Hanging Brutal Murder on Brand Names: User Input + Automated Marketing = Issues

Posted August 27th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

rolex-loosWould you ever advertise your web site as the place to turn for brutal murder or hanging people? No? Surprisingly, I have encountered several companies that do, big name retailers with brand names that every consumer knows. They illustrate some serious issues with online marketing.

But before we get to the murder and other dark deeds, it might be instructive to engage in a little toilet humor. Can you spot the marketing problem in this picture? It was taken in Moscow a few years ago. At that time, no pun intended, the center of the city was in the middle of an upscale building boom.

As you can see, someone paid a lot of money to cover the side of a construction site with a huge image of a Rolex watch (the young woman in the bottom right of the picture gives you a sense of scale). I imagine that when it was installed the marketing folks were feeling pretty proud of themselves. The print quality was excellent and the placement very visible. Unfortunately, Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Industry, Strategy, marketing

Lift Without Loss: New e-retail white paper offers help for tough times

Posted August 20th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

white_paperHow would you like to get more revenue from your online store traffic without making additional cuts in pricing or shelling out for bigger shipping subsidies? Well, today we published our “Lift Without Loss” white paper that explains how you can do this, using a variety of field-tested strategies that have yielded positive results. The white paper is complimentary and no registration is required. You can download it here.

As e-commerce sites seek out competitive advantages in today’s challenging economy it’s clear that the strategy of targeting web site content to specific traffic segments has a major role to play. And there is zero doubt in my mind that this strategy can, when properly executed, increase conversion rates or average order or both.

However, targeted content is often equated with discounts and other offers like free or reduced shipping. We all know that these cut into margins, and nobody wants to cut into margins unless they have to, especially in today’s tough economic climate. Fortunately, targeted content does not have to be about discounts. It can be as simple as a welcome message.

Consider “The Case of ModCloth and the Foreign Fashionistas” that we describe in the white paper and on our Case Studies page. A simple greeting, tailored to the origin of the site visitor, was able to double revenue from a significant slice of site traffic without affecting margins. This was not a fluke. We are consistently seeing improvements in conversion rates and average order value as a result of targeted messaging campaigns. And we have described how they work in this white paper. We hope you find it helpful.

  • Download the white paper.
  • Let us know if you put any of these strategies into practice.

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    Posted in Industry, Strategy, case study

    Code Green: Used with care, coupons and offer codes can boost revenue

    Posted August 18th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

    cobbs-couponA few posts ago I talked about some of the challenges that online retailers face when dealing with coupon boxes, notably the potential of such boxes to distract shoppers from completing the purchase process.

    Unfortunately, some people got the impression that I was opposed to the use of coupons in online retailing. I assure you that’s not the case. It’s obvious that coupons are wildly popular on the web, the question is: Are you making money with them? Before I talk about some techniques to make sure that you are making money with coupons, let’s recall why this is not always the case.

    What do online shoppers do when they get to the checkout page and see an empty box labelled “Coupon” or “Discount Code” or something similar? If they have a code they enter it; if they do not have a code, they are apt to go looking for one (as evidenced by our experience with coupon-related Monetate campaigns and by the PayPal comScore survey).

    Working with e-retailers we have found that selectively covering up a coupon box produce an improvement in purchase completion in cases when a shopper is unlikely to have, or need, a coupon. Now, some readers have asked the very sensible question: “Why not just remove the coupon box?” The answer is that a. some e-commerce systems make it technically challenging to remove the coupon box, and b. you may want to use that box in some promotions.
    discount

    So what would a good example of a coupon code promotion look like? Consider a promotion designed to present a specific segment of your site traffic with a special offer code. Let’s say the targeted traffic segment is defined as visitors arriving from comparison shopping sites. The purpose of the discount code is to give these visitors an incentive to stop surfing from site-to-site and make their purchase on your site, on that visit. To ensure that this coupon campaign is a money maker for you, make sure you can answer these questions in the affirmative:

    1. Can the coupon code be used without slowing down the purchase process?

    2. Do you explain the terms of the offer without taking the shopper away from the checkout page?

    3. Do you reassure shoppers that the promised discount had been applied?

    If you can accomplish these three things you will likely be rewarded with a significant lift in revenue and average order value from the traffic segment targeted by the coupon campaign. At Monetate we have seen that when retailers handle coupon codes with care they deliver real value and definitely deserve a place in your online marketing playbook.

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    Posted in Industry, Strategy, case study

    Multichannel Marketing Moving Up: And getting geo-personalized

    Posted August 12th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

    globe-half-100Today on the Shop.org blog, Ellen Davis talked to Terry Lundgren, the CEO of Macy’s department stores, and asked him what he will be talking about when he keynote’s Shop.org’s Annual Summit next month. Lundgren’s response was, perhaps not surprisingly: “the power of multichannel retailing–the convergence of stores and online.”

    The fact is, multichannel retailing is hot right now. As eMarketer recently pointed out, Shop.org and Forrester Research have both reported that “multichannel retailers out-performed Web-only merchants in growing online sales, with 68% of multichannel retailers showing Web sales growth in Q1 2009 over the year before, versus only 39% of Web-only retailers.”

    However, as eMarketer suggests in this article, the current performance surge may be due, in part at least, to a period of “catching up” during which tradional bricks-and-mortar retailers implement marketing strategies–such as segmentation and personalization–that some online pure plays have already begun to use. I know we are seeing accelerated interest in this area from bricks-and-mortar stores, driven in part by changing consumer demands. For example, I would go along with this observation by Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Multichannel Retailing: A Competitive Differentiator:

    “Demanding consumers expect retailers to provide more convenience, flexibility and personalization by leveraging the synergies that come from multiple sales channels.”

    I think the really exciting news for multichannel retailers is the potential to leverage location-based targeting, what I like to call geo-personalizing of content and messaging. For example, we are seeing good results from campaigns that geo-personalize messaging for site visitors who live or work near a retailer’s bricks-and-mortar premises. Conversion rates and average order values can both be lifted when the visitor is made aware of free in-store pickup of online orders and ease of in-store exchanges. This is “zero cost marketing” with no discounts required. As I see it, the question now is this: Which retailers will get on board with this technology and which will sit out the potential surge in revenue it can undoubtedly produce?

    Want to talk more about this? Leave a comment or come see us in person. We will be at Shop.org Annual Summit 09 from September 21 to 23 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas (hotel rates are still very reasonable). If you’re attending, please stop by Booth 547 and say “Hi” (after listening to Mr. Lundgren’s keynote, of course). We’d love to chat about multichannel marketing, about segmenting your traffic, or about the best places to eat in Vegas.

    p.s. Shop.org retail members, remember to claim your company’s free pass to the Summit by August 14.

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    Posted in General, Industry, Personalization, Strategy

    Tagging the Personal, Relevant, Compelling Site Experience

    Posted August 10th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

    57-60 SecondsA few months ago I wrote a post about Monetate’s “60 Second Integration Guide” and said that it listed all the steps needed to add “segment, target, and personalize” capabilities to your online store or other commercial web site. With those capabilities in place, you can give visitors the kind of personal, relevant, and compelling site experience that leads to higher conversion rates and average order values.

    A lot of people downloaded the guide but some were skeptical that a process so simple could provide a full set of “segment, target, and personalize” capabilities. Well, today I’d like to present two audio clips, the first of which just happens to be 60 seconds long. In this clip, Monetate’s co-founder and CEO, David Brussin, describes the tag that is the key to all of Monetate’s functionality. The simplicity of the tag, and the fact that it can be inserted into any web site with very little effort, is also the key to that 60 second integration. Here’s David:

    Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

    Bear in mind that this one tag takes care of all four of the functions required to display relevant content, personalized for each visitor segment that you want to target. These functions are as follows:

    1. Collecting and segmenting data about site visitors,
    2. Displaying customized marketing and merchandising content,
    3. Incorporating discounts offered to certain segments, and
    4. Analysing the results.

    Here’s how David describes–in 36 seconds–the four-way functionality of the Monetate tag:

    Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

    So what does this means for online marketing today? It means that the goal of creating a personal, relevant, and compelling site experience for each visitor is now readily attainable. It requires no technical training, no big I.T. project, no changes to your page layouts or product shots, no installing of placeholders or containers. Just one tag and you’re done.

    To put this in a wider context, last month was the tenth anniversary of the publication of “Smart Personalization” by Forrester Research. That report concluded: “typical Web personalization efforts fail to produce results that match market expectations.” Fortunately, in the decade since then, things have changed. And while it may have taken the better part of ten years for marketers and technologists to turn things around, we can now say with confidence: If you have an online store generating more than a $1 million in annual revenue and getting over 100,000 unique visits a month, delivery of the personal, relevant, and compelling site experience is not only attainable, it can pay for itself many times over, in better conversion rates and higher average order values.

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    Posted in Industry, Personalization

    Mad Men Marathon Monday: A marketing workshop or just for fun?

    Posted August 7th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

    Every business blog needs some occasional levity, don’t you think? A dash of entertainment among the earnest and ongoing effort to deepen our shared understanding of the topic at hand, namely online marketing and the challenge of making commercial web sites work better. So allow me to alert you to some great marketing-oriented entertainment: Mad Men Marathon Monday.

    Mad Men Marathon Monday, Season 2, Aug 10 starting 7AM

    With Season 3 of Mad Men starting up on August 16, AMC decided to play all 13 episodes of Season 2 in one day, back-to-back, and that day is Monday, August 10. Read the rest of this entry »

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    Posted in General, Industry