From time to time here on the blog I like to revisit Transparent Marketing: How to earn the trust of a skeptical consumer, which I believe to be an excellent blueprint for the modern marketer. Of course, I may be biased because it was written by my boss, the Director of MECLABS Group, Flint McGlaughlin.

But I consider it to be one of the best things Flint has ever written (second only to his name in the lower-right-hand corner of my paycheck), because it was so incredibly prescient. It was written in 2003. And while it was certainly relevant at the time, it has become an even better guide to modern marketing thanks to the rise of social media.

Rage against the machine meets unbridled access to information plus megaphone

The recent meteoric rise of social media, coupled with Google’s impressively fast and accurate algorithim, means that now every 13-year-old with an iPhone is an instant fact-checker. Teen angst can be channeled at “the man” (sorry, that’s now you) with the tweet of a button. Or even worse…mom angst.

Bill Maher sums it up best, “…we just had the fifth anniversary of YouTube and the twelfth of Google, and between them, they’re killing off a great institution: lying. You just can’t lie anymore – facts are too easy to check, everything is on video…our Internet conversations are forever.”

Of course, where’s the line, right? Unless your email marketing is trying to help a Nigerian prince get his oil wealth safely to the shores of America, you’re probably not outright lying in any of your marketing. So I’m going to present a few examples and we’ll play “You Make the Call.” Share your opinions via the comments section, Twitter, however you want.

And when you read the below examples, you might be thinking, “Wait a minute Dan. You are a supersleuth private eye type who has an uncanny knack for getting to the bottom of things.” Really, I only have two assets. A free, unlimited, lifetime plan for Google searches. And the ability to read. Yes, it’s that easy for your customers to dig stuff up.

Like a rock? Or like a brick?

If you’ve taken any MarketingExperiments training, you know that we often recommend using third-party credibility indicators to reduce anxiety. And a central tenet of Transparent Marketing is “Let someone else do your bragging.”

However, it doesn’t say “Let anyone else do your bragging.” You can’t pick just anyone. You must choose wisely. Chevy’s homepage proudly boasts, “No one has more Consumers Digest ‘Best Buys’ for the 2010 model year than Chevrolet.” And it’s not just the homepage. TV ads, magazines ads, banners ads…the entire campaign is built around Consumers Digest.

The first thing that comes to my mind is, “What the heck is Consumers Digest?” To the Google…

Let’s first talk about what Consumers Digest isn’t – Consumer Reports. (bait and switch?) According to Wikipedia, “The publication has no connection to the Consumer Reports magazine published by Consumers Union (which, unlike Consumers Digest, is an independent non-profit organization).

Consumers Digest is a for-profit magazine. And how does it make a profit? Not through subscriptions, it has zero subscribers. “Many car makers have financial ties to the publication,” according to The Wall Street Journal (although, in fairness, it does sell some issues on the newsstand. How many? Nobody seems to know).

Consumers Digest website (I’m not giving them the link juice, use Google or common sense to find it) is poorly designed, to put it kindly. After a thorough (five-second) analysis, Senior Manager of Research Partnerships Andy Mott remarked, “It looks like it was built by a third-grader.” And I’m not trying to be harsh, no website is perfect, but they don’t even look like they’re trying. The site is essentially PotemkinVillage.com:

• There are several bullet points in both columns purportedly stating what they review (baby gear, cameras, etc) that are not links, you can’t click on them and find out more
• In fact, there are essentially only three pages to the whole site – homepage, latest issue (table of contents has no links to content), and automotive best buys (in fairness, you can click-through for a paragraph-long “review” of each car)
• Best line on the site… “If you are interested in receiving information on how you can subscribe to our Web site, please write to: Postmaster, Consumers Digest Communications, 520 Lake Cook Road, Suite 500, Deerfield, IL 60015 or send an e-mail to: postmaster@consumersdigest.com”

And then there are the Automotive “Best Buys” themselves. While different independent ratings organizations may disagree, you would think that there would be some overlap. Consumer Reports’ Best Car Overall for 2010 is the Lexus LS 460L, which “scored an outstanding 99 out of 100 in our road test, making it our highest-rated vehicle.” While Consumers Digest has 44 “Best Buys” for 2010, the LS 460L is not one of them.

In fact, of Consumer Reports’ top cars in ten categories, only two made it onto the Consumers Digest list. You guessed it, both were Chevrolets.

Before I ask you to make the call for this campaign, let me set the tone. First of all, Chevy is in a segment – automobiles – that is usually heavily researched by customers. Cars tend not to be a point-of-purchase decision, like cereal or gum. So if a customer was interested in a Chevy, how hard would it to be to Google “Consumers Digest” to learn more about these awards the carmaker has been boasting about?

Secondly, Chevy isn’t just any car company. In fact, the only reason it is in business is because just last year taxpayers bailed the company out, at which time then General Motors President and CEO Fritz Henderson said, “We are deeply appreciative for the support we have received during this historic transformation, and we will work hard to repay this trust by building a successful new General Motors.”So while third-party awards could certainly help Chevy regain that trust, does Consumers Digest fit that bill? In other words, I won Who’s Who Among American High School Students but I didn’t brag about it and put in on my resume.

Social media factor: So far, with the notable exception of The Wall Street Journal, the mainstream press hasn’t reported on this campaign as far as I can tell. But the first hit in Google for “Consumers Digest fake” is a blog. And I found tons of blog posts claiming that Consumers Digest is fake, from the well-known (Clark Howard) and the unknown. So, for even the mildly curious, it is quite easy to learn more.

Now marketer, I turn it over to you, if you worked in the Chevy marketing department, would you have green-lighted this campaign?

You Make the Call


So real, it’s fake

OK, not to bias you, but that first one it a bit of a gimme. So let’s ratchet it up a notch. This next call comes courtesy of my wife.

For my last transparent marketing blog post, I told you how impressed I was with Domino’s “The Pizza Turnaround” campaign by Crispin, Porter & Bogusky.

As a follow up, they came up with their new “Pizza Holdouts” campaign. If you’re not familiar with it, they basically stalk people who haven’t tried the pizza yet with a personal ad campaign. Billboards that say, “Bill Johnson, our sauce is now herbier” along with signs, trucks, planes, radio announcements, etc.

Eventually the person takes the hint and, surprise, loves it! My wife is convinced that these are fake. And ever since I wrote about Domino’s Pizza the first time, she’s wanted me to do a follow up to expose how they turned their backs on transparent marketing this time. To the Google!

Well, it turns out, as best as I can figure, this is for real. Again, my research is not extensive. For the Chevy info above, I simply typed “Consumers Digest” into Google, found an interesting Wikipedia entry, and then tried “Consumers Digest fake.” “Pizza Holdout fake” didn’t provide me with the same flood of bad publicity, but it did show a very wise use of social media by Domino’s – they listened. And responded.

The first search result was a YouTube video of the campaign. Right below the video are negative comments, most notably skepticism over the reality of the video. Domino’s responded to those negative comments with more info about the campaign. And since “Uploader Comments” show first in YouTube, you quickly see these replies. While they didn’t address every negative comment on the page (there will always be naysayers), they did prominently speak to a few key issues.

And that was about the extent of my research. After all, who researches the purchase of a pizza that much?

Of course, just using common sense, there are a few obvious things to be skeptical of. After Domino’s made a personal ad campaign for you in your town that your friends and family were in on, and then shoved a camera in your face when you tried the pizza, could you really bring yourself to say, “Tastes like cardboard warmed over. Honey, call the local pizza joint.”? (And what town has only one Bill Johnson?)

Social media factor: Social media played a positive role in this case, thanks to Domino’s proactively responding to skeptical customers. Also as part of my lazy research, I went to Domino’s microsites where they promote use of Facebook and Twitter. Since they’re encouraging social media and giving people positive things to tweet about (such as a contest to capture so-called pizza holdouts), not surprisingly, there seems to be mostly positive stuff out there.

So the campaign is real yet it looks so real some people think it’s fake. If you were asked to green-light this campaign, what would you do?

You Make the Call


Trust but verify

You didn’t think I could write a post about transparent marketing without shining that harsh light of analysis in the mirror, did you? You did? Really? Then just skip the next part and move right along.

Here at MarketingExperiments, our job is to serve you, our audience, and help you do your job better. To that end, we freely publish our experiments.

However, in publishing those experiments we have a debate raging internally, because we anonymize our experiments. We don’t share the name or our Research Partners and we obscure identifying information as well. And just in case a competitor could figure out which company we’re talking about, we also don’t share data like “number of conversions.”

On the one hand, we feel that this does a disservice to you, our audience. We want to be transparent and share as many juicy details as possible.

However, we do work with real-world Research Partners on their actual marketing campaigns. We believe this provides far greater value than running hypothetical experiments with brands that don’t exist. But because our Research Partners are actual companies competing every day for business, they view the experimentation we do as sensitive information. They consider “number of conversions” and other data we use in experimentation to be sensitive business intelligence that could give competitors a leg up.

Social media factor: Zero. I’ve never seen anyone tweet, blog, or even Foursquare about this, and I listen to the conversation every day. In fact, other than this blog post, no one probably even noticed.

So what would you do if you were in our shoes (well, mostly sandals, our office is by the beach)?

You Make the Call


True perfection

If you follow the news at all, you probably know where I’m headed with this “You Make the Call” theme – the imperfect game. Long story short, Armando Galarraga was one out away from a perfect game when umpire Jim Joyce blew the call. Galarraga didn’t throw a temper tantrum. And after the game, once Joyce saw the replay on TV, he apologized for getting it wrong.

That’s transparency. No one is right all the time. And your produce isn’t right for everyone.

So how can you apply these lessons to your own transparent marketing?

• Don’t be everything to everyone – Focus on what you do best and hammer it home.
• C’mon, keep it clean – That line isn’t always totally clear, as I’ve referenced above, but some practices are egregious. Quick hint: If you’ve hired a consultant or agency with the words “Black Hat” in its name, you’ve crossed the line. Stay on the sunny side of marketing.
• Listen – Social media makes it very easy to listen to your customers. Don’t just use “powerful auto-tweet technology” to build followers and blast promotions. Hear what they have to say. Then go the extra mile. Ditch the auto-tweet technology and actually have a conversation. You may be tipped off to (and mitigate) a mistake before it becomes a full-blown crisis.
• Test – Good marketers with good intentions can disagree on how transparent your brand should be and what will work best. While one of you might be wrong, the customer never is. So test. See what works.
• Hear it straight from the source – Heck, just read Transparent Marketing: How to earn the trust of a skeptical consumer. It’s all in there. And it’s a free download.
• Of mice, men, and marketers – In the end, even with the best intention of transparent marketing, you will go awry. While writing this very blog post I got a note calling a promotional email I wrote a scam. Ouch! But, as with anything, if your aim is true, you’re more likely to hit the target.

Related Resources

Transparent Marketing: A slice of honesty from Domino’s Pizza

Holistic Marketing Optimization: What’s more likely to show up on Twitter?

Resources on Transparent Marketing

But I consider it to be one of the best things Flint has ever written (second only to his name in the lower-right-hand corner of my paycheck), because it was so incredibly prescient. It was written in 2003. And while it was certainly relevant at the time, it has become an even better guide to modern marketing thanks to the rise of social media.

Rage against the machine meets unbridled access to information plus megaphone

The recent meteoric rise of social media, coupled with Google’s impressively fast and accurate algorithim, means that now every 13-year-old with an iPhone is an instant fact-checker. Teen angst can be channeled at “the man” (sorry, that’s now you) with the tweet of a button. Or even worse…mom angst.

Bill Maher sums it up best, “…we just had the fifth anniversary of YouTube and the twelfth of Google, and between them, they’re killing off a great institution: lying. You just can’t lie anymore – facts are too easy to check, everything is on video…our Internet conversations are forever.”

Of course, where’s the line, right? Unless your email marketing is trying to help a Nigerian prince get his oil wealth safely to the shores of America, you’re probably not outright lying in any of your marketing. So I’m going to present a few examples and we’ll play “You Make the Call.” Share your opinions via the comments section, Twitter, however you want.

And when you read the below examples, you might be thinking, “Wait a minute Dan. You are a supersleuth private eye type who has an uncanny knack for getting to the bottom of things.” Really, I only have two assets. A free, unlimited, lifetime plan for Google searches. And the ability to read. Yes, it’s that easy for your customers to dig stuff up.

Like a rock? Or like a brick?

If you’ve taken any MarketingExperiments training, you know that we often recommend using third-party credibility indicators to reduce anxiety. And a central tenet of Transparent Marketing is “Let someone else do your bragging.”

However, it doesn’t say “Let anyone else do your bragging.” You can’t pick just anyone. You must choose wisely. Chevy’s homepage proudly boasts, “No one has more Consumers Digest ‘Best Buys’ for the 2010 model year than Chevrolet.” And it’s not just the homepage. TV ads, magazines ads, banners ads…the entire campaign is built around Consumers Digest.

The first thing that comes to my mind is, “What the heck is Consumers Digest?” To the Google…

Let’s first talk about what Consumers Digest isn’t – Consumer Reports. (bait and switch?) According to Wikipedia, “The publication has no connection to the Consumer Reports magazine published by Consumers Union (which, unlike Consumers Digest, is an independent non-profit organization).

Consumers Digest is a for-profit magazine. And how does it make a profit? Not through subscriptions, it has zero subscribers. “Many car makers have financial ties to the publication,” according to The Wall Street Journal (although, in fairness, it does sell some issues on the newsstand. How many? Nobody seems to know).

Consumers Digest website (I’m not giving them the link juice, use Google or common sense to find it) is poorly designed, to put it kindly. After a thorough (five-second) analysis, Senior Manager of Research Partnerships Andy Mott remarked, “It looks like it was built by a third-grader.” And I’m not trying to be harsh, no website is perfect, but they don’t even look like they’re trying. The site is essentially PotemkinVillage.com:

• There are several bullet points in both columns purportedly stating what they review (baby gear, cameras, etc) that are not links, you can’t click on them and find out more
• In fact, there are essentially only three pages to the whole site – homepage, latest issue (table of contents has no links to content), and automotive best buys (in fairness, you can click-through for a paragraph-long “review” of each car)
• Best line on the site… “If you are interested in receiving information on how you can subscribe to our Web site, please write to: Postmaster, Consumers Digest Communications, 520 Lake Cook Road, Suite 500, Deerfield, IL 60015 or send an e-mail to: postmaster@consumersdigest.com”

And then there are the Automotive “Best Buys” themselves. While different independent ratings organizations may disagree, you would think that there would be some overlap. Consumer Reports’ Best Car Overall for 2010 is the Lexus LS 460L, which “scored an outstanding 99 out of 100 in our road test, making it our highest-rated vehicle.” While Consumers Digest has 44 “Best Buys” for 2010, the LS 460L is not one of them.

In fact, of Consumer Reports’ top cars in ten categories, only two made it onto the Consumers Digest list. You guessed it, both were Chevrolets.

Before I ask you to make the call for this campaign, let me set the tone. First of all, Chevy is in a segment – automobiles – that is usually heavily researched by customers. Cars tend not to be a point-of-purchase decision, like cereal or gum. So if a customer was interested in a Chevy, how hard would it to be to Google “Consumers Digest” to learn more about these awards the carmaker has been boasting about?

Secondly, Chevy isn’t just any car company. In fact, the only reason it is in business is because just last year taxpayers bailed the company out, at which time then General Motors President and CEO Fritz Henderson said, “We are deeply appreciative for the support we have received during this historic transformation, and we will work hard to repay this trust by building a successful new General Motors.”So while third-party awards could certainly help Chevy regain that trust, does Consumers Digest fit that bill? In other words, I won Who’s Who Among American High School Students but I didn’t brag about it and put in on my resume.

Social media factor: So far, with the notable exception of The Wall Street Journal, the mainstream press hasn’t reported on this campaign as far as I can tell. But the first hit in Google for “Consumers Digest fake” is a blog. And I found tons of blog posts claiming that Consumers Digest is fake, from the well-known (Clark Howard) and the unknown. So, for even the mildly curious, it is quite easy to learn more.

Now marketer, I turn it over to you, if you worked in the Chevy marketing department, would you have green-lighted this campaign?

You Make the Call

So real, it’s fake

OK, not to bias you, but that first one it a bit of a gimme. So let’s ratchet it up a notch. This next call comes courtesy of my wife.

For my last transparent marketing blog post, I told you how impressed I was with Domino’s “The Pizza Turnaround” campaign by Crispin, Porter & Bogusky.

As a follow up, they came up with their new “Pizza Holdouts” campaign. If you’re not familiar with it, they basically stalk people who haven’t tried the pizza yet with a personal ad campaign. Billboards that say, “Bill Johnson, our sauce is now herbier” along with signs, trucks, planes, radio announcements, etc.

Eventually the person takes the hint and, surprise, loves it! My wife is convinced that these are fake. And ever since I wrote about Domino’s Pizza the first time, she’s wanted me to do a follow up to expose how they turned their backs on transparent marketing this time. To the Google!

Well, it turns out, as best as I can figure, this is for real. Again, my research is not extensive. For the Chevy info above, I simply typed “Consumers Digest” into Google, found an interesting Wikipedia entry, and then tried “Consumers Digest fake.” “Pizza Holdout fake” didn’t provide me with the same flood of bad publicity, but it did show a very wise use of social media by Domino’s – they listened. And responded.

The first search result was a YouTube video of the campaign. Right below the video are negative comments, most notably skepticism over the reality of the video. Domino’s responded to those negative comments with more info about the campaign. And since “Uploader Comments” show first in YouTube, you quickly see these replies. While they didn’t address every negative comment on the page (there will always be naysayers), they did prominently speak to a few key issues.

And that was about the extent of my research. After all, who researches the purchase of a pizza that much?

Of course, just using common sense, there are a few obvious things to be skeptical of. After Domino’s made a personal ad campaign for you in your town that your friends and family were in on, and then shoved a camera in your face when you tried the pizza, could you really bring yourself to say, “Tastes like cardboard warmed over. Honey, call the local pizza joint.”? (And what town has only one Bill Johnson?)

Social media factor: Social media played a positive role in this case, thanks to Domino’s proactively responding to skeptical customers. Also as part of my lazy research, I went to Domino’s microsites where they promote use of Facebook and Twitter. Since they’re encouraging social media and giving people positive things to tweet about (such as a contest to capture so-called pizza holdouts), not surprisingly, there seems to be mostly positive stuff out there.

So the campaign is real yet it looks so real some people think it’s fake. If you were asked to green-light this campaign, what would you do?

You Make the Call

Trust but verify

You didn’t think I could write a post about transparent marketing without shining that harsh light of analysis in the mirror, did you? You did? Really? Then just skip the next part and move right along.

Here at MarketingExperiments, our job is to serve you, our audience, and help you do your job better. To that end, we freely publish our experiments.

However, in publishing those experiments we have a debate raging internally, because we anonymize our experiments. We don’t share the name or our Research Partners and we obscure identifying information as well. And just in case a competitor could figure out which company we’re talking about, we also don’t share data like “number of conversions.”

On the one hand, we feel that this does a disservice to you, our audience. We want to be transparent and share as many juicy details as possible.

However, we do work with real-world Research Partners on their actual marketing campaigns. We believe this provides far greater value than running hypothetical experiments with brands that don’t exist. But because our Research Partners are actual companies competing every day for business, they view the experimentation we do as sensitive information. They consider “number of conversions” and other data we use in experimentation to be sensitive business intelligence that could give competitors a leg up.

Social media factor: Zero. I’ve never seen anyone tweet, blog, or even Foursquare about this, and I listen to the conversation every day. In fact, other than this blog post, no one probably even noticed.

So what would you do if you were in our shoes (well, mostly sandals, our office is by the beach)?

You Make the Call

True perfection

If you follow the news at all, you probably know where I’m headed with this “You Make the Call” theme – the imperfect game. Long story short, Armando Galarraga was one out away from a perfect game when umpire Jim Joyce blew the call. Galarraga didn’t throw a temper tantrum. And after the game, once Joyce saw the replay on TV, he apologized for getting it wrong.

That’s transparency. No one is right all the time. And your produce isn’t right for everyone.

So how can you apply these lessons to your own transparent marketing?

• Don’t be everything to everyone – Focus on what you do best and hammer it home.
• C’mon, keep it clean – That line isn’t always totally clear, as I’ve referenced above, but some practices are egregious. Quick hint: If you’ve hired a consultant or agency with the words “Black Hat” in its name, you’ve crossed the line. Stay on the sunny side of marketing.
• Listen – Social media makes it very easy to listen to your customers. Don’t just use “powerful auto-tweet technology” to build followers and blast promotions. Hear what they have to say. Then go the extra mile. Ditch the auto-tweet technology and actually have a conversation. You may be tipped off to (and mitigate) a mistake before it becomes a full-blown crisis.
• Test – Good marketers with good intentions can disagree on how transparent your brand should be and what will work best. While one of you might be wrong, the customer never is. So test. See what works.
• Hear it straight from the source – Heck, just read Transparent Marketing: How to earn the trust of a skeptical consumer. It’s all in there. And it’s a free download.
• Of mice, men, and marketers – In the end, even with the best intention of transparent marketing, you will go awry. While writing this very blog post I got a note calling a promotional email I wrote a scam. Ouch! But, as with anything, if your aim is true, you’re more likely to hit the target.

Related Resources

Transparent Marketing: A slice of honesty from Domino’s Pizza

Holistic Marketing Optimization: What’s more likely to show up on Twitter?

Resources on Transparent Marketing

For one, content within email tends to change more often than your typical landing page. This makes optimizing for content more challenging as different topics are likely to garner different levels of interest from the segments within your email list. So results will change each month based on the content alone – making A/B testing the only reliable method for measuring progress.

In addition, email lists themselves prove to be a challenge, as what works for one list may not work for another list. Even within lists, especially aggregated lists, you will see different results based on the value proposition, content, layout, and calls-to-action (CTAs) used in your email.

And to further complicate matters, you are still dealing with a funnel process in which your email must first reach a user (avoiding spam filters, personal filters, etc.), your subject line must interest the user enough to open the email, your email must display properly (with images on and off) and be compelling enough to achieve a click-through to your landing page where the battle for a conversion wages on.

In today’s world of overloaded email boxes, people declaring email bankruptcy, spam filters and everything else, this game is only getting more difficult – for marketers and users alike.

With that said, I’d like to offer up my own favorite email testing tricks and tips. It’s important to understand that what works for one segment, list, or industry will not necessarily work for another. In fact what works one month for a list may not work next month. It’s an ever-evolving process in which you must always challenge your own best practices to maximize your results.

1. Text-only email

This is my silver bullet of email optimization. In a world where everyone wants their logo, business cards, websites, and emails to be as shiny and pretty as possible, it’s easy to forget that email is a text-based medium.

Out of all the emails you actually read each day, how many are HTML vs. text-only? The important emails you receive each day – the ones from your family, friends, and co-workers – are all likely text-based. This means the HTML emails you receive are most likely not from one these aforementioned groups and thus likely less important to you on a personal level.

Obviously there are caveats to this – such as an email from your bank or a Facebook friend request – but the truth is, when you send an HTML email you are already fighting a certain level of banner blindness. If you currently only send out an HTML email, I’d challenge you to A/B split test against a text-only version of your email and measure the results.

2. Story format

Emails are a form of value exchange. In exchange for someone’s time and interest, you must first provide something of value.

One of the easiest, most interesting ways to provide value in an email is to tell a relevant story. Not only can telling a story create interest in your topic, but it also can provide you with a natural sounding CTA of “Continue Reading” or “Read More” that requires less commitment from the user before clicking through to your landing page.

The downside to the story format is it requires you to have an interesting story to tell as well as an audience willing to read through the text.

3. Big button

Sometimes if your offer is compelling enough, all you need to do is give people a place to click. It helps if your email list is already familiar with your brand, is interested and familiar with what you’re offering and needs little explanation before clicking through.

For example, our Marketing Director is drawn to J. Crew’s buttons like a moth to a lightbulb…

The focus should be on the value proposition and the CTA copy as this will determine the commitment level required to achieve a click-through. A “Learn More” CTA will bring more clicks, but less qualified traffic than a “Buy Now” CTA. Experiment with this CTA copy to see what works best for your particular audience and dial in the right amount of click-through vs. conversion.

4. Multiple CTAs

I’ve found that when dealing with large, aggregated email lists, including multiple, different CTAs can help increase click-through on the basis that different people will be interested in different aspects of a topic.

For instance, if you are offering a free PDF download on a topic that you hope will encourage people to provide their email address, and you also have a webinar that does the same thing, go ahead and include a link to “View the PDF” and another CTA to “Sign-up for the Webinar.”

What you’ll find is that offering multiple contrasting calls to action will result in a higher click-through rate as some people will be interested in downloading the PDF, while others will prefer the webinar – two different mediums that attract two different groups of people but achieve the same objective.

5. Digest

If you currently send out a longer email newsletter, I’d encourage you to try a digest format. In the digest format you offer several links at the top of the email that either direct users to a particular article on your website or anchor down to an excerpt within the email itself, followed by a CTA to “read more.”

I’ve found digest emails work well when you have a lot of content to offer and you are able to effectively arrange this content so as to attract a wide variety of clicks. It’s a combination of the story format and multiple CTA emails mentioned previously.

Related Resources

The Five Best Ways to Optimize Email Response: How to craft effective email messages that drive customers to action

Optimize your Email in Three Steps: How one marketer tripled revenue from their house list

Order your custom Email Response Optimization Package

In the meantime, here is our latest community-written blog post to help you understand how your peers deal with optimizing their entire conversion funnel during the customer/client acquisition period…

There’s no simple answer

In a former life I worked in computerized irrigation – a lot of plants, a lot of pipes and a lot of leaks.

The only way to find the leaks was to manually walk up and down each row looking for pooled water on the ground.

The same applies to leaks in the funnel. The only way is to use something like Urchin or Analytics and find the “black-hole pages” – pages traffic goes into never to be seen again. Concentrate on the pages with good volumes of traffic and plug those leaks!

– Dave Collins, Founder & Managing Director of SoftwarePromotions

If your oil funnel had a leak, you’d be sure to replace it

The sales cycle certainly calls for a consistent, quality funnel which has just the right amount of viscosity and throughput.

I believe that it really goes back to the age old question of “How do we integrate marketing and sales?”.

When this question comes up within a company, red flags fly through the roof. It’s a shame because we’re not territorial animals. We’re civilized human beings who should solely be focused on what’s best for our company – because this attitude will ultimately help you achieve more.

Sales and Marketing should align their policies so that quality information is passed from the point of initial contact – inbound or outbound – through the sales cycle. Nurturing is the key fluid in keeping the motor up and running. Having the tools to manage the data is great but it’s human intelligence that ultimately drives nurturing and sales.

People buy from people, not from software or companies. Optimizing the quality of your staff and providing them with tools to better manage and view their data is what companies need to improve lead generation and sales.

For example, landing pages should have some form of unique ID or should be interconnected to CRM so that when related information is recognized, it’s automatically tracked as a touch point. Capture forms should be simple and brief for initial contacts and get more detailed as prospects choose to dig deeper.

– Jason Croyle, Lead Generation Specialist and Social Media Evangelist at InTouch

Connect PPC ads to landing pages to capture forms to lead generation and sales

I deal mainly with Google Analytics, Website Optimizer and AdWords, so my example will be within that frame.

1. First, connect Google Analytics and AdWords (To track ROI on a variety of ads and keywords.)
2. All buttons on landing page are tracked using the _trackEvent method. (This will help you determine what buttons/ call-to-actions on your landing pages are receiving the most awareness.)
   1. Buttons on landing page are also tracked using Google Website Optimizer so that we can provide multiple variations of buttons, content, and call-to-actions on landing page.
3. Combining steps 1 and 2 will allow us to determine what steps, content, ads and call-to-actions work best not only on a micro level, but on a “holistic” level – all together.

– Omar Ead, Director at Digitus Marketing

One at a time

Short answer: fix one phase/step at a time. You truly will not know where your fallout point is until you’ve fixed the phases above it. It’s quite easy and inexpensive to test various elements; see what works best to set a baseline. Then move on to the next step in the process and repeat.

I tend to spend a good amount of time building the optimization roadmap before I start tweaking and testing.

– Nick Rice, Regional Manager of Field Marketing at McCann Erickson

Related Resources

Compounding ROI of Sequential Conversion Rate Increases: How one company took a small gain and multiplied it tenfold

Holistic Marketing Optimization: What’s more likely to show up on Twitter?

The Compounding Effect of Micro-Gains: How small performance increases in PPC, landing page conversions, completed sales, and more combine to deliver big improvements in revenue.

As we prepare the content for that web clinic, I wanted to get the perspective of Andy Mott, Senior Manager of Research Partnerships at MarketingExperiments. As his title would suggest, Andy manages Research Partnerships with some major, enterprise-level companies.

As he is on almost every topic from email copy to Jacksonville Jaguars’ draft picks, Andy was fired up about holistic marketing optimization and what marketers who feel lost in large organizations can do to really make an impact…

Marketers can get excited about one-off successful tests that show huge gains. And rightly so. But in next Wednesday’s web clinic, we’ll be focused on teaching how to take a step back, look at the big picture, and drive even greater ROI. That’s hard enough for a small ecommerce site. But what does that mean to a marketer in a Fortune 500 company?

Andy Mott: In some ways, the average marketer has a bigger challenge than a CEO. The goal of a CEO is simple – make more money. You might argue that CEOs should have a wide range of goals from satisfying all stakeholders to running oil rigs that don’t explode, but the end result of all those decisions boils down to one clear place – the bottom line.

However, once you move down the chain of command from the CEO, things get a little more murky, don’t they? And when you finally find yourselves in the deep, dark trenches of the marketing department, it becomes clear why holistic marketing optimization is so difficult.

Most marketers aren’t given the simple task of “make more money.” Sometimes their compensation is driven by secondary or tertiary goals that actually conflict with their colleagues.

So there are too many cooks in the kitchen and they’re not even cooking the same meal?

AM: Well, beyond just individuals with conflicting goals, many large marketing organizations, have entire siloed departments that are working towards (because they’re getting compensated for) different goals. For example, the email marketing group is hyper-focused on open rates and clickthroughs because their bonus depends on it. And then you have branding, product group A, product group B, the search marketing agency, the creative agency…

And then the battles begin. All these different groups end up throwing more elbows than Kevin Garnett grabbing a rebound, fighting for space on the homepage and engaging in turf wars over who should be in control of the optimization cycle.

If you’re shaking your head right now agreeing with Andy, feel free to use that tweet button in the upper left to share your most frustrating experiences.

AM: I’d love to hear what marketers out there have to say. Here’s my story. I was working with a major company that had several divisions and layers with (much like an unoptimized landing page) competing objectives.

The technology organization had a set of benchmarks for different back-end aspects of a product. Each aspect had to meet an individual benchmark. Essentially, the focus was on separate checkboxes and not the big picture. After all, the customer didn’t interact with separate backend pieces, the customer just knew how the overall product worked.

One aspect of the product did not meet its individual technology benchmark, but the impact on the overall product performance that the customer would notice was minimal (less than 1%).

Now, there was a fix that would ensure that this piece met its benchmark. However, the fix would mean that that 1% of customers would not be able to use the product at all. They would install the product and be met with a totally blank screen.

So, essentially, either 100% of customers would feel a less than 1% impact (and probably not even notice). Or, 1% of customers would feel a 100% impact – the product just wouldn’t work.

So what do you do in these situations? How do you take a holistic approach when different groups and organizations differ over the right thing to do? Who should decide?

AM: The answer is very simple – the customer is in charge. And you, the intrepid marketer, must be their advocate.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” That sounds great, Andy, but it’s easier said than done. I hope you have a Henry V-style motivational speech in you, because speaking truth to power is one of the most difficult things any person in any organization will ever be asked to do.

AM: And, I would argue, the results are just as predictable as they are dire, from oil-covered pelicans to plane crashes that wipe out the entire leadership of Poland. The people higher up in an organization tend to have all the power yet are the farthest away from where the rubber meets the road and the impact of the actual decisions.

So how do you decide when to stick your neck out and how do you protect yourself to make sure that, even if you’re wrong, your head doesn’t roll?

AM: Here are the main points I try to keep in mind:

• What’s more likely to be tweeted? – So, from the story I just told you, what do you think will be more likely to be tweeted? Marginally slower load time? Or a program that you took the time to download, and then when you try to run it, your screen is totally blank?
• Emphasize the value of sequential conversion rate increases – Sure, if you’re in charge of search marketing and you optimize your patch, you’ll see a gain. But what if you took a holistic approach? What if, as an organization, you optimized the PPC ads, the landing page, and the shopping cart or lead gen form? The total ROI increase would be so much more beneficial for the entire organization. Focus on the value to the entire team.
• Just recommend tests – Every marketer likely has a slightly different opinion about what makes the best headline. Or copy. So go back to the simple principle above…the customer is in charge. You don’t have to fight for your idea over someone else’s. Just propose a test. And that way, the customer will tell you with his actions what works best.
• Share the credit, take the blame – This is just one of my maxims in life. I learned it from Dwight Eisenhower. Or perhaps John Wooden. Or maybe it was Harry S Truman. You see my point. Every true change agent leads the charge by focusing on the benefit to the team over the individual. You don’t just want to be able to make a difference in your career. You want to make a habit of it. And while you’ve probably mitigated the downside risk with the testing suggestion above, something can always go wrong. Other organizations (and superiors) will trust you more next time if you don’t try to pass the buck.

OK, Andy, I like the practical advice. But you can’t overlook the fact that what you’re asking is still very hard to do. Isn’t this what the President has been criticized for lately? All common sense and no emotion?

For this blog post to work, it needs to be an inspirational blog post that will be posted in every marketer’s cubicle in the nation. Where’s my Braveheart moment? “They can take our marketing budgets, but they can never take our freeeeedddoooooommm!!!”

AM: I am seeking to inspire every marketer to speak up for what’s right against the tide of inaction, inefficiency, and incompetence that can define the modern-day large corporation. But I will do you one better Dan. I’ll see your Mel Gibson quote, and I’ll raise you one. I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes, from a man that optimized an entire nation…

The Man in the Arena

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

– President Theodore Roosevelt

Related Resources

Compounding ROI of Sequential Conversion Rate Increases: How one company took a small gain and multiplied it tenfold

The Business Case for Testing: How one marketer convinced her business leaders to start testing and drove a 201% gain in the process

Embrace Your Inner Sleazeball: How to gain enterprise approval for the marketing resources you need to succeed

In my last article, I gave an overview of the Web designer role. Today I am looking at the yin to the Web designer’s yang – the Web developer. Often, the casual observer will have the most difficultly drawing a clear distinction in a corporate Web team between the Web designer and the Web developer. They are both conversant in Internet jargon. They can both have direct access to Web pages and ancillary systems that affect the website. To confuse matters more so, in some organizations, they are the same person.

So if the Web designer is primarily responsible for the overall design of pages and graphics, what exactly does the Web developer develop on the site? In short, Web developers develop applications. An application uses business logic to manipulate data or customize the visitor’s experience. To put it in simpler terms, “developer” usually refers to a programmer – someone who enjoys building complex rules to drive and maintain systems.

“Web developer” pseudonyms

• Web Application Developer
• Web Engineer
• Multimedia Programmer
• Web UI Developer
• Software Engineer
• Web Programmer
• Software Developer

In your company, this role might be
lumped in with

• Web Designer
• Webmaster
• Software Engineer

What they probably can do for you

• Create, alter, or troubleshoot custom applications – especially those which require database access
• Connect data gathered onsite to internal databases or third-party applications (e.g., lead generation forms)
• Develop scripted widgets from scratch (Javascript, Flash)
• Install or configure some software on the Web/application/database servers
• Secure applications against hacking vulnerabilities
• Optimize sites for performance (except optimizing graphics)
• Formulate direct queries against a database

What they probably can’t do for you

• Translate your specifications into a visual representation of the site/page
• Create site graphics
• Create Flash animations from scratch
• Perform complete site redesigns

What you need to know about Web developers

The shortest path to a successful Web-based marketing initiative often requires the tandem deployment of a Web designer and a Web developer.

Web designers typically handle the elements that are most evident to the end-user – they are decorators who ensure that the house is attractive and tastefully furnished. Web developers will often handle the elements that are just assumed to work by the end-user – they are the general contractors who ensure that the plumbing, lighting, and heating are installed and working properly.

Developers can be extremely literal in their interpretation of your requests – to a fault. If the “Buy Now” button is supposed to lead to the shopping cart, you may actually have to spell this out for them. And although it may feel like a lot of unnecessary work on the front end, you will find yourself actually saving significant time over the length of the project if you take the time to document everything in detailed specifications before it even begins.

Developers thrive on good specifications. They will appreciate your effort and will probably be more proactive in working with you if they see that you have made the initial effort to properly define your request. Continually changing the specifications throughout the project and communicating these constant changes via email, instant messages, and verbal chats could cause the developer to plot your early demise.

Understanding all of the “what-if” scenarios of your marketing application is crucial to sound Web development. Designing an application is somewhat similar to building a house. If you know that the house requires a three-car garage, that’s easy to build into the initial foundation.

If you decide, halfway through the project, after the foundation has been poured and the walls have been framed out, that the house now requires a three-car garage, it may require that the developers actually rip up the whole foundation and start from scratch. This will surely cause the developers to create new, unflattering names for you.

It’s easy to confuse the Web developer with the Web designer (or to squeeze their roles into a single person) because the developer can, technically, do most of what the designer does – but the developer can’t do it well. Most developers can create graphics – ugly graphics. Most developers can do overall site designs – Spartan site designs.

Web developers are often available to perform Web-based tasks that don’t rise anywhere near the level of true application development. They might be asked to make basic copy edits, to swap out simple graphics, or to create new pages that are simply different versions of existing pages. This is all fine – to a point.

Developers who have true programming skills but are confined to nothing more than janitorial duties on a site probably won’t stay around for long. Serious developers want to build applications and they will seek out opportunities that allow them to delve deeply into business logic.

Related Resources

Web Team Roles, Web Designer: Are you trying to buy bread from the butcher?

Technology Blind Spots: How human insight revealed a hidden (and almost missed) 31% gain

The MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal, Q1 2010

One team – the IT team – is responsible for the functional performance of the site. The other team – the marketing team – is responsible for the business performance of the site. Unfortunately, the performance of these two objectives are frequently misaligned.

Marketing professionals face distinct challenges to launch and maintain Web-based initiatives. They must constantly quantify business returns through the website, yet they frequently do not have the tactical (technical) tools at their disposal to make this happen.

This means that they must routinely coordinate their initiatives through the IT team. Aside from the traditional hurdles of culture and jargon, marketers can also be stymied by an expanding and splintering list of roles that may be present in any company’s “Web team.”

I have often seen marketers spin their wheels because they direct their requests to members of the Web team who are either ill-equipped or, in some cases, forbidden to fulfill the marketer’s request. Like a shopper who asks a butcher for a loaf of bread, the marketing team too often finds itself directing its requests to any member of IT who will listen – and then becoming frustrated when those requests are ignored or the final product fails to live up to the marketing vision.

For this reason, I believe it may save some headaches if we spend some time simply defining the typical roles in corporate Web teams. More importantly, you should know that every role on the IT team represents certain skills that could drive the success of your marketing campaign – or sabotage it before it ever gets off the ground.

So over the summer, I’m going to blog about these roles to help you get the most value from your IT resources. In this first installment, I’m going to address one of the most generic and misunderstood roles on a Web team – the Web designer.

“Web designer” pseudonyms

• UI Designer
• Multimedia Designer
• Technical Web Designer
• Web Producer

In your company, this role might be lumped in with

• Web Developer
• Graphic Artist
• Webmaster
• Web Content Manager

What they probably can do for you

• Translate your specifications into a visual representation of the site/page
• Site/page mock-ups
• Converting designs into static pages (HTML)
• Installing and configuring third-party widgets (Flash, Javascript)
• Creating site graphics
• Creating Flash animations (except those containing full-fledged application logic)
• Manipulating and optimizing existing graphics
• Manipulating style sheets (CSS)
• Making basic copy edits to existing pages
• Installing tracking snippets into pages (Google Analytics)
• Configuring content via a CMS
• Ensuring that sites/pages are standards-compliant

What they probably can’t do for you

• Creating, altering, or troubleshooting custom applications – especially those which require database access
• Developing scripted widgets from scratch (Javascript, Flash)
• Installing or configuring any software on the Web/application/database servers
• Securing applications against hacking vulnerabilities
• Optimizing sites for performance (except optimizing graphics)
• Formulating direct queries against a database
• Writing extended, professional copy

What you need to know about web designers

“Web Designer” is one of the most generically overused titles on corporate web teams. Marketers often take it to mean “the person who kinda does everything on the website,” but then they are disappointed to find that this person can’t actually do everything on the website. Be careful that you don’t simply throw out the “Web designer” moniker every time you feel that you need to have anything accomplished in a Web-based environment.

The average Web designer would prefer that you place the emphasis on the word “designer.” They are most comfortable in graphic manipulation tools (Photoshop) or What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editors like Dreamweaver.

They usually skew more towards the artistic side and less towards the technical side, although they should be comfortable enough in a Web environment that they can translate any of their designs into a working page of HTML. They are adept at all of the stylistic elements of a page – meaning that they should be extremely fluent in CSS and Javascript (to the extent that Javascript affects the presentation of the page itself). In more enlightened marketing organizations, there are one or more Web designers who report directly to marketing.

Most web designers have either minimal programming skills or none at all (HTML and CSS are not programming languages). To put this into technical terms, the web designer may not be capable of building applications with tools like .NET, C#, PHP, Java, Objective C, Flex, or SQL.

Unless you are certain that your Web designers have specific experience in the area of application development, do not ask them to build anything that requires detailed logic or database access. Web designers with actual programming skills tend to be weak on design and strong in programming, or vice versa. The designer who actually writes strong, effective code and creates pleasing, artistic designs is a rare bird who should be kept around at all costs.

The artistic skill of a Web designer is a key asset, but one that can spoil your marketing campaign if it is allowed to run free of any guidelines or constraints. For example, if your Web designers do not specifically have training in the Offer/Response-Optimization process and they are given free rein to design landing pages, you could end up with offers that are absolutely gorgeous yet stunningly ineffective.

If you are embarking on a significant site launch or redesign, do not wait until the eleventh hour to pull the designers into the discussion. Ultimately, the strategic direction of a site must be reflected in every aspect of that site – including such mundane elements as font, palette, and graphics.

If you spend three months planning your site in a vacuum and only involve the Web designers at the exact moment when you want to commence creation, don’t be surprised to find that the designer’s product does not adequately communicate your strategic vision.

Related Resources

One-to-One Marketing at Four Levels: Strategic ways every marketer can enter into an online conversation with customers

Technology Blind Spots: How human insight revealed a hidden (and almost missed) 31% gain

The MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal, Q1 2010

Today Google AdWords is far more complex than SEO was in 2003.

With that complexity there are additional opportunities for some & additional expenses for others. But keeping up with all the changes is easily a full time job.

Noticing that trend, and seeing stuff like the below image, I thought it made sense to try to create something great servicing the AdWords / PPC market.

Google keeps controlling more real estate, and if you are not leveraging AdWords then there is a chance your business could eventually get pushed “below the fold” – perhaps not for longtail keywords…but certainly for the highest traffic and most valuable keywords in your industry. Google recently launched their vertical search panels, and to some degree you can think of many of these as what will eventually amount to some form of an ad channel (or a channel which promotes content from premium related partnerships with Google).

I am decent at AdWords, but my level of proficiency is nowhere near my level with SEO, and so we needed the help of someone else if we were going to make sure that we had bar-none the best product/service on the market. And so we decided to partner with Geordie to turn PPC Blog into a great membership website which mirrors this one.

Off the start access costs $179, but Geordie and I wanted to offer our blog readers a recurring 30% discount off of that, by using this code
EF0

This coupon will work for the first 100 subscribers, and then after the discount will no longer be available.

You can join here
http://ppcblog.com/member-tour-seobook/

Just like with SEO Book, you can cancel anytime and are under no obligation to stay any longer than you find it valuable to do so. If you do any serious amount of PPC it is quite easy to find a few tips that help you save $5 or more a day, especially when you consider how much PPC stuff Geordie has done (he has managed millions/yr in ad spend for the past 4 years & has brain dumped everything he knows) & how high quality the membership will be.

60+ training modules and a friendly PPC focused forum await you

But, you say, I am a multi-national conglomerate (or perhaps small business that depersonalizes marketing like a multi-national conglomerate), how can I possibly communicate like a person?

On our free June 9th web clinic – One-to-One Marketing at Four Levels: Strategic ways every marketer can enter into an online conversation with customers – we’ll explore this topic and give you actionable advice to communicate with (instead of “marketing to”) your prospects. In the meantime, here is a look at how your peers are engaging in one-to-one (aka 1:1) marketing…

Find and tap into deep relationships

One of the biggest disappoints of early Web implementations has been the lack of effective consideration of one-to-one strategies within all aspects of digital marketing – email being a singular exception.

In a nutshell, what 1:1 means for our clients is to be relevant each time they engage with a consumer on their website, in their media buys, and increasingly in social outreach using transmedia, Facebook et al.

What that means in real terms has been the ability to apply 1:1 strategies that have worked so well in email, etc to display.

For example, an electronics retailer was able to see that it had a relationship with 40% of its users and segmented these dynamically. The retailer learned that 63% of its response was coming from 11% of users – the ones they have a deep relationship with (basic 1:1).

By segmenting based on behavior, the retailer also found a high affinity to specific products which helped with more relevant merchandizing and seasonal planning. It was able to do this at no more cost than it paid for ad serving. It was then able to translate this to media planning and buying and include relationship in determining media effectiveness.

We are just at the start of this process and 1:1 will only really get going when:

1. We remove ambiguity around privacy – consumers want relevance and choice with companies they have relationships with but do not want to be stalked
2. We manage data efficiently – this is critical so we don’t exponentially increase cost and negate value
3. We get past this generational thing – many “digital marketers” have not been schooled in the value of 1:1 techniques or are overly invested in product substitutes such as re-targeting when 1:1 is about re-marketing. Maybe it takes a few grey hairs to know the difference. Thankfully my colleagues have plenty of them (I’ll pay for that comment later).

– Martin Smith, Chief Technology Officer of TruEffect

Personalized communication based on prospect type

Our company is setting up a relationship marketing process for a business coach to generate qualified leads. We are creating a custom HTML-coded Web form consisting of a series of qualifying questions. Specific email content will be created.

Response data is housed in a database. Based on the answers, each prospect will be automatically funneled into one of several tracks and receive a series of timed, customized and personalized emails specific to the “prospect type” defined by the responses on the Web form.

The objective is to create customized and personalized email communication relevant to the individual’s needs – thereby driving increased conversion rates.

– Eric Mohr, Principle at EBM Direct Marketing Services

Use social media (with extreme caution)

One way to be incredibly relevant and relational is to reference personal information from someone’s social profiles – a favorite movie, for example. I DO NOT recommend this for most brands or entities. You don’t want to scare anyone. Also, it can take a TON of time – so again, it’s not for everyone.

It DOES work well if the audience wants to feel a personal connection with you. Say you are a musician (as I was) and you get a positive comment on MySpace, Facebook, etc. from an obvious influencer. It’s not hard to glance at their profile and find something you have in common with them and then relate to that. It can create a real evangelist if done right.

This could potentially work for politicians, company figureheads, or local business owners – as long as it is done in a friendly, non-Big Brother way. This is just one way to close the gap between

“that organization” and a “real person.”

– Kennedy Pittman, Radically Epic Uber Strategic Visionary at Square Hat Media

Related Resources

One-to-One Marketing at Four Levels: Strategic ways every marketer can enter into an online conversation with customers

One-to-one Marketing: The true promise of Dynamic Offer-Content Customization

Transparent Marketing: How to earn the trust of a skeptical consumer

Photo attribution: bensonkua

Psychological triggers are a very powerful marketing tool.

Psychological triggers are the mechanisms of thought by which people make a decision to view your ad instead of others, or convert from tire kicker to buyer.

Let’s take a look at twelve common psychological triggers that you can weave into your ad copy and landing pages.

1. Engagement

People love to feel a sense of engagement.

Offline, people engage by picking up the item they are thinking of buying and manipulating it. Touch is a powerful form of engagement. If people are buying services off someone, they’ll want to look them in the eye.

The alternative – disconnection – is a barrier to the sales process. Given the remote nature of the online experience, disconnection can be a real problem. Look for ways you can create engagement.

For example, consider the “will it blend” approach. They take an item the buyer is already engaged with, and probably has direct experience of, and blend it. The visitor is also engaged by the fun of it. It’s something the visitor would probably like to do themselves, and the video immerses her in that experience. It feels tactile.

Engagement isn’t a real-time chat widget. Engagement is making the visitor feel a connection with what you’re selling. Put the visitor in the scene. Think about their existing experiences and link your product to them.

Make it tactile.

2. Greed

Greed is a pejorative term, but it is a human reality. We’re all a little greedy, just some are much more so than others. Your buyers are a little greedy, too.

Greed is a very powerful motivator. How many things have you bought that you don’t need simply because they were a bargain? It could be said that internet commerce is driven largely by price. People perceive the internet as the place to shop around for bargains, and will forsake the safety of a store purchase if the “internet price” is low enough.

Think about ways you can convince people they can get more for less by shopping with you.

3. Demonstrate Authority

“Largest”. “Biggest” “Best” “Specialist”. All appeals to authority.

If you’re going to buy something, and prices are the same from various suppliers, you want to buy it off the seller who conveys a sense of authority. Do they look like they know what they’re doing? It’s a form of reassurance and especially important on the web where people can’t look behind the curtain.

Authority is easiest to spot when it is absent. What to you think about pages written in pigeon English? Pages that contain spelling mistakes and grammatical errors? Pages that look like they’ve been designed by a child?

4. Demonstrate Satisfaction

This is the classic “money back if not satisfied” guarantee.

In case-study after case-study, offering money-back is a sure fire way of increasing conversion rates. Buyers do not want to make mistakes. If you can reassure them it’s not possible to make a mistake at the point of sale, then this removes a major barrier to purchase.

The beauty of it is that you aren’t giving them anything to which they aren’t already entitled by law. If a person really isn’t satisfied with a product or service, and they’re angry about it, they can reverse charge their credit card. Consumer law in many countries allows for a cooling-off period for buyers, particularly on items that are delivered by mail.

5. Timing

Right time, wrong place? Wrong place, right time?

The success of many products and services comes down to timing. Is the market ready for what you’ve got? Has the market moved on, and you’re too late?

It’s important to frame things as being “of now”. Many companies release yearly versions of products i.e. “updated for 2011!” in order to sound contemporary.

Another way of doing it is to relate your product to an event. For example, if hurricanes feature a lot in the news, then, say, relating your building products to hurricane preparedness is a good idea.

6. Association

Take something the user already does, or knows about, and associate your product with it.

For example, email is a killer app partly because it can be explained in terms of something a person already does – writes letters. That’s why it’s called “mail”. Social networks are popular because they take something the user already does – chats with her friends – and puts it in an online context.

7. Consistency, Honesty And Integrity

Your copy needs to be consist, honest and show integrity.

If just one statement you make doesn’t ring true, then it compromises the integrity of everything else you do. Avoid making outlandish claims unless you can demonstrate them to be true.

There’s another element to consistency, and that is consistency in buying behavior. Note how Amazon suggests other books you might like during and after you make a purchase. I’m sure they sell a lot more books this way.

They are making offers consistent with the original purchase. The pitch has integrity because it’s related to the original purchase. It’s also a great point to provide extra value to the visitor, as Amazon often bundles offers together at a discount price.

8. Feeling Part Of Something Bigger

We all want to belong.

Think about ways you can show this in your copy and in your sales process. Tried-and-tested ways include testimonials, reviews, and revealing other buyers activity i.e. 20 people bought this today!. It may be irrational, but it feels safer to go where others have gone before.

Use the terms “we” and “you” frequently. Be inclusive. Show images of real people – in groups. Avoid stock-images of plastic-looking people (see consistency, honesty and integrity above). Frame your product in a social context. See how Apple does it.

9. Curiosity

Arouse curiosity.

This is especially important to get the click-thru. The ad has to be relevant, of course, but if you can manage to work in a curiosity angle, too, it becomes that much more powerful. Once the visitor has clicked thru to your landing page, continue to arouse curiosity to keep them reading.

Common techniques include posing a question and not answering it immediately, telling a story, adding an element of mystery, and sharing a secret.

10. Urgency

Use a sense of urgency to get over the common buyer resistance point: “I’ll think about it”

Give reasons why the buyer should buy now rather than later. Careful not to be dishonest about it. Many sites mistakenly create a notion of scarcity that is false i.e. only ten copies of the e-book available! If this claim doesn’t ring true, then people will back off.

11. Fear

Fear of missing out. Fear of being left behind. Fear of the consequences if you don’t act. Fear of the unknown.Fear of losing control.

It’s said that all consumerism is driven by fear. Like it or not, it’s a fundamental truth about the way marketing works in modern society. Look for insecurities and supply the visitor with symbolic substitutes to address those insecurities. The entire make-up industry runs on this concept.

12. Exclusivity

Everyone likes to feel special. A cut above the rest.

Is there an exclusive aspect to your products? It may seem counter-intuitive to limit availability, but it can serve to drive up the price and make your product even more appealing.

Once you’ve identified people who buy on this psychological trigger, you can make them further exclusive offers on other products you sell.