Summary of Learning From Day One of the Bronto Email Marketing Summit is on
Curation Revolution.
Bronto Email Marketing Summit Notes Day Two
Live blogging from Bronto Email Marketing Summit (Morning)
**** Martin Note: My feeling that email marketing was at the hot center of the inbound marketing explosion is being confirmed. I noticed
Responsys doesn't call itself an email provider anymore nor does Bronto. Both are "platforms" that enable the kind of marketing automation we are all looking for. This further outlines the implosion of many SaaS products into one massive platform capable of doing many kinds of Internet marketing including segmenting, drip campaigns and read the cookie wrap the site (
Baynote). ****
Joe Colopy, CEO
Bronto
Keynote is why
Curation Is The New Web Revolution - Marty
3rd Bronto Email Marketing
Summit is largest yet. Bronto started in 2002 so 10th Bronto anniversary is next year. "Great moments are born from great opportunity," Joe says after we watched the USA hockey team take the ice against the soviets.
"Traditional marketing not based on ROI, not based on automation is over. Every marketer in this room can now base their marketing on data. Their time is over our time has begun. For the last 50 years their time has ruled. No more. This is our time. Let's go ahead and take it.
Who's with me?
(crowd cheers)
The age of Don Drapper is over. It is about Math Men not Mad Men now. We make informed decisions based on data.
Duke
Fuqua surveyed 300 CMOs ans asked how much increasing digital vs. traditional marketing:
12.8% increase in digital with a 1% decrease in "traditional marketing".
Dollars are moving to the digital side. Simplistic blasting or leverage technology for more sophisticated approach, use data to to inform decisions in automated ways, in highly informed ways than ever before.
ENGAGED COMMERCE
$$$ in acquisition, send across to commerce engine and HOPE. Reality is not everyone is ready to convert. Some are going to convert some will spin off into the stratosphere. The challenge was THEY (visitors) weren't ready to buy.
How can automation and cross channel can you set up cross sell, upsale, birthday campaigns, and drip campaigns to capture however people walk in. Keep and bring into closer and closer circles in order to convert. Remarketing is much more affordable.
Engage, convert, repeat....
BIG ASSUMPTIONS
Mechanics - data, information, action, conversion (rinse and repeat)
Unprecedented about of data in digital world. These arrows pointing to conversion are easier said than done...but there are challenges.
DATA EXPLOSION
There is a data explosion going on. Don't confuse data with information. Every second about 3M emails sent. 50M Tweets daily. Tremendous amounts of data and it is not ending. Used to have separate devices for different tasks. Now everything is online.
(Eric Schmidt, we create as much information every 2 days as from dawn of man to 2003.")
500 exabytes 4 years ago. Now have 2,502 exabytes so 5 fold increase in four years.
It is a lot, generating a lot, generating a lot. That is a lot of data to churn.
The human brain is still pretty much the same.
DATA CHASM
You are not bringing in everything needed. Bigger challenge is you have tiny amounts of information and data to make big decision. Yes there is lots of data, but how do we make DATA more relevant in a marketing perspective. How can your data inform your marketing decisions.
Last year we talked cross channel. This year I'm talking about the data information side and how to close the data chasm. At the end of the day crossing this data chasm is not as press worthy but makes all the difference.
Jeff Beardsley, Director Production Engineering
Bronto number of emails sent is doubling year over year since 2008. Google and Facebook process data an an almost unimaginable scale. Google processes 24 petabytes of data a day several years ago. Much more now, like maybe 1,000 petrabytes of data.
Great Migration
Bronto moving to "big data platform". API V4 with new dashboards, new segmenting (complex segments can take a long time to calculate). We are doing this revision so even complex manipulations happen very fast. Frequency caps, crunching reports and other demand intensive features are where Bronto is headed because that is what is needed by marketers.
Segment processing time has been cut in half by new Bronto platform. A little over 40 minutes before new platform against 20M contacts. "We think we can decrease the 50% increase in speed by several orders of magnitude once hits production."
Have to have the right BIG DATA platform to make all of this kind of new magic possible. It (new ideas) doesn't matter if you can't use it. (Bronto is going through same platform migration as everyone). We empower you the marketer with our thinking and innovation.
David Tyson, Product Manager
**** While this presentation was mostly sales oriented I found Bronto's use of several very important Internet marketing ideas such as segments and mobile to be interesting and worth learning more about. Their Segment Builder is of particular note since relevancy rules now and segments and personas make email relevant and converting. *****
Next generation of Bronto. We work from product to rollout in a continuous cycle. "If it is ready we want to give it to you." We don't want to confuse our customers so why we have Bronto Labs. We put stuff out early and ofte, but up to account holders if they turn new features on. At some point features graduate out of Bronto Labs. We don't "release" as things become available we push them out.
Dashboards (looking at Bronto dashboard on screen)
We've widgetized many individual metrics. Some may have found dashboards were taking long time to load. We load asynchronously now so many performance benefits related to new dashboards. Dashboards are drag and drop. Widgets are collapsible. ( Solid dashboard design with many flexible settings and looks. ) You also have the ability to change the overall layout, can lead with KPIs or lots of different data points. Can change from one to three column layouts.
May want a widget to monitor your welcome emails separate from your other drip campaigns. Easy to see results from one message vs. another. Segmentation has been improved. (segments seem to be a real Bronto strength, need to know more about this) Mobile has also been a big part of Bronto update.
Use keywords in an innovative way too (find out more about this too), where keywords are tags and can be used as segmenting tools. "Segment Builder" = very cool find out more.
Segment Builder
Trying to be more intuitive about how you (users) build segments. Segments can get complicated based on selection criteria. Lots of "custom logic" options available with "and" "or" logic. (once again should have paid more attention in Algebra :).
***** Bronto wants to increase customers using SMS ***** Tie into AtlanticBT.com mobile campaigns. Bronto has moved to a volume based model. Pay for the messages you send, no extra fee. We want to make SMS native part of the Bronto platform. We are lowering the volume required to get started to do mobile messages. Bronto has added 1000 SMS and package.
Dynamic SMS Content = use code to reinforce relationship with information such as birthday or other segmentation such as "customers who like x also like y".
Mobile segmentation
Can build a message via Bronto API too.
Text 2 Join = pull SMS as part of your marketing program.
Bronto Mobile Campaign text BSUM12 to 33233 for Summit Alerts (standard rates apply) (everyone in the room is now texting BSUM12 to take advantage of Bronto offer)
Other improvements....
Bronto is upgrading their templates especially seasonal. Very few people in the room have used existing Bronto templates.
Date Range Filtering - Bronto can now use a date range filter to cut down sorting and less data for Bronto to have to return (since I bet searching on this platform across all of these variables can be a resource hog)
Bronto Labs Graduation Day (cool riff on the Lab and graduation, well done and worth stealing)
A/B split testing is grading into more random list splitting. Most people here have used A/B split testing but with static numbers of list split. Now the list can be tested in smaller and more variable ways.
Community.Bronot.com (Bronto community site with Ideas area which is a big suggestion box, another great idea with Digg like voting so Bronto knows where to put priority)
Jeff Beardsley during Q&A
Used to be 1M was a big day at Bronto. Now we send 10M before lunch. There are several customers with over 1M lists. I've seen customers send out more than 100,000 transactional messages a day, and that is just one customer. We colocate our own servers and not in the cloud yet. We have "a lot of servers and they all sit in the data center and do their job."
Welcoming Workflows - Courting Your Customer
with Laura Santos (laura(at)envelopes.com) Marketing Manager Envelopes.com
Based in Amityville, NY started 40 years ago as envelope printer.
Welcome Series - series of messages that build relationship. "Front of mind mean front of wallet."
Good stuff to include in welcome series:
- brief thank you
- features about your brand and company
- be social and forward to a friend
- great product reviews and other messages
Dating and email courting have common elements. You don't overwhelm on the first date and nor should you in "courting the customer".
First message of the welcome series has highest open rate across all messages, so
- core message
- sets stage for experience
- grab attention and push message loud and clear
First message = consistent with experience.
- Be clear in who you are
- set expectations up front (set schedule)
- Offer an easy exit strategy (how unsubscribe)
Recency? Hard to determine YOUR frequency, but stick with your schedule
Don't wait too long to send your 2nd message. Keep your promise going. Whatever your schedule stay in line or dissonance. Give them "10 Reasons To Like You" (cool idea)
Share insider secrets (another cool idea)
Sharing is caring (save time, money, make easy)
Be Social, Take A Step Back
- Where else can customers interact? Social humanizes brand and company. Envelopes tested social shares and likes campaigns. Winner was pushing to page within Facebook (a gallery page).
- Time to Meet Friends (forward to friends = great way to increase list)
- Allow management of recency and don't be afraid since a fewer wanted messages are better than many ignored one - manage preference helps segment out customers
- Content is king - people love to read about people just like them "customer spotlight story" has good open and conversion rate despite not pushing any product in these - Laura does a customer spotlight once a month
- Different strokes for different people, don't treat everyone the same - segmentation based on how came through the door, personalized welcome messages
- Collect DATA, DATA and DATA and analyze it
- TESTING
Laura tests everything from content to sequence to message. Picture of an Envelope.com campaign and it uses triggers, sequence and creative. Great way to organize the drips (Bronto Workflow).
Only One Trigger Per Workflow
Bronto
Workflows Overview with
Aubrey Jones
Start with a whiteboard and visualize the workflow. There can be many triggers to start a workflow including: conversion, change in status, length on file or other RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) attributes.
If then statements can further segment path and list. Actions allow further depreciation of content possibly into social.
(demonstrating Bronto workflow system, very drag and drop and simple picture based connections)
The workflow environment is very intuitive and easy feeling (since never used not sure, but appears so in demo), what is clear is complex triggering mechanisms are easy to "see" and build.
The ease of this tool to create contingency relationships (didn't open so don't show x, show y instead) is impressive, visual and easy looking. The off/on contingency can be a true pain and those if, then statements tend to eat themselves, so cool visual way to keep contingency straight. In fact, I think the visual nature of the work environment could CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK about the Rubik Cube of email contingency (all those if, then, else statements).
Q&A
Laura uses intervals and time delays to overcome the one trigger per workflow limitation.
Bronto webform in Facebook could trigger a series and in that instance you have an individual that you can email. Bronto can post to the FB wall but not to FB people.
Lots of question and confusion around segmentation, personas and relationships to drip campaigns. Reasonable questions since I've been working on this for years. Great book to help is
Managing Content Marketing by Rose and Pulizzi. Best pesona/segment guide I've ever found. Also
Sally Hogshead's, her real name,
F Test is cool and she has persona development down to a very cool science.
Another group of confusion around nested if, then statements to create the branches of campaigns. This too is a BEAR and can quickly become a jumble. I think keeping the elements of branching algorithms straight are easier with such a visual tool AND we are about to live in the land of the branching algorithm across almost everything (site presentation, email, social).
Laura sends out profiling updates quarterly. Laura does offer a promotion to manage preferences, "Tell Us More About Yourself, And Save". Can also use, "Tell Us More, Get A Free White Paper" for B2B
Great predictive modeling question. Can we model based on what customers DON'T do on an email. Very cool idea since the amount of rich data that could be mined and then refined just exploded again. Moreover, every email element is an contingency, an offer, so no action is an action.
Bronto Email Marketing Summit Lunch
Having lunch with Rusty Belsinger, Director of Sales
SeeWhy. SeeWhy helps retrieve conversions from cart abandonment. Will need to stop by their booth as cart abandonment is a huge issue for ecommerce. In my last gig a .5 reduction in cart abandonment was worth $1M. Others at the table just confirmed cart abandonment remains a huge issue. "Low hanging fruit," as Rusty just described since any gain in conversion drops right tot he bottom line.
Top 7 Factors To Optimize Email Responses
Anne Holland, President Anne Holland Ventures (Created
Marketing Sherpa and sold it)
WhichTestWon.com
Let's talk about testing.
1. Test A/B opt-in forms (many people don't test here and that is a mistake)
Overlays are critical. Dating websites use overlays the most. Dating sites know more about conversion optimization more than anyone. They are "scary" testers. Anne steals from dating sites. Click on the link above to see the Marketing Sherpa overlay (pops up as you walk in).
Showing an overlay A/B test of thinner vs. wider. WINNER = thinner with 8.8% more opt-ins.
Never know what will make you more money or give you more opt-ins. Why did it work? Who knows, what matters is the data.
Other thing you can test with the overlay is timing, where overlay presented in the site and many other variables.
Next test shows social joins as part of the button vs. no social proof. Down and dirty simple produced 122% more opt-ins.
Lead generation test next example showing a college landing page. Tested adding privacy vs. no privacy under the button. Privacy won 19.1% more leads. (note: if college students want privacy statements everyone wants them)
Simple tends to work best with this stuff (Internet marketing).
2. Shorter Attention Spans
Prospects attention spans are not going to get longer in our lifetime, so how do we market to shorter attention spans. How can we make a bigger impact with email and shorter attention spans.
- Newsletter length = shorter is better and less noise is better (revised for the ADD world), you don't have time to get to all that stuff. One topic per newsletter and that is it. 2 offers = two blasts because you will only click on and pay attention to ONE link. Anne's open rates are 2x with the ONE THING idea. GRAB THEIR ATTENTION.
- Shout Test - Tumbleweed Tiny House tested all caps, and all caps got 14% more opens and 30% more clicks (all caps got more opens). Once in awhile try the all caps idea.
- Test Timing - since attention spans are shortening then maybe the amount of time before abandonment emails 1 hour beat 6 hours. In the old days we tested 3 days vs. a week. 1 Hour produced much more AOV than 6 hours even though conversions were roughly the same.
- Re-optimize Templates - make sure and review look and feel of template by testing various elements of the template. Need table of contents if you have multiple things going on in an email. How does mobile impact your email look and feel? What is powerful on buttons is the copy writing int he button. Tested "Read More" vs. "Find Out More" Read More won. In America the word "read" is nasty, but in Europe it is the word to have as it produced more than 3x the click to order rate.
- Graphics - Graphics Matter - Human + Mountain with red button vs. Man + Mountain and blue button. 80% difference in click with Mountain and Red Button (Anne likes red buttons).
- Social Proof - Use of reviews and other forms of "social proof" with a test of a cart abandonment email for a bath company with reviews, REVIEWS WIN, adding text of a review won $349 AOV vs. $249 AOV (AOV = average order value)
- Email Ads - marketing vs. non-marketing (less button-y, less CTA) and the non-marketing approach worked better for B2B resin company
3. Landing Pages
"The team at Dell tests their brains out," Anne Holland. Dell tests and then tests winners in different geographies. Winners win across the globe as far as Anne knows. The average Dell test shoot for 3% to 5% sales rise. Average ecommerce site may generate 20% increases, Dell has tested so much point of diminishing return is being reached so much smaller "winners".
Most Hippos wouldn't let them create a shop grid like the Dell test on the screen. The Grid beat the large hero. The grid won vs. rolling hero. If you see something different it is because Dell is testing. Whenever you give the customer more navigational aid on HOME and CATEGORY pages the MORE option wins. Turning your entire page into a navigation bar works really well.
Turning your entire page into a navigation bar works really well in ecommerce because customers want nav help.
How much MORE can we help. Example of lingerie shows MORE is better again.
4. Mobile
#1 thing people do with mobile is check email via mobile phone. Anne has always been surprised by mobile demographics. Match.com has seen such a large trajectory of mobile use they are always in touch with how numbers of mobile and who is mobile are using.
Bronto can create a "mobile email reader" tag into a customer profile and help create mobile presentation of content to those "mobile readers" of email. Anne would want to see how products play out "for mobile". Gives you the data to run a "budget up" campaign to empower mobile.
1. Auto-adjust display width
2. Header link to mobile version
3. No reverse type!
4. Easy-to-find phone number (often overlooked and never in a graphic)
5. Tweak graphics (not huge, not tiny)
6. Uber-short subject lines (strange since longer tweets tend to work best, but shorter mobile email subjects win)
Add a link at top that says "switch to mobile site". 61% of customers who go to mobile unfriendly go directly to a competitor.
5. QR Codes - "I love QR codes," Anne Holland. Problem is you can't stick a QR code into an email. QR codes do work to get opt-ins in packaging or display advertising just not in emails. If you want to grow your list use the real world to make it easy to QR into the list. It is no longer about getting people to hand over their email when they buy. Instead put the QR code everywhere and they zap themselves.
"Mobile Tests are a Bitch." Anne Holland
6. iPad Optimization
Optimizing for iPad "swiping behavior" instead of a "button button" is worth testing.
7. Track Beyond The Click
Tracking the click is not always the best thing to do. Measure as far down the funnel as possible. Be careful to track as far down the funnel as possible since possible to make mistake and feel good about it all along without knowing the full funnel.
The key question is what MAKES MORE MONEY!!!! Just depend on opens and clicks is RX to make less money. Must tie all the way through the cart. OR, you may end up rolling out the wrong "winner".
Which Test Won - Anne is pitching her site (many people in the room use her site)
Q&A
No one can get a statistic result from 1K or 2K emails. You must have 100 buying actions to create statistically conclusive number. Worst case 85% statistically significant. Important to know your "doubling date", the date by which you got 50% are in the house. This is an old DM (direct marketing term). Anne uses "doubling date" because once there you can move on. She uses doubling dates to help her know how good a campaign is without waiting for long tail to come all the way in.
DOUBLING DATE = Important Concept since it helps move on and keep testing.
Amount of copy = depends on audience and how "considered" the purchases is (i.e. expensive)
Very generally we've seen shorter copy tends to win in a graphic environment.
Anne is showing a current test she is running for a client for certification examines.
HTML vs. Text Only
Marketing vs. non-marketing
Text only is personal and highly copy written, like a letter from your sales rep.
40% room votes for graphic 60% want personal text only
Text only CRUSHED graphic display.
(COPY is NOT THE PROBLEM, connection is and text that is more engaging wins over cold graphics is my take away from the example Anne just showed)
There is room in our email campaigns to do more of a text based email that are more warm and fuzzy.
"We don't run the tests, we are just journalists, tests are run by marketers on our site," Anne Holland.
Text only = ABOUT VOICE, words you use, the style and we have a very strong brand in terms of what people are expecting.
"It is a copywriter's world still," Anne Holland.
HTML5 and CSS3 is a saving grace for Responsive (mobile) Design, a marketer who works for a college shared.
VWO =
Visual Website Optimizer (a cheap SaaS) is company a lot of people are using.
Vertster is still out there. There are 40 or more tools now. Next year the fall out would have happened.
Nice note from my friend Nathan Maxwell (aka Social Shark) a few minutes ago....
Nathan rocks, check out his
mobile site (always ahead of us :)
Cross Promotion with Email, Social and Mobile
...so in the "it's a small world," department I used to work with
Emily Keye back in the day. One of the better email marketers on the planet with great skill in transactional emails as I recall.
This is going to be interesting since I've already written about how well Bronto did social on their signup in
Twitter Marketing Genius You Can Steal From Bronto
Amazing how many people I know who don't know
Atlantic BT. Emily didn't, but just means more awareness challenge for their marketing director (me) since the biggest (70+ now) and coolest (trust me on that one) web development company in Raleigh still has some way to go to get top 2 box on awareness. Hard to imagine how
Jon and
Mark have so quietly built one of the fastest growing private companies around almost without anyone noticing. Kind of cool too. Where else can you scooter from one end of a building to another? Have to figure out a new way to ROCK THE HOUSE now that
Curation Contest is over. Anyone reading this with ideas, please send to Martin.Smith(at)Atlanticbt(dot)com....and now Emily K is about to rock the house with social, mobile and email all playing nice and helping instead of hurting one another.
Build A Solid Foundation
Email, social and mobile are a powerful group of channels (
SoLoMo Revolution). The nature of "relevance" has changed forever.
Consumers have...
- Increased options
- Higher Expectations
- Tech Knowledge
- Ability To Easily Use multiple channels
Marketers who treat channels as silos are going to PAY (with pain, lost traffic and are going to be less competitive).
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PERMISSION
Seth Godin would be happy to see Emily open with the need for permission.
Multiple ways to grow your list, but here are ideas to use channels to build your list:
- almost half hide email signup below fold
- Signup should be called out, on as many pages as possible, explain benefits and above the fold
- Set expectations (what and how often)
- Consider incentives (welcome messages with incentives)
- 2 Step signup with a link to a secondary form with an optional segmentation form (with more benefits the chief being more relevant messages)
- popups and overlays also help grow email lists (keep in mind timing, when someone comes in, wait a few seconds, and be sure to cookie and NOT have popup each time I revisit your site, offer clear way out of a popup such as the X to close the window but make it even more clear to kill the window if they don't want to join now, form can't be long or involved, keep it simple, one client increased signups 10x due to use of a popup)
- transactional messages - don't forget about these as they can generate a lot of revenue (also ask people to sign up on things like your shipping confirmation message with one of the highest open rates of an email)
Social & Emails
Facebook = little harder with new timeline. Only 4 FB badges are visible so making sure email signup is one of the first 4 is important since there is no other way post timeline change to have an easy email signup in FB.
Drive any signup into a segmented list so FB signups can be watched and understood as a group. How do they convert, what do they respond to, etc...
Tease the list with "don't miss, sign up" kinds of CTA's (call to actions)
Mobile - Text To Sign Up
Use SMS (text) to drive email sign up. 66% of adults use text messages. Southwest airlines has been very successful with "text to signup" on the back of peanuts, napkins and boarding passes. If you have stores, take advantage of signage "Text To Sign Up" with incentives.
Text to signup CTAs can live anywhere. Leverage QR codes to help with signup. Bronto makes use of QR codes easy with a module.
Email + Social = 50% more likely to purchase from YOU (not to mention impact on SERPs)
Sam's Club does a great job of explaining why they should be followed or liked.
Social Media after purchase. Specialicious, a daily deal site Emily works with, asked for the LIKE on the Thank You page after a purchase. Play up exclusivity of content (from joining). Let your engaged audience know your social media exists and explain the strategy and ideas behind each join (i.e. what is the benefit of joining across social nets? Could be a cool promo to award the multi-joiners).
CONTESTS and Sweeps can also drive to social
Make sure to watch the performance of names acquired via contests and games. Fangate where you must LIKE to enter has been eliminated by new FB timeline. When we get to 1,500 likes X special thing happens, i.e. enlist the tribe in the game.
Email open rates 60% higher for people who have also shared their mobile number.
SMS messages 97% open rate AND 88% of messages read in first 15 minutes.
Only 37% marketers are integrating mobile into cross platform efforts.
How do you collect mobile numbers?
The key is to make sure you are clear what someone is signing up for. What is the frequency, what is the duration and what is the type of communication? Also, add mobile into email preference campaigns.
"Cross channel marketing is hard, there are many things to overcome," Emily Keye
Need to be able to create a single customer profile with multiple dimensions not a customer who looks like 10 customers because they touch the file in 10 ways (mobile, print, email, organic, video, social nets).
Use your engaged email audience to drive traffic over to SMS / mobile.
Cross Channel Promotion
Now that you have permission what is next?
- Portray a consistent brand across all channels
- Layout, color, type, images, voice = all must be consistent
- Lose customer fast when dissonance sets in from confusion across channel
SMS Messages...very personal, time sensitive, clear CTAs and makes sense to receive now such as a FLASH SALE or something equally as timely. May want to send status via SMS, but not the full monty as that is best left via email (people like to keep those)
Welcome Message
Birthday Messages
Abandon Cart Message
Product Review Message
Post Purhcase thank you
Pre-Order reminders
New Product Announcements
Coupons
Geo-location is a comer.
Social
You can drive revenue, little hard to measure, but the type of content that makes sense are things like contest, games and involvement (ask people to vote on something). Videos, pictures and information sharing (tips) also work well in social.
Very few marketers can pull off true cross channel marketing. Only 20% even have the ability according to Forrester.
Blowing up silos first challenge to cross channel marketing.
Examples
FingerHut used email to drive subscribers to Facebook to vote on favorite discount that was then delivered via email. Take a poll and then focus moved back to email. So if you vote and not on email then you don't get the deal. Nice circular multi-channel marketing here.
Silver Legacy Resort in Reno - Ski and Stay package. Snow triggered social (Twitter), to email and sold more "ski and stay" packages than ever. (more
here)
Q&A
How opt out of text? "Text Stop" is used mostly, but needs to be clearly promoted. Once you've signed up there is no CANSPAM requiring easy opt out. Best practice is to include "stop" in SMS once a month and some customers include every time to build up goodwill.
Martin Note: Mobile SMS subscription are "astronomically growing", 10% to 20% of your core list should also SMS subscribe and these are your "most engaged" customers. Mobile is clearly more important than we know or realize NOW. I don't get paid to miss this train, so capturing and figuring out how to use SMS is a key challenge for Atlantic BT and our customers going forward. If you put "free" in a SMS you can get in a lot of trouble.
Helpful group:
Mobile Marketing Association = establishes business best practices
Check out
SoLoMo Revolution and
Mobile Revolution on Scoop.it - my feeds on mobile marketing revolution.
Curation Revolution = my biggest Scoop.it
Mobile Best Practices focusing on conversions
This presentation convinced me I have a lot to learn about mobile. Mobile is a different gig with different stuff going on and Ken's BLAST of a presentation did nothing if not confirm that gut feelin.
Mobile Success Factors
* Key Decision Points
* Developing Mobile Customer Expereinces
* Defining Success
* Evaluating Mobile Solution Providers
All mobile commerce stats are pointing up. 47% plan to purchase using mobile "device" in next 12 months.
We are still in Gen1 of mobile world. I recommend against "screen scraping". I believe the mobile experience must be a merchandised experience. Someone must focus on mobile. I don't know if SMS is right for evrryone (Hell with 90+ or better open everyone should be thinking about SMS).
There are ore uses for mobile than transactions. Revenue is low on the list right now. 2 Years ago we didn't think mobile would generate any revenue.
About 50% of merchants have a mobile site?
First place to go with mobile is a mobile platform provider (such as MarketLive) with screen scraping the most popular form (Ken doesn't like Screen Scraping).
68% of tablet users BUYS with the tablet so lower penetration than phones, but MORE likely to buy. MarketLive will be agnostic to any device (so Responsive Design). Tablet users spend 50% more per purchase than phone people too (should we be focusing on tablets?).
Consumer Experience is fragmented and isolated:
online store | social | mobile | off-line store | eMail | search
conversion | engagement | research/conversion | sale | convesion |
PROFILE IDEA - ask what kind of device (smart phone, tablet, etc...)
Mobile Case Study H20
1. Mobile Website vs. Mobile App (mobile websites win for commerce)
"doesn't make sense to do a mobile app for commerce," Ken Burke.
Apps don't have success outside of gaming.
MOBILE WEBSITES beat APPS for commerce
Important to create similar feature sets, look and feel. Screen Scraping is taking a normal size site ad shrinking it to a mobile device. Ken doesn't think it works because mobile requires a different approach. Neutrogena has been successful with Mobile presentation.
H20 wanted something mobile in 2-3 weeks, so used a provider (MarketLive).
- Buy A Product
- Research A Product
- Get Customer Service
- Support lifestyle (content)
- Give social feedback
These are the 5 things Ken thinks most important feature on mobile is Store Locator is #1.
"Screen real estate issues mean you may need to change your taxonomy on mobile to favor things such as "customer favorites". Ken recommends bundling categories in a unique way. Key product bundles such as Armani merchandising bundles by city for spring break. Timely = NOW and so mobile is good with timely.
Sometimes search on mobile is different, make sure you mobile search has all features of site. Search should contain all products, but may not have as many categories since search shoulders more of the load. Experiment with mobile, but don't be afraid if somethings go against ecommerce best practices.
H20 why shop video is good example of content that can work well on mobile. App-like features such as skin care quiz or consultation form helped H20 create sticking and converting content on mobile.
Value Added Content = great conversion help. Repackaging value added content can work on mobile too. Armani is another Ken favorite.
**** Don't forget to integrate social into mobile.
**** 800 on mobile is critical and make it clickable so calls from the phone.
**** Product reviews are very important.
H20 Success Critera (what happened)
8 - 10% traffic going through mobile (this is true or all MarketLive customers too)
45% bounce rate on mobile (general stat)
Avg. time on site 3:53 (H20)
Pages visited 5.2 (H2)
Top Mobile Page: Store Locator
Conversion Rate 1% and Growing (and not including iPad)
Questions for Providers
- How do you support ratings and reviews (some of the best mobile content, with sort by rating an important filter)
- How address mobile checkout challenges (payment providers supported)? PayPal is #1 request to integrate with mobile.
- Tokenization - storing card with a third party, is a BIG deal on mobile. If you are not tokenized on site you may not be ready for mobile. Have to tokenize by provider. Tokenization is a big hurdle. Payment processes will have a huge impact on conversion.
- How well is content integrated? Using the same CMS?
Promote Mobile On Main Site
Perricone MD = big mobile picture on home page
Need mobile signup landing page with value descriptions with clear value statements.
QR Codes
14M Americans used QR Codes in June 2011.
Add to Cart from a QR Code (Ken is working on this now, zap the code and goes to checkout)
40% of QR codes scanned shopping and more than 50% at home (print and direct mail mostly)
QR Codes = more specific you are the more successful you will be.
Use QR Codes to generate a Facebook Like **** COOL IDEA ****
Use images to support navigation - Ken is suggesting that mobile marketing can now afford icons and images to make the environment richer as page load speed isn't as critical in a 4G world.
Solution or persona oriented on the mobile site instead of category taxonomy since drill down is impossible.
"INTERNAL SEARCH is KEY to Mobile Marketing,"Ken Burke
Zoom can be very important on a mobile site.
Nordstrom's does a good job with their mobile site. Beautiful product page.
Persistent cart from site to mobile can be cool (if logged in obviously).
iPad customer so much more valuable than even smart phone.
Martin Note: Key to keep ability to look across channels easily in analytics as part of tool ealuation and being able to do that is a function of tagging and CMS.
