36 landing page management secrets for post-click marketing
Repost: Original article by: www.ioninteractive.com

Most articles on landing pages talk about tactics for individual pages, such as tips for page layout or best practices for content. Those are useful lessons, to be sure, but as organizations scale up the number of distinct landing pages and post-click marketing initiatives they’re running, they encounter a different set of challenges.

These are landing page management issues.

Although few people discuss these issues, I can say, after many years of consulting in this industry, that these are ultimately the hurdles that prevent most companies from achieving best-in-class post-click marketing. Or, turning that around, efficient post-click marketing management is an untapped, strategic opportunity for competitive advantage.

With that in mind, I put together a report on enterprise post-click marketing that focuses exclusively on structures and methods to efficiently grow landing page management. It discusses people, processes, scaling mechanisms, and risk management in a collection of 36 recommendations:

1. Build post-click recognition: bring all the stakeholders and participants together.
2. Officially assign responsibility for post-click marketing to someone.
3. Agree on post-click performance metrics and connect them to the online marketing ROI funnel.
4. A pilot program is a splendid way to introduce post-click concepts and processes.
5. Determine an overarching post-click marketing strategy that people can navigate by.
6. Establish a way to coordinate continuity between pre-click ads and post-click experiences.
7. Harness the very best creative talent you can — post-click is a creative channel.
8. Communicate regular post-click updates and feedback with the whole online marketing team.
9. Invest in education and plug into the global online marketing community.
10. Establish a central repository for all landing pages and their components.
11. Provide a standardized mechanism to “preview” and “proof” landing experiences.
12. Minimize IT dependency for daily landing page production and management.
13. Create a set of design templates for landing pages that adhere to your brand standards.
14. Maintain pre-approved content elements that can be reused across multiple landing pages.
15. Standardize data collection and form handling.
16. Don’t fragment your respondent data by turning your landing page environment into a data silo.
17. Interface consistently with enterprise-wide web analytics.
18. Favor A/B testing over multivariate testing (MVT) for the power of simplicity.
19. Handle special-case rules in a standardized manner.
20. Organize your post-click marketing initiatives into campaigns and portfolios.
21. Recycle and test good ideas from one landing page in other contexts.
22. Consider software-as-a-service (SaaS) for your landing page environment to grow smoothly.
23. Rig your landing pages to automatically expire when their content is outdated.
24. Have A/B tests automatically remove underperforming alternatives once statistical significance has been reached.
25. Take notes on your experiments, briefly documenting hypotheses and conclusions.
26. Promote the development of reusable/parameterized widgets and Flash objects.
27. Install post-click marketing dashboards to continually “scan the horizon”.
28. Grow the different stages of your online marketing funnel in proportion to each other.
29. Support international landing pages properly in your environment.
30. Leverage a portfolio strategy: more experiments = more opportunities to find gold.
31. Learn from your shared, centralized campaign history.
32. Use disproportionate traffic allocation for champion/challenger tests.
33. Mitigate unsuccessful tactical ideas by always representing the brand well.
34. Celebrate wins and share the credit — remember, post-click marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
35. Review your ROI, even beyond the scope of your official post-click performance metrics.
36. Finally, don’t rest on your laurels — online marketing is a highly dynamic environment.

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16 Tips to Finding and Using Mailing Lists Successfully
Repost: Original article by: www.bethesda-list.com

1. Do the Math – Plan your mail marketing campaign as an accountant would. Start by figuring out how much income and unit sales the project must generate to break even. Remember, it’s money that matters first; percentage response rate comes second. In other words, your campaign might actually be a big money maker, even if it has a low percentage response rate.

2. Always Key Code, Record and Analyze Results – Assign a key code to each list, record and analyze the responses for each code. You’ll see which files are working better than others. Do this on every mailing. When email marketing, use coded links to a special order page in your web site. Many mailers do the key coding but neglect to record and/or analyze, so they never learn what works and what doesn’t.

3. Test Everything Else, Too – Copy, package design, offer, pricing and timing are key elements that can also affect a direct mail campaign. Key code, record and analyze results of each change in your mailings.

4. Be A Smart List Buyer – Keep in mind a few things when you’re ordering lists:

- One time use – Lists are for one time use only. The names are the property of the list owner. However, mailers do own the names of those individuals who respond to their promotion.

- Be flexible – Direct mail lists offer many options; however, all the bells and whistles may not be available on every list.

- Samples – List Owner Links usually require a sample; even if it’s just a rough sample of what you plan to send.

- Time – Many lists can be shipped in 24 hours. Others may take a week or more.

- Minimums – Most List Owner Links require a minimum order of 5,000 names.

- Prepayment – Most list suppliers require prepayment from first time customers.

5. Build Your Own Mailing List – Your customers, trade show leads, other prospects, inquirers and former buyers are the feedstock for your own comprehensive and direct marketing list. Be sure to include opt-in email addresses. Many BLC list customers have also asked us to market their organizations’ mailing lists. Got an up to date list of 10,000 or more names? Ask us about marketing your file for additional income.

6. Focus on Your Audience – Your selling message should address the specific needs and interests of your audience. A good list professional will be specific too. With the details you give them, they will recommend lists that home in on your best customer prospects.

7. Types of Lists:

- Direct Mail (Snail Mail) – For use in direct mail marketing programs conducted by the marketer. Many of these lists are also available with telephone numbers at additional fees for telemarketing programs.

- Email – For use in email marketing programs. Reputable and effective email lists use only opt in names. Email list owners nearly always do the mailing for the marketer.

8. List Sources – Keep in mind a few terms when considering lists:

- Association – Professional or trade association membership buyers. Many of these individuals also purchase other offerings from their organizations.

- Subscriber – Magazine or continuity subscription buyers. Sometimes offered along with names of expired subscribers at a lower price.

- Buyer – Proven buyers of a list owner’s product or service. Often offered with a “hot list” or “recent buyers” subfile at an upcharge.

- Compiled – Names of prospective buyers compiled by a third party. While not usually considered as productive as association, subscriber or buyer lists, compiled files can be effective.

9. How Lists are Priced – Direct mail lists most often have a base price per thousand names, expressed “/M”. Options to select geographic areas, job titles, industries, or to add key coding and the like are additives also priced by the thousand names. Shipping and handling charges are charged by the order.

10. How Mailing Lists Are Supplied – Today, most mailing lists are sent via email. However, they can also be provided on floppy, CD, Cheshire and pressure sensitive label stock.

11. Get Your Envelope Opened – A live stamp, instead of pre-printed indicia or meter mark, short teaser copy and name and address printed directly on a closed face envelope will go a long way toward keeping your mailing from landing in the trash unopened.

12. Use Color in Your Letter Effectively – Try a blue signature and sparing color use elsewhere to emphasize your most important points.

13. Give all the Product Details in Direct Mail – Give your reader everything he/she needs to make a decision. Features, functions and benefits… the more the better.

14. Be Extra Brief in email – You have just fractions of a second. Be quick and tempting. Use the subject line as your teaser copy. Link to your home page in several places.

15. & 16. Work with a List Professional – (This tip has two numbers because it’s so important.) Use a list pro with years of experience, hundreds of regular customers and a solid reputation throughout the business. They should have access to the best lists and work with sources around the world. List professionals can help you find promising new names that you never knew existed, and they’ll steer you away from those files you ought to avoid. A list pro will also coordinate the time-consuming list acquisition process (ordering, tracking, shipping, billing, etc.) at no additional charge to you.

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Insider’s Guide to A/B Testing
Repost: Original article by: www.mailinglistsworldwide.com

What is A/B Testing?

When deploying a new email campaign, you have two choices, one where every recipient receives the same message or an A/B campaign also known as split testing. Below is an explanation on A/B testing and why it may make sense for you to take advantage of this idea with your
next mailing campaign.

Using the A/B testing method is a way to be able to see which of two different messages results in being most effective when it comes to customer response. This insight will be very helpful with future offers and making sure your mailing campaigns are getting you the most return for your investment.

What should you A/B Test?

You always want to be getting the best results (open and clicks) with your email campaigns and customer response with mail campaigns. A/B testing allows for a variance so that you can measure what is working best. The following items are typically what are varied between message A and message B:

- The call to action – wording, method, size, color and placement
- Subject line
- Headline
- Teaser copy
- Product or service description
- Layout and style of the mailer
- Product pricing and promotional offers (discounts, free shipping, etc.)
- Amount of text on page (short vs. long)

These are only a start. Anything you can think of that is of importance can be tested. Bethesda Emedia Marketing believes you will find the resulting data very important for your future business marketing campaigns.

The 40/40/20 rule of direct mail

Bethesda Emedia Marketing wants you always to remember the 40/40/20 rule. This is simply that 40% of the campaign result is based on the quality of the list you are using, 40% is dependent upon the perceived value of your offer or promotion and 20% relies on how well your layout, copy and production are put together.

Since the 40/40/20 rule is so important to remember, not all tests will produce the same level of results. You will most likely have to conduct quite a few rounds of A/B testing simultaneously during a single campaign to see a clear pattern forming. Once this pattern is analyzed, then you will see what version within the campaign bought the most bang for your buck.

A/B testing is the simplest and least expensive way to determine your best approach during a direct mail or email campaign. A specialist on email marketing concluded “A/B testing is not rocket science, and it’s easy to put into place…A/B tests provide statistically significant results.”

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Social Media, B2B’s new best friend for sales
Repost: Original article by: www.mailinglistsworldwide.com

For decades in most all legal practices, accounting firms and surveying companies the sales team and the marketing team had little to no interaction. Sales professionals were busy constantly following up on leads and handling current clients. The marketing team was brainstorming and executing plans to draw in new prospects. Then comes along this new way of life, AKA Social Media. With this amazing tool we now see many companies able to easily and cohesively combine the efforts of their sales and marketing teams.

In 2010, Econsultantcy studied this very idea. The results of their research are below.

Six of the main strategic lessons Econsultancy learned:

Understand the sales and relationship development processes used by
the organization, teams and individuals before you attempt to see how
social media might support them.

Develop standard policies and procedures to ensure you protect against
inadvertent problems with client confidentiality, brand and reputation
management, disclosure of valuable know-how and the ownership of
critical contacts and network.

Assess which vertical markets externally and which professionals
internally are most enthusiastic about social media, and work with
your champions in a pilot project.

This allows you to bring the early adopters (and potential mavericks)
under the umbrella of the organization’s criteria for effective use.
Particularly cautious firms might explore social media by using an
internal tool such as Yammer for internal communications campaigns.

Look at existing marketing, sales and account plans and try to develop
some measures by which social media activity, when incorporated into
other traditional activities, can be assessed.

Provide introductory training on appropriate social media tools, which
may involve working alongside the professionals as they perform their
day job and delivering new layers of complexity in bite-sized pieces.

Monitor activity and results carefully, be patient, provide regular
support and encouragement, promote successes (however small or
anecdotal) and allow social media use to develop in line with
experience and update the best practice guidelines and systems
regularly.

Six of Econsultancy’s top operational tool tips were:

Using social media as a method to learn more about markets,
organizations and individuals. A targeted form of market listening in
order to gain insight into trends, needs and opportunities and map
client-side relationships.

Using location based social media—particularly those providing
information on different aspects of individual’s preferences, habits
and places frequented—to learn about and connect with different
members of the decision making unit.

Consider how to integrate social media contacts and connections with
traditional “centralized” databases, sales automation and CRM systems.

Ensure that corporate and personal brands (business and self profiles)
are aligned and that consistent key messages about specific strengths
and expertise are promoted through all channels.

Using the traditional networking advice of “Giver’s Gain” and using
social media to add value to every interaction with existing and
potential clients through a careful shared content strategy.

Use status updates, particularly on professional and business networks
such as LinkedIn, on a regular basis to ensure that you remain “on the
radar” of a large number of contacts with ease—and provide hooks to
prompt interaction.

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