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Retargeting Emails - Do E-commerce customers like or loathe them? March 10th, 2011Leave a commentGo to comments By Charles Nicolls, SeeWhy At SeeWhy, when we first launched our remarketing service in 2009, Randy Stross wrote a piece about email remarketing in The New York Times suggesting that while remarketing might be a great idea for ecommerce websites, it's not a great idea for consumers. He likened emails following up on abandoned shopping carts to a salesman chasing you down the street if you didn't buy from his store. There are major differences, of course. We've long argued that remarketing emails, when done well, not only drive conversions but also build brand trust. They can deliver great service and provide customers with the confidence to return to buy-either online, by phone or in store. If Randy was right and customers universally resented the intrusion, then these emails wouldn't work. In aiming to answer the question more substantively, I turned to data, and specifically email marketing benchmarks. The key metrics to look at to determine whether customers like or loathe remarketing emails are: the recovery rate the open rate the clickthrough rate the unsubscribe rate Frankly, the evidence is overwhelming: Remarketing, when done well, is appreciated by customers. Here's the evidence: (1) The recovery rate The recovery rate is the percentage of visitors that abandon shopping carts, and remarketed visitors thatthen return and purchase following remarketing. At SeeWhy, we measure recovery rates across all our customers, and currently the average is 20 percent. So, one in five shopping cart abandoners come back and buy, having being remarketed. In some cases, the recovery rate is as high as 50 percent. Moreover, when remarketed customers buy, they spend on average 55 percent more than customers who didn't abandon their shopping carts. (2) The open rate The average email open rate for remarketing emails is currently 46 percent, m

 @unbounce has provide a post with a double payoff. First, this is a great list of conversion-related stats and, second, a great example of how to design content to be sharable.

The content is sharable for the following reasons: The title contains the call to action "48 Tweetable Stats..." There's something here for everyone The quotes are Twitter-sized for easy sharing in 140 characters Each quote has a call to action in the form of a "Tweet this" link. Every quote So, if you've got something you really want people to share, follow this recipe. For article-style content, use pull quotes and put a "Tweet this" link with each.

These guys are real smarty-pants.

Shimon Sandler offers some tips for linking phone orders to search campaigns, ranging from simple (using a pay-per-call provider) to more involved (setting up a database of unique promo codes tied to specific keywords).

You can create a unique landing page for each product that features a different phone number for each of the engines, or add a promo/reference code to each product page and train your phone sales reps to ask for and record this code for every order.

Sandler says that you can also put a printable coupon on each landing page that consumers need to redeem in-store, or try an IVR phone system that tracks phone calls and their sources. - Read the whole story...

Quality Backlinks are one of the MOST IMPORTANT factors to be considered to rank any website HIGH in popular search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. We all know that Directory Submission, Article Submission, Social bookmaking or Blog posting is one of the most important ways to build incoming links to a website from a related page.

 @ashocka18 has written an article for designers working on landing pages. In the process Heidi has linked to some very helpful posts.

I was struck by the way she laid out the article, perfect for those of us who scan. Your landing pages should be designed to help scanners find the salient points of your copy... like where the link to my post is.

I especially love the banner images for each topic. Very fun. Boring Call to Action Button Lame Logos Inconsistency Too many fonts Random colors Spacing fails Cheesy stock photos (I call this "Business Porn") Overuse of photoshop effects Icons from everywhere Readability issues Navigation Check it out.

How you phrase a discount is a powerful way to increase conversions. Some visitors do not like to do math, or will do it wrong. Therefore, offering 20% off is less effective than save $18. However, high discounts (50%, 90%) may draw buyers more powerfully than the dollar value.

You have to find out for yourself.

Karon offers a nice list of alternatives and some links to research for your enjoyment.

 @peeplaja has just saved you a whole lot of time. He's done the research and found the studies that you can use to refute the often poor advice your designers are giving your Web team.

Spend some time with this post and the links he references if you want to consistently create effective, high-converting websites.

This article on ebooks comes at an important time at Conversion Sciences as we put the final touches on a unique ebook of our own (preorder Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects).

Content is the way you charge and release the power stored in your marketing batteries (customer lists, email lists, social media networks).

And don't forget that ebooks now outsell print books.

I geeked out a bit on this. It's a fascinating discussion of how online experimentation fits into the broader picture of business experimentation. Great references and links.

While we don't recommend sending cold emails to prospect I found these tips somewhat fascinating especially:A picture is worth a thousand wordsRecipients who opened your first are more likely respond subsequent emailsAdd link website in the lineSome of might work for subscribers as well.

It's great to meet email professionals that 'get it." By "It" I mean conversion, or "What to do after the email recipient clicks through."

If you have any doubts about "It" then you will appreciate Scott Bratcher's summary check list. He even links to one of my stories.

 @peeplaja - This is about as complete a summary of home page best practices that I've ever seen. Peep could have made this an eBook. There are some great examples, specific recommendations and tons of links to other resources. This ambitious post covers:Map out buyer personasCraft a value propositionBuild a connectionUse proper visualsDefine most wanted actionCreate call to actionWrite user oriented copyAdd trust elementsTest lengthCheck load speed

As I'm putting the final touches on my up-coming book, it is very clear that content is the most important conversion strategy: It influences and enables almost every other strategy.

If you need to get started on content marketing here is a pretty complete list of resources to get you started.

 @b2bmarketing via @huffpostbiz John Fox gets landing pages and is bringing the tale of this important online strategy to the masses who read the Huffington Post. Much of the article was based on an interview with yours truly.

There are two defining characteristics of a landing page: It must keep the promise made by the link or ad that brings people to the page It is single-mindedly focused on getting them to take an action that will help them or the business Fox goes on the talk about trust, proof and images as keys to effective landing pages. He also talks about eliminating distractions and avenues for abandonment.

Thanks for a great article, John.

The science we love must be entertaining, and what's more entertaining than finding more revenue hidden in your website? This creative little video does a great job of making string theory entertaining. It'll introduce you to words that will make you a hit at scientist parties, too. Thanks Roy H. Williams for the link.

Comic book ads as PPC inspiration. I love the unexpected, and Ben Settle has one for us. Look for "comic book classified scans" link.

Best Practices For UnsubscribingPosted March 5th, 2008 by Bill McCloskey <!--{PS..0}--> John Engler of Unsubcentral had some great comments based on my article last week and the problems I was having unsubscribing from a newsletter. I'm providing them verbatim with his permission…. Read the rest of this entry » v

How micro forums and links in White Papers increase conversion.

Thousands of directories are available on the Internet to connect you with a number of sites. Some Paid and some Free online directories are available for this purpose. Some directories take one time fee while some take reoccurring fee. When you make a submission to a paid or free directory, then your site is also accessible with these sites by the search engine. By directory submission, you can be confident of getting traffic on your site. In this way you can enhance the Google Page Rank for site as well as your SERP also grows up. Directory Submission helps in creating relevant and long lasting link building.

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