketing investments.
Flexible Test and Measurement
1:1 Marketing provides the opportunity to economically experiment with your direct marketing and monitor the results in real time. The use of variable data printing and on-press versioning permits experimentation with personalization, headlines, and even images. By running two campaigns side by side, you will be able to monitor response rates via an internet dashboard to see which one pulls greater response. Read our whitepaper “Resolving the Crisis in Marketing” to learn more.
5 Quick Tips for Testing
- Conduct multiple test marketing at the same time
- Send to different people on the same list
- Perform a reasonable test* to ensure a statistically valid response
- Be ready to replace it
- Continue monitoring the results
Remember, whatever you test, it is not likely valid after six months.
*A reasonable test depends on how many names you have on your list. You can test with as little as a few hundred or as many as 5000. The key is to be sure that your sample is statistically relevant to the size of the primary list.
Want to learn more? Get Guidelines for Testing here.
Tags: marketing, marketing measurement, ROI
Posted in Marketing Basics, Marketing Solutions, Understanding Your Customer | Leave a Comment »
March 25, 2009 by phase3communications
With typical companies sending out multiple marketing messages every week, customers are quickly becoming tired of what they refer to as “information overload”. In most cases, less is more when it comes to direct marketing. Even so, companies and marketing agencies ignore this rule and continue to exasperate their prospects with more mailings. Here’s some tips to make sure that your company isn’t among the repeat offenders…
1) Send a meaningful message.
According to Ogilvy North America, between 18 and 25 percent of service-related messages and 85 to 90 percent of transactional messages are opened. This shows us that customers will open a mailing that pertains to them as opposed to a traditional outbound marketing message.
2) Use analytics effectively.
Most outbound messages are sent without any method of tracking their success. JupiterResearch says that only 35% of all b-to-b marketers track their click data when sending out an e-mail.
3) Clean your lists regularly.
Much to your territorial salesman’s dismay, it is crucial that your company has one master list that can be checked and streamlined regularly. Keeping lists separate opens up the possibility of sending the same message to the same customer multiple times, often times when they would not like to be on your list at all. An effective schedule of communication and a clean opt-in list will result in higher open rates and more conversions as you are now measuring only your desired target audience.
Taking these pointers into consideration, could pURL marketing be your best option? With a tailored message an an incentive to respond, variable data marketing continues to solve the pressing problems that many b-to-b marketers continue to face.
Tags: personalized URLs, PURLs, Variable Data Printing
Posted in Direct Mail, PURLs, Variable Data Printing | Leave a Comment »
