Email is one of the biggest challenges marketers face in 2008: Still capable of generating a stunning ROI, but requiring the analysis and guidance of experts to overcome the problems “success” has created for it in the past 20 years.

Just consider this list of biggest marketing concerns about email from a survey taken of B2B and B2C marketers last November by MarketingSherpa:

#1: Recipient mailboxes are swamped. All email suffers.
#2: Spam is eroding trust.
#3: Email doesn’t get the budget and attention it deserves.
#4: Willingness of people to opt-in to new lists.
#5: Lack of accountability and measurement.
#6: Image blocking negatively affects creative email.
#7: Deliverability.

MarketingSherpa is offering three days of seminars, training, and case studies at their Email Summit in Miami Feb. 24-26 to address these issues and more. I’m betting most readers of this blog have already signed up. If you haven’t, you probably need more help than you realize or you’re willing to admit yet (there are a few tickets left). Though the one-day MarketingExperiments email certification course at the Summit is now sold out, you’ll shortly be able to take the full-length course online.

Here are some tasty email tips from MarketingSherpa and MarketingExperiments experts to hold you in the meantime:

• Segment, then target. Generic blasts are out. Finely honed messages are in.

• Build trust. It’s key to open and conversion rates. According to the MS survey, 50% of respondents said emails that arrive too frequently are spam, even when they’re from companies they know.

• Make a strong, value-added offer every time. Don’t waste your customer’s valuable time. See above.

• Eliminate incongruence and discontinuity. See MarketingExperiments research for more on this topic, but here’s the gist: If someone reads your email then gets a confusing, disruptive message from your Landing Page, you’ve lost them. And they won't be back.

• Get enough budget. Email expertise and technology will take real money. You get what you pay for.

• Test. In 2008 you must have a solid ability to deeply analyze your lists and track metrics; e.g., click-to-open ratio, revenue per email, leads per email, engagement per campaign.

According to a New York Times article last Thursday, WalMart’s CEO said the company will start making their suppliers meet strict energy use and ethical standards as well as ensuring their own stores are as energy-efficient as possible. They may even put windmills in store parking lots so customers who have electric or hybrid cars (or buy them in the future from WalMart) can juice up while they shop.

When WalMart makes a commitment to go green, look out; WalMart doesn’t do trendy, so saving energy, the environment, and humans must be good for the corporate bottom line.

In a Nov. 2007 BBMG survey of 2,007 Americans, 9 out of 10 said the words “conscious consumer” describe them well. What’s a conscious consumer?

According to BBMG founding partner Raphael Bernporad, “Conscious consumers expect companies to do more than make eco-friendly claims. They demand transparency and accountability across every level of business practice.”

BBMG found that consumers are more likely to buy—if products are of equal price and quality—from companies that:

• Manufacture energy efficient products (90%)
• Promote health and safety benefits (88%)
• Support fair labor and trade practices (87%)
• Commit to environmentally-friendly practices (87%)

The most important issues to the 2,007 adults BBMG surveyed?

• Safe drinking water (90%)
• Clean air (86%)
• Finding cures for diseases like cancer, AIDS and Alzheimers (84%)
• Global warming (63%)

While quality and price were deemed #1 and #2 in importance to a purchasing decision, convenience came in #6, edged out by three other factors:

• Where a product is made
• How energy efficient it is
• Health benefits

Source: Bernporad Barnowski Marketing Group, “Conscious Consumer Report,” November 2007

Conscious consumers are conscious not only of the effect their purchasing and lifestyle decisions have on the world, they’re conscious of the effect your business decisions have as well.

Gordon Gekko got it wrong. It’s not greed that’s good, it’s green.

It’s true that developing a good Value Proposition is essential for successful online marketing, but having a good Value Proposition alone will not do much for you. A business can spend all of its time and resources on developing a perfectly simple, instantly credible, ten-word Value Proposition, then fail simply because it doesn’t know what to do with it once the business has it. This leads me to my final question about Value Propositions:

What do you do with a Value Proposition?

You communicate it!

Not a difficult answer. If you have a really strong Value Proposition, the next step is simply to let your ideal customers know about it. But that isn’t where the difficulty lies. I think the difficulty lies in knowing exactly HOW to communicate a good Value Proposition.

At MarketingExperiments one of the strongest elements we look for when optimizing Web pages is the clarity of the Value Proposition expressed on a specific page

Here are two proven ways to optimize communication of a Value Proposition on a Web page. We’ve seen both of these greatly increase conversion.

First, through Congruence

Your Value Proposition must be communicated with Congruence. Basically this means that all of the elements on your page must in some way communicate the Value Proposition: the header, the navigation, the body text, footer, and even stuff like buttons, color schemes, and images. All of these page elements must communicate the Value Proposition. For every element on the page you must ask, “How is this expressing or supporting the Value Proposition of this page?” If you did this only to a Web page the results would be good, but we have one other method to make it even better.

Second, through Continuity

Your Value Proposition must be communicated not only through every element on a landing page, but also through every step of a conversion process. Your Google AdWords ad, Landing Page, checkout process, and even your thank-you page must all communicate the Value Proposition. Many businesses seem to assume that once you get a customer past a certain point you can stop “selling.” But in a world where it takes only one slight movement of a finger for a customer to be gone forever, this is a false assumption. We have seen the significant impact following this methodology can have for a Web site.

Here are some specific research examples of how to communicate your Value Proposition.

This blog finishes my series on Value Propositions. I hope explaining how important Congruence and Continuity are in communicating Value Proposition as well as my other posts on this topic will be helpful to our readers. The research experience really helped answer my own questions. Thanks for your attention and trust. Good luck!

Consumers trust what their peers say about your business, your product, your service, more than they trust you.

If you haven’t looked at consumer reviews of your product or service lately, better man-up and face your public: Negative consumer reviews might explain why no matter how much you’ve spent on marketing, redesigning your Web site, or tweaking your prices, business has been flatter than week-old roadkill.

Customers are kings, queens, and executioners in 2008.

Not only are they looking for peer reviews right on the sites they visit, they use “social shopping” communities that allow for interactive, peer-driven product reviews to decide whom to trust. Sites such as:

epinions.com
ThisNext.com
Yahoo! Shoposphere
Stylehive.com
Buzzillions.com
bunnybot.com

The Zagat Survey of restaurant review fame recently partnered with the WellPoint insurance benefits company to start a Web site dedicated to reviewing doctors. It should be up this month. According to WellPoint’s press release, the online survey tool will allow consumers to review their doctors in the areas of trust, communication, availability, and environment.
The yelp.com Web site already provides health and medical reviews, right beside those for restaurants, shops, food, services, education, even religious organizations in about 200 cities.

What does all this mean for you? Listen to the 1,200 consumers the e-tailing group surveyed in late 2007:

• 93% said they are likely to start their shopping on a Web site that offers Social Navigation (a.k.a. consumer reviews/ratings).
• 86% said reviews are very or extremely important to their final decision.
• 82% found reading reviews better than researching a product in-store with a knowledgeable sales associate.
• 81% used customer reviews to decide between two or three products or to confirm that their final selection is the right one.
• 78% spent more than 10 minutes in the review reading process.
• 76% were more likely to shop on a retailer’s Website vs. their competitor’s site if it offers social navigation.
• 65% of shoppers say they always read reviews before deciding what to buy and whom to buy it from.
• 64% of those shoppers spent at least half their time conducting online research before making a purchase.

Source: 2007 “Social Shopping Study,” e-tailing group (e-tailing.com)

Everyone knows the old adage about how word spreads fast when you have a good restaurant meal and even faster when you have a bad one. In 2008 consumers are spreading the word at light-speed, eager to share with everybody they know and everyone they don’t with just one click of the mouse.

Those businesses staying vigilant and responsive, ready to learn, change and improve when their customers speak up, online and off, have a chance to survive and thrive in 2008.

Anyone who missed the live Webinar presented by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin to members of the American Marketing Association on Thursday 1.17.08 missed a great opportunity to hear him expound on what MarketingExperiments’ analysts and staff named the number one research finding of 2007: The critical, twin roles of Continuity and Congruence in ensuring visitors flow from channels to Web site to conversion without disruption.

Dr. McGlaughlin also discussed the importance of having a clear, concise, and well articulated Value Proposition for both your business and your product before even attempting to communicate it. Only after you have it and have the means to successfully communicate it should you concentrate on driving traffic to your site. Otherwise, you and your visitors are in for disappointment.

Thanks to the AMA, I can offer a link to the Webinar slides here and to the audio here (just hit the “Playback” button at the bottom of the page).

One great question from the audience was about the results of Example 2 in the Webinar. The audience member was curious about why the number of visitors to the Control version of the offer pages was so much higher than that of the Optimized offer pages.

As they teach you in Business 101, you have to stay in business while you are making changes. The reason for the huge disparity in the number of visitors is that we do the vast majority of our testing in the “live” environment, so we only divert a sliver of total site traffic onto a test page. In many cases we are testing several treatments side-by-side and concurrently. Each treatment gets a slice so we can compare results.

The key figures as shown below are the number of subscriptions to the free offer as a percentage of the total traffic channeled to that offer. Result? The optimized version of the partner’s offer―the one where we concentrated on eliminating discontinuity and incongruence―resulted in a substantial gain in take-up of the free trial offer:

Version          Visitors     Free Subs.     Conv. Rate

Control           112,137          459             0.41%

Optimized       13,726           114              0.83%

Relative Difference: 103%

For more on the concept and the execution of Value Proposition as well as Continuity and Congruence, check out our research archive and the great blogs that Austin McCraw has been posting to this site for the past couple of months.

As I said in my last blog, while researching MarketingExperiments’ Web clinic, “2008 Internet Marketing Strategy: Are You Prepared?” I accumulated many “fun facts” about Internet marketing in 2007 that didn’t make it into the final deck but that I’d still like to share in this less formal forum.

Examined in part or in sum, dots may be connected and insights may emerge. I promised to share them with you this week. Here’s the next group:

• “Understanding their customers better” was the #1 2008 New Year’s Resolution of 82 marketing executives surveyed by Next Level Strategic Marketing Group.

• Marketing basics will be of greatest importance in 2008 according to 607 marketers (VP and higher) recently surveyed by Anderson Analytics, 60% rating it “very important.”

Marketing basics includes “customer satisfaction, customer retention, segmentation, brand loyalty, and ROI.”

The other 9 of the top 10?

2. SEO
3. Personalization
4. Green Marketing
5. Multicultural/ethnic issues
6. Breakdown of Old Media
7. Innovative Branding
8. Viral/Word of Mouth (WOM)
9. New Media
10. Time Starvation

• 84% of Millennials text message on their cell phones compared with 57% of all consumers.

Source: Deloitte 2007 “State of the Media Democracy Survey." 2,200 U.S. consumers, broken down by generation: Millennials (ages 13-24), Generation X or “Xers” (25-41), Baby Boomers (42-60) and Matures (61-75).

While researching last week’s MarketingExperiments’ Web clinic, “2008 Internet Marketing Strategy: Are You Prepared?” I accumulated many “fun facts” about Internet marketing in 2007 that didn’t make it into the final deck but that I’d still like to share in this less formal forum. Examined in part or in sum, dots may be connected and insights may emerge. I plan to share several per posting this week.

Global Internet Statistics (Averages as of Nov. 2007)

Sessions/Visits per Person per Month: 34
Domains Visited per Person per Month: 70
Web Pages per Person per Month: 1,519
Page Views per Surfing Session: 44
PC Time Spent per Month: 32 hours
Time Spent During Surfing Session: 1 hour
Duration of a Web Page Viewed: 46 seconds

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

Could you learn something from these companies? Top 10 online shopping destinations ranked by percent of “Very Satisfied” customer ratings:
Netflix.com 90.3%
NexTag.com 87.0%
Amazon.com 86.6%
Shopping.Yahoo.com 84.3%
Kohls.com 84.1%
BarnesandNoble.com 82.8%
HomeDepot.com 82.5%
CircuitCity.com 82.0%
eBay.com 80.5%
JCPenney.com 80.3%

Source: Nielsen Online

And how well are you executing the basics? A recent e-tailing group poll asked: “When visiting a merchant’s product page, how important are the following to selecting and ultimately purchasing a product?”

“Very Important”

Product overview 76%
Merchant’s guarantee 73%
Stock status/availability 69%
Quality of the image 67%
Customer service links 65%
Product specific information 63%
Long description 54%
Size chart 54%
Toll-free telephone number 54%
Ratings and reviews 53%

Source: the e-tailing group/ARS eCommerce LLC, August 2007

Yesterday, during one of our most widely attended webclinics ever, Dr. Mcglaughlin passionately talked about marketing to the post-modern consumer in 2008. In it, he stated a problem, puting it in the form of a protest to marketers from today’s average Internet consumer. He then proposed a response, which he put in the form of a creed, that he believes all marketers would be wise to adopt.

During the call and since then, participants and subscribers have been asking for copies of both documents. So, I have the permission and privilege of posting them here.

The Prospect’s Protest (A Problem)

I. I am not a target; I am a person: Don’t market to me, communicate with me.

II. Don’t wear out my name, and don’t call me “friend,” until we know each other.

III. When you say “sell,” I hear “hype.” Clarity trumps persuasion. Don’t sell; say.

IV. I don’t buy from companies; I buy from people. And here’s a clue: I dislike companies for the same reason I dislike people. Stop bragging. It’s disgusting.

V. And why is your marketing “voice” different from your real “voice”? The people I trust don’t patronize me.

VI. In all cases, where the quality of the information is debatable, I will always resort to the quality of the source. My trust is not for sale. You need to earn it.

VII. Dazzle me gradually: Tell me what you can’t do, and I might believe you when you tell me what you can do.

VIII. In case you still don’t “get it,” I don’t trust you. Your copy is arrogant, your motives seem selfish, and your claims sound inflated. If you want to change how I buy, first change how you market.


The MarketingExperiments' Creed (A Response)

ARTICLE ONE: We believe that people buy from people, that people
don’t buy from companies, from stores, or from Websites;
people buy from people. Marketing is not about programs;
it is about relationships.

ARTICLE TWO: We believe that brand is just reputation; marketing is
just conversation, and buying is an act of trust. Trust is earned with
two elements: 1) integrity and 2) effectiveness. Both demand that you put
the interest of the customer first.

ARTICLE THREE: We believe that testing trumps speculation and that
clarity trumps persuasion. Marketers need to base their decisions
on honest data, and customers need to base their decisions
on honest claims.

Copyright ©2008 MarketingExperiments

Here is a video clip of Dr. McGlaughlin presenting the Protest and Creed:

I’m eager, as is Dr. McGlaughlin to know your thoughts and ideas about the Creed...

We regularly receive copies of Value Propositions but good ones are just not very common. Companies would be much more successful at Web site optimization and marketing campaigns—capitalizing in their respective markets—if only they could first figure out how to formulate a good Value Proposition.

Because of this conundrum, I have been posting questions and answers for the last month about what I wanted to know about Value Propositions: what Value Propositions are supposed to communicate, what does not belong in them, and about how long they should be.

Now I want to provide a few practical examples of how to think through a company or product and recognize a Value Proposition. I found some good ones in our Landing Page Optimization Certification Course. It took me a little while, but I was given permission to show you these excerpts for free (the courses are normally around $500). I hope it helps you to actually hear Dr. McGlaughlin talk through good Value Propositions for these two companies.

Here Dr. McGlaughlin points out the Value Propositions of Willoughbys.com. (The size of the video may make it hard to see the image of the Web page, though it is really the audio that is helpful.)

Click here to see a larger image of the page

Here Dr. McGlaughlin addresses the Value Proposition of BestBuy.com

Click here to see a larger image of the page.

As I pointed out in my last post, Value Propositions are not limited to companies. Products have their own individual Value Propositions as well.

Finally, here is a clip where Dr. McGlaughlin speaks about the Value Proposition of a specific laptop Best Buy is offering online.

Click here to see a larger image of the page.

So, there are three great examples of good Value Propositions from the top analyst at MarketingExperiments. The clips all came from our MarketingExperiments certification courses, and there are many more examples of how to formulate good Value Propositions where these came from. If you like what you heard and want more training in Landing Page Optimization, the certification courses are very helpful.

The final question I have in my research about Value Propositions is coming up next time. I will be addressing what to do once you have formulated a good Value Proposition. This question was submitted earlier by one of our blog readers. If you have questions that you would like answered about Value Propositions, feel free to email them to me. I will try to get the answers for you. Good luck and hope to be posting again soon.