Closing the Loop. Why Tying Efforts to Outcomes Matters
Over the years I have witnessed many companies’ take on how to report online marketing efforts. What sticks out to me most is often that lack of tying online marketing programs directly to successful outcome. Looking at only the first half of the loop can lead a marketer down the path of wasted time and effort.
Why is this concept so important. Consider the following.
Your company sends out an email newsletter to 1,000 recipients. Let’s assume the value of a conversion remains constant.
Campaign 1: Open Rate: 50% or 500 opens. Unique click through rate: 25% or 125 clicks. Conversion rate of 10% or 12.5 conversions.
Campaign 2: Open Rate: 45% or 450 opens. Unique click through rate: 15% or 67.5 clicks. Conversion rate of 25% or 16.87 conversions.
In campaign 1 your open and click rates are better. If you didn’t track all the way through to a conversion it may seem …
Of Relevance and Intent, Choose Your Keywords Wisely
Looking to optimize your web site in an effort to generate higher keyword rankings? Before you commit to a single change you will need to do some work. The first step is to do your keyword research.
Look at your web site analytics. Learn what words and phrases your customers use to find you in search engines. Have on site search? Mine your search logs to see what keywords visitors use to search your site.
Research the amount of competition for your top keywords. Pull up your top ten competitor web sites. In your browser go to view>source. Scan the source code for the keyword meta tag in between the <head> tags at the top of the page. What keywords are they targeting? Look at their major product or service pages. What words are used for titles, bread crumbs and navigation links?
Once you have compiled your keyword list research the number …
Make More Money by Reclaiming Abandoned Shopping Carts
Most online shopping sites have plenty of traffic. The problem is they fail to take full advantage of the traffic they have today, instead focusing on driving new traffic. Put this strategy into place now to reclaim abandon shopping carts and get more out of users currently visiting your site.
1. Set up a conversion funnel in your analytics. Find out where the most abandons take place in of your checkout process. This will usually be the shipping charge information page.
2. Edit the checkout flow so that you are asking for some basic information before they get to see the shipping charge. Have them post their shipping information with an email address so when they hit submit to get the shipping charge you are capturing their email address with the shopping cart content information.
3. At the end of each week run an abandon shopping cart report for those who filled …
Trust but verify. Look at your web site code for telltale signs of disaster.
Earlier this year a local investor and media relations firm hired me to answer one question. Why after spending $30,000 in two years on their web site were they unable to attract organic search engine traffic?
I pulled up the web site and viewed the source code. It took me only ten seconds to find the answer. The developers had constructed the site in such a way that the content would display in a visitors browser but was not being written into the code of the page where search engine spiders look to gather it up. When the search engine visited it found nothing more than a few instructions and some structural code. No navigation. No content.
A horrifying development for my client. But I see this type of thing all the time. Programmers by nature are trained to develop by writing code. They are not generally trained in SEO, usability, …