Baird’s Top Tips for the Web in 2008

B. Baird

A year is a long time on the Internet. A year ago, you probably didn’t have a Facebook page.  You’d never seen an iPhone.  And most circulators thought that the “New Challenge of Audience Development” was a reference to the future career of Britney Spears after she shaved her head – not a reference to our changing role in our organization. My, how times change ….

So, with the passage of time, which of the Internet marketing tips from these columns continue to be relevant and undiscovered?  The ones shown here continue to hold up over time.

ON-PAGE SUBSCRIPTION MARKETING: 

#1: Location, Location, Location. 
Looking at which placements in your Web site are producing the highest click-through and conversion rates produces surprisingly powerful insights. These are places where you can get the biggest bang out of expanded marketing efforts. And you can extrapolate valuable lessons about the types of places where your most interested visitors spend their time so that you can identify more within the site. 

#2: Use Animation to Attract the Eye.
The eye is drawn to motion. This means that placing animated offer text in your ad or on the reply button draws attention to the action you want, and this increases response. There are plenty of tasteful ways to do this using flash animation or simple .gif animation.

#3: Use Embedded Forms.
The fewer clicks it takes to subscribe, the better. So embed forms on your pages wherever you can negotiate them.

If you can’t get them above the fold, try putting one at the bottom of every page and make all subscription links on the page “jump” the user down to the form. This eliminates page load time and server delays, and minimizes clutter above the fold (although above is almost always best).

SIGN-UP PAGES:  Resell and Reassure

#4: Reiteration of benefits. 
Be sure to restate the reasons to subscribe from the prior page and provide a similar look and feel from whatever they clicked on to get here. Remember: the sign-up page is the first place where a user sees the scary mantra of a dollar amount … a commitment … and the reference to the fact that they eventually might have to pay for something.  So seeing benefits and credibility graphics such as security certifications, etc. is essential on the sign-up page.

#5: Button Best Practices.
Are they above the fold, or, if far below, still using prominent color masses, action-oriented benefit statements, and motion to draw the eye? Which button in Figure 2 below attracted your eye more?

REGISTRATION: 

#6: Think Like a Subscription Marketer.
Registration is tremendously similar to subscription marketing: you’re using direct marketing tactics to create an offer funnel which will attract the prospect and guide them to an action. 

This means that everything I’ve described so far – and everything you know about subscription marketing - applies to registration marketing as well. Use that knowledge.

#7: Use A/B Splits and Multivariate Testing Techniques. 
Lots of sites have gotten hip to the multivariate creative testing methods created by researcher Genichi Taguchi—methods which are now applicable to testing multiple elements of an ad at the same time, such as offer, button copy, headline, etc. 

The upside? You can accelerate your learning by testing multiple elements at once vs. cell-by-cell with split-testing. The downside? Depending on what you decide to test and how you decide to test it, there can be more creative work involved to create all of the permutations, and you have to keep a close eye on page load times.

To identify resource providers, type “multivariate testing” into a search engine.

EMAIL MARKETING:

#8: Use Deliverability Tools.
These are software or services which enable you to assess the true percentage of your email that’s actually getting through to the recipient’s in-box, as well as diagnostic tools which help you determine the root cause for email that’s being misidentified as spam (or blocked entirely). 

Two thirds of the time deliverability problems are due to a reputation problem, whereas creative or content account for only about a third or less.

Sometimes the problems and fixes are relatively straightforward. Other times, improving deliverability can be a game of inches rather than yards and take some time and effort.  Either way,  the results are very measurable.

If you are deploying mass emails from your own servers, these tools are essential. Without benchmarking, monitoring and tweaking, your internally-deployed email deliverability will inevitably decline due to consumer complaints that have not yet been addressed by you as a mailer.
 
These tools also usually provide a browser rendering tool which shows what your email will look like in dozens of different browsers. It’s often a dramatic wake-up call when, for example, your creative team sees that all of your magazine’s cover shots are obscured by the right-hand side of the screen for every user of a large ISP such as hotmail or gmail. Pre-testing creative with these tools yields great enhancements before deploying a campaign.

To find firms which provide deliverability tools, just type “email deliverability” into a search engine.

8.  The Semi-Annual Sale.

It’s a very simple idea—with very significant results. Twice a year you send out an email campaign with a special offer that’s not available any other time. This is simple enough … but the pivotal part of the campaign is the “Last Chance” second effort, which is sent 24 hours before the sale ends and emphasizes the urgency and exclusivity of the offer.

Unlike in the offline direct mail world, in this case the “Last Chance” version will usually pull as well as or better than the original effort.

B. Baird
Bill Baird is a leading subscription marketing and audience development advisor to publishers on the web. His clients include The Motley Fool, Consumerreports.org, NetDetective.com and EdWeek.org. He is also the creator of SPARKwatch, a best practice research and advisory service for web marketers. He can be reached at (203) 838-5444 or at http://www.bairddirect.com.