Category: Direct Response

Improving the response rates in every direct marketing medium: Print, Online, Direct Mail and Broadcast

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ShopText promises to make print ads more useful for impulse purchases

The promise is scintillating: You’re paging through a magazine or newspaper, or you encounter an out-of-home ad (even, perhaps, a digital billboard), and you decide you simply must have that product. You type a six-digit short code into your cell phone, send the number a text message with a keyword, and after a verifying second text is received and replied to, your product has been ordered.

The consumer wins by getting the product, and the marketer wins by fulfilling what may have been a passing whim. It’s the QVC network without ever going near a television or talking to an operator.

That is the promise of ShopText, as described in a recent New York Times article.

This technology’s potential audience is substantial. Everyone is aware of how ubiquitous the cell phone has become in our society. But what may be surprising to many is the fact that two out of every five users has sent a text message from their phone. According to recent M:Metrics statistics, 39.2% of cell phone owners send a text message at least once a month.

Now imagine that you are paging through a newspaper and you see something about the latest Harry Potter book — the one that is being pre-sold now, and will be delivered in the early summer. And then let’s just say that you’re a huge fan of the series, and want to see if Harry dies in this concluding volume. And finally, let’s say for the sake of example that once you’ve pre-registered with the ShopText site, all you need to do is send out a text message, directed to the short code “467467” (think of short codes as cell-phone-specific mini phone numbers). The actual text message would be easy to type because it contains only one word – “Potter.” Done! That’s all you need to do to lock in your pre-release book and have it mailed to you when the official release date arrives.

As you may have already surmised, this is no idle example. It’s exactly what I did, about four hours ago. The purchase took less than a minute. Time will tell if I become a satisfied customer, and even a repeat user. But since I really did want to lock in a copy for this new book, but kept forgetting to do so, this service fulfilled a real need that I had.

What are the implications if this mobile purchasing system fulfills lots of other people’s needs, and truly catches on?

Well, imagine trade shows where you can have samples and brochures sent back to your home or office (on the vendor’s dime of course). Or you could “buy” free or nearly free samples that you read about in display ads. These samples could be of just about anything – from cosmetics to pet supplies.

I find this incredibly exciting.

Watch this space to find out how this new consumer experience turns out for me. In return, I promise you I will be as objective as possible. Oh, and I won’t blab about Harry’s fate, if my copy arrives before you have a chance to read it yourself.

I am boldly going on record now, though, to make two predictions about future purchases:

  1. If this quick, convenient way to purchase on impulse lives up to its promise, I definitely will be buying lots of other things this way 
  2. Regardless of the above, Harry will be buying the farm

You read it here first.

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Google Optimizer puts a potent tool in any marketer’s hands

Until this week, the options for marketers who wish to test landing pages were unappetizing. You could create home-grown A/B tests, or you could turn to an online testing system offered by companies such as Offermatica or Vertster. The first option was slow and cumbersome, while the latter was yet another layer of campaign management. Google changed all that with the release on Tuesday of their Google Website Optimizer.

The Eisenberg brothers, authors of the web marketing bible Call To Action, define a landing page as “a specialized page designed to induce the shopper who responds to an ad to make the purchase.” Once you’ve paid for a click that brings someone to this page, you’d better be sure to maximize the odds of a conversion. That’s where A/B split testing comes in. Using the original page as your control, you create a statistically reliable test with a second, similar page.

The test’s hypothesis is this: That the test page, which has slightly altered  content such as headline, body copy, offer or pricing, will not improve response.

Running both pages in equal numbers proves or disproves that hypothesis. If the test page does out-pull the control, it then becomes the control, and you pit something else against that. And so it goes until you’ve explored all combinations of variables or the campaign is over.

Life was simpler for direct mail  and direct response print marketers, simply because of the time and cost restraints of that medium. You needed to test, but the number of test variables was limited by the slow feedback loop and the cost of split testing using ink and paper.

But if you’re running an online ad — one that generates hundreds of clicks a day — you’d be crazy not to be continually testing something. All the time.

Online marketing shifts the constraint away from the medium itself and squarely onto campaign management. In my experience, a majority of marketing organizations simply cannot manage the level of testing that they could or should be doing for a given campaign. Those who are loathe to test are spending more for every conversion they generate.

Google has stepped in to help. Although their new tool doesn’t address the “expertise void” in testing (and they recognize that, as you’ll read in a moment), the Optimizer does promise to make the automation of testing within reach of just about any marketing organization.

According to product manager Tom Leung, it enables advertisers to “receive up to 10,000 versions of a web page.

“This tool lets you have one page, add a few Java scripts and
then when visitors hit the page, there are different combinations served.”

If the Optimizer is anything like Google’s other recent web marketing game-changer, Google Analytics (which is the refined suite formerly known as Urchin), this will be a direct response marketer’s dream.

The Website Optimizer is free to marketers using Google Adwords. Because A/B tests require experienced content professionals to get right, it is no surprise that Google has created a legion of Optimizer Authorized Consultants. The list of consultants will be growing (hey, Google, you have my information — call me, babe!), but now includes Optimost, EpikOne and Future Now, the company that published Call To Action. Now why doesn’t that surprise me?

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How to make a direct mailing break through the clutter

The most successful business-to-business mailing I ever produced was early in my career, for a company called Acro Automation (http://www.acro.com*). It was a lead generation letter, mailed in a standard window envelope. But the envelope was stuffed with a wad of real shredded money. I bought the tangled remains of one-, five-, ten- and twenty-dollar bills direct from the U.S. Treasury, in eleven pound boxes. Each was enough to fill approximately 2,500 envelopes. Showing money fragments through the window of the envelope, along with a printed teaser that explained their relevance, was enough to trigger an 11% response rate from a notoriously non-responsive audience of production engineers.

A publicity shot of me with the Acro envelopes, back when I still got carded in barsShortly after that mailing the government called an abrupt halt to the sale of this byproduct of monetary obsolescence. They apparently didn’t appreciate my use of ex-money to generate more of the real stuff. But the lesson had been duly noted. I had learned how to reach out and grab the reader by the imagination: Be unique and outrageous.

I was reminded of this lesson when I read Seth Godin’s account of marketing one of his books. Read his story and take heed. Reconsider that me-too mailing you were planning for your next promotion. Why settle for average when you can break records — and in the process, accumulate great stories, such as mine about the Treasury, and Seth’s about his similar, bureaucratic battle with International Paper?

*I had nothing to do with their current web site, by the way, but I was involved in the acquisition of their four-letter domain name. At the time I had no idea how rare these would become. I was also responsible for another one of those: www.sofa.com. If I only knew then what I know now, I would have treated these as the valuable client assets that they are!

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Sticky ideas are made not born

Memes are ideas that spread like viruses. Some are more contagious than others. What makes an idea contagious is a quality that makes people want to share it. Memes must also be memorable — they have to stay with their “host” long enough to spread. A common cold wouldn’t be nearly so common if it didn’t last long enough in our bodies for us to sneeze or cough. It’s the same with memes. They don’t have to live in us forever in order to be successful, but they do have to find a host and take it for a ride.

In order to be memes, ideas have to be sticky.

An example of a sticky idea that has come and gone is that Elvis Presley is still alive — that his death was faked. Another, which is leaving our consciousness in half lives, is that Halloween trick-or-treating is dangerous because of rampant poisoning of the candy being given out. Did you realize that this was an urban legend? This meme — or sticky idea — reached its apex in the 1980s and drained Halloween of a lot of its fun for subsequent generations of kids.

Sticky ideas are the tools of the trade for marketers. They are of particular importance to interactive marketers, since email and other online communcation can spread a meme like wildfire. Stickiness can make selling a product that much easier. Here are two ideas, one sticky, one not-so-much. They both deal with our immune system:

  • Zinc in lozenge form can help our immune system by interrupting the virus that causes a cold, thus preventing it or lessening its severity
  • Probiotics in foods like yogurt can strengthen the immune system and fight things like upper respiratory infections, since healthy bacteria in the gut are part of our body’s natural system for fighting disease

These are two ideas about staying healthy. Both have the support (in terms of communicating the idea and selling products) by major food and drug companies. But only one of them was sticky enough to be the topic of conversation yesterday, when I was walking to lunch with a couple of business associates.

I don’t think it’s an accident that we were talking about lozenges and not yogurt. The idea that a lozenge can help you feel better — especially with a new, exotic ingredient (zinc) — resonates.

On the other hand, eating yogurt, or taking a pill, with live bacteria in it? As a way to stave off illness? Yuck. It may be true, but it doesn’t stick. I’ve heard this concept for years, but I still don’t think it’s going to catch hold in a big way. Probiotics may continue to grow in sales, but I’m putting my money on zinc.

Made To StickThose ideas were built into the product. You can’t do much to change their stickiness. But many can be altered, like an engineered microbe, to better connect with an audience. This is the theme of a book by the Brothers Heath (not to be confused with be-bop jazz greats The Heath Brothers). The book is called Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

They contend there are six aspects to a sticky idea:

  1. Simplicity — Is it easy to grasp? (“A mineral we don’t get enough of in our foods can cure our cold …”)
  2. Unexpectedness — Like a joke, does it have a punch? (“… and it’s zinc!”)
  3. Concreteness — Does it draw a clear picture? (“… which you can buy in lozenge form.”)
  4. Credibility — Can you believe it? (“I’ve heard it’s based on clinical trials …”)
  5. Emotions — Does it make you feel something? (“Even if it doesn’t work, it’s just good to feel like I’m doing something about colds …”)
  6. Stories — Can it be verbalized? (“… and I think it does work. I started taking zinc just when I was starting to feel a cold come on, and it lasted just three days!”)

Probiotics don’t stack up nearly as well on the stickiness meter. I give the yogurt wheeze high marks for #2 and 4, but medium or low marks for the rest. Especially #5, Emotions, which I think is a key to a sticky idea.

The fact is, no one likes to think much about their lower digestive tract. A finely tuned gut may make you healthier and happier, but please, keep it to yourself, buddy. I’m trying to eat.

The next time you face a marketing challenge, use this checklist to ensure your marketing proposition has what it takes to spread virally. Although I find the Brothers’ Heath list one that was designed as much to fill a book as it is to exhaustively explore stickiness, your idea cannot go wrong if it scores high for all six criteria. It will become sticky, and earn the right to be called a meme.

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Get out your yellow highlighter to emphasize your most important web copy

Two of my favorite sites use a technique to make their short, punchy web copy even stronger.

  • 37signals is a smart, irreverent Web 2.0 developer of web-based collaboration and development solutions. I’ve praised one of their products in this blog: Basecamp, an ASP alternative to MS Project. They market their products through a web site and attached blog that aren’t afraid to break with convention. That includes the way they draw your attention to important sales copy.
  • Very Short List (VSL) does the same. It’s a fun, free subscription email and web site that delivers a list of exactly one interesting product, service or web site every single day. The copy they employ to describe each “VSL” is always short and clever. To further aid in scanning, VSL highlights important points in their message.

VSL Thumbnail - Click to enlargeBoth use the technique you see in the sample graphic (click to enlarge). They use a text highlighting technique that any web site could adopt but few do. It’s a clean if somewhat “cute” alternative to bold and italics.

Is this new formatting based on science? In other words, do metrics exist to show that this technique improves readership, or helps convert readers into customers?

No. Josh Fried of 37signals admits in Copyblogger.com, “We don’t have metrics [to support our design changes]. It’s all gut.” (I agree wholeheartedly by the way, with Brian Clark, author of Copyblogger.com. He cautions in this post that listening to designers and one’s instincts can be a dangerous practice when the outcome could be a major decline in the bottom line of your business.)

So right now web marketers appear to be flying blind when they are using this technique to showcase important copy. This could be remedied.

I’ve made a point to talk to anyone I know who conducts eye tracking heatmaps to see if they’ve ever seen any evidence that this hinders or helps a reader through the thicket of online copy. And if they haven’t, would they like to give it a try?

In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts on whether this hip spin on copy formatting will prove to be more than a novelty.