Marketing Guy: “Dan, what is one of the greatest benefits Sitebrands new product [Relevance] will bring to marketers in general?”

Dan: “That’s easy, zero integration.”

Marketing Guy: “Are you referring to the one line of code that is required for your tool to be fully implemented into a website?”

Dan: “well, sort of.”

Marketing Guy: “Can you elaborate?”

Dan: “Zero integration means that there is no longer a need to involve IT, this means that marketers have 100% control over what they want to do on the website.”

Zero Integration = No need to pester IT = Marketers get to do what they want when they want.

His eyes lit up.

Marketing guy: “Really? What do you mean?”

Dan: “If you want to change content on your site to better reflect the type of visitor you currently have on your site, go ahead, you can do that through our UI without the need of your IT department. Whether or not you have long release cycles or other organizational roadblocks to do the types of online marketing you’ve been accustomed to doing in the offline world, you can now do it in the online world without pestering IT. If you want to tap into any data point you or your vendors own, you can do that without the techies. In other words, our one line of code will allow a marketer to tap into all of the various backend data sources you have in order to offer the most relevant message in real time to your visitors across multiple sessions.”

Marketing guy: “So what you’re saying is that Sitebrand has designed a personalization tool that puts the power of marketing where it belongs, in the marketers’ hands”.

Dan: “That’s what I said, zero integration.”

Screenshot of a campaign storyboard in Sitebrand's upcoming release, Relevance.

Some of the most strategic marketers I’ve had the pleasure of talking to say similar things when thinking about the dive into web personalization. They get relevant messaging, better customer experiences and increased conversions, but they aren’t sure how to make it work in a context that supports what their existing website is and does.

Whether its personalization or other online marketing engines, it’s clear the software is becoming increasingly cumbersome to use and require hours and hours of training to figure out.

Sometimes when envisioning a web campaign, it doesn’t make sense until you see what it would look like on your site from beginning to end. Or sometimes, the trouble is envisioning which sections of a website the campaign runs across. Software isn’t always the easiest thing to navigate and let’s be honest, marketing professionals don’t want to spend all their time HTML coding.

If you find yourself agreeing with this (and honestly, how couldn’t you?) what I’m about to say should really resonate with you. Imagine the ability to personalize campaign after campaign with the most friendly of user experiences with a pretty cool storyboarding feature.

Being able to see exactly how the campaign looks, where the call to action goes next and the 30,000 ft view of a particular campaign is compelling to say the least.

An up-close look at campaign storyboarding in Sitebrand's next generation personalization platform, Relevance.

If features like this can’t get you into personalization, I’m not sure what will. With Relevance, Sitebrand’s upcoming revolutionary personalization platform, it certainly helps bridge planning and execution stages. Or in other words, it bridges making lunch and eating it.

Hungry for personalization yet?

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Stay tuned for a series of blogs that will show the power and flexibility of Sitebrand’s next generation personalization platform, Relevance! This is the first installment of the weekly series.

“The catalog marketer cares about long-term value, and proves that catalog marketing generates customers who have the best long-term value (which is usually the case), preserving the business model.

The online marketer gets caught up in the multi-dimensional aspect of long-term value associated with multiple micro-channels, finds the problem too confusing, quits, and focuses a disproportionate amount of energy finding ways to encourage a customer to convert to a purchase today. This leads to improvements in conversion that do not translate to improvements in long-term value, causing the online marketer to constantly search for the next big thing”.

I couldn’t agree more. I’m not saying that dollars don’t matter, of course they do, but there is so much more at stake. Too many online marketers are consumed with the now, they (I’m generalizing, I know) are focused on the $ conversion rate on a campaign by campaign basis. They ignore more traditional measurements such as the lifetime value of the customer, brand awareness, and other positive micro conversions that don’t translate into immediate ROI.

It’s as if online marketers are walking around carrying quotas over their heads. Every dollar out is scrutinized and measured against every dollar in. I realize that life time value and brand awareness are difficult things to measure (follow this guy if you need help @jimnovo, or check out @avinashkaushik who wrote a blog recently on this subject). I also realize that explaining and proving out the results of those measurements to those in charge of the marketing budget is even more difficult. Yep, the weight of the quota is squarely on the marketers shoulders. But that’s no excuse. Rather than giving in to the quota and solely focusing on the now, marketers should extend their efforts by embracing measurement methods, technologies and tactics that bring greater value to the lifetime of the customer.

Let’s take web personalization for instance. Vendors who have found some success in this space are typically focused on one of or both of these:

Testing: Whether it is A/B or MVT, the notion that testing out pages to optimize the funneling of users through your site is generally accepted as a benefit. This evolved out of the web analytics industry which emphasized a continuous improvement framework.

Conversion Optimization: Personalization vendors in this space are focused in optimizing the tail end of the purchasing cycle (the now). Product recommendations, shopping cart abandonment, product discounting, these are all forms of personalization where the goal is to persuade users to add more items to the cart, increase the average order value and ultimately to hit that checkout button now.

I have no problem with these forms of personalization. If done well, they do work. The first helps site owners build the best possible pages; and the second helps increasing that conversion dial within the context of the now.

Should marketers be doing these things? Absolutely.

Should marketers limit their use of personalization to these things? Absolutely not.

In addition to the types of personalization mentioned above, it should also be used in the context of providing the most relevant message to the visitor that is on my site right now. If that visitor is in the early stages of a purchasing cycle, then offer them messaging that makes them feel comfortable about the brand, offer them product reviews, newsletter signups, any type of messaging that makes them feel comfortable with you and your product. This will increase brand awareness, loyalty, and eventually will translate in a purchase and hopefully subsequent purchases in their lifetime.

By simply focusing on the end of the purchasing cycle you are focusing on the now and you are ignoring a number of other conversations you could be having with your prospects and customers simply because of the fact that you have a quota over your head.

It’s time for marketers to look beyond the quantitative quota and bring the virtues of the qualitative to the table - session wide dialogue, brand awareness, and loyalty are all virtues that need to be brought to the forefront as the previous generation of marketers did before us. It’s time to bring personalization to your business and to convince everyone around you that the measure of success for personalization and online marketing should not solely be focused on the now but rather the lifetime value a customer brings to your business. It’s time to think beyond the quota.

Relationship building emails, like this one from Sephora are great ways to engage customers.

This type of relationship-building email goes a long way! I was planning a visit to their Ottawa store anyway as I wanted to pick up a birthday present for one of my good friends, but after I received the email I got a little more excited about going shopping because I was also going to receive a gift - an early one at that! I was allowed to pick up my gift 14 days before or 14 days after my actual birth day.

Sephora made it easy for me to redeem my birthday gift, all I had to do when I went to the store was tell them my email address and they handed me my Lip Gloss Trio. While I was in the store I purchased a few little extra things for myself and since I spent more than $100, I also received some free samples. This small token of appreciation from Sephora enticed me to go spend some money in their store!

But wait! The story doesn’t end there… A few days later I received another email from Sephora asking me to rate my recent in-store purchase. It listed the items that I bought and gave me the option to write a review for each item. When I clicked through, I had the option to write a review, post some images or even a video. What a great way to get people talking about the products that they sell. There is nothing better than actual customer reviews to show people what great products you sell.

Cheers to Sephora for implementing a great relationship building strategy!

Happy emailing,
Alison

Kalma talks about personalization and its relationship to recommendations and although it’s nothing groundbreaking (Kalma doesn’t reveal ancient eCommerce secrets that’ll boost your conversion rates), he makes a great point about historical recommendations and how they may not jive with new sessions.

Full disclosure: I’m a bigger believer in session based personalization than recommendations.

To Kalma’s point - “It gets tricky when shopping for other people”.  Let’s take it a step or two further: last week you browse women’s dresses and skirts for your wife (at her request).  You look at a few different styles, brands, etc… but leave having not converted.  You come back to the site a week or two later but this time, you are looking for men’s dress shirts for you.  Based on previous browsing history, you could very well be presented with “targeted recommendations” of dresses and skirts.  Some may might find that offensive and most would find it irrelevant.

Another example: if you are anything like me, it’s an enormously difficult task keeping surprises/gifts from loved ones.  It’s a curse, I swear (I’m open to suggestions, too).  Imagine you’ve gone to such great lengths to hide ideas and deny all  guesses, only to have your super secret gift spoiled when your loved one uses the shared computer.  They reach one the sites you recently browsed in search of this gift and the recommendations are all in similar/hinting themes.  Perhaps your loved one isn’t that savy, but that’ll have you sweating bullets.  Or maybe the messaging is that targeted … “Did you still want to buy that engagement ring you were looking at?” … Yikes.  That could be bad.

In more extreme examples like those above, historical recommendations can be hit or miss.  Session based personalization is more reliable, as its all based on real-time actions of visitors.  And it never spoils gifts, either.

All this said, one thing really stands out.  Brian Kalma rolled recommendations and personalization up as one-in-the-same.  Interesting, but I see recommendations and personalization as two completely different entities.  Personalization can mean branding, messaging, calls to action and more via behavioral targeting, referring domains/URLs, unique/specific segmentation, etc…  Simply put, its not limited to relevant up-sell/cross-sell opportunities.  It’s about a session wide dialogue to heighten audience engagement and experience whereas recommendations are driving additional sales or conversions.

It’s well established visitors/customers don’t respond well to constant ‘buy this-buy that’ messaging.  That wears out quick.  The online marketing community has done a good job understanding that customers want an informative relationship that doesn’t push for sales on every tweet, message or email blast.  Under that logic, are product recommendations that different?  Don’t we run a similar risk of burning out visitors by only offering product recommendations?  Clearly it’s a valuable tool or tactic that has its place, however, it’s not the only weapon in your eCommerce arsenal.

You know what side I lean on.  Question is, where do you stand? Recommendations or real-time personalization - which do you see more long term value in?

We here at Sitebrand have been around for 9+ years, and now have a nice reference library of past editions collecting dust. The inner nerd in me took it upon himself to do a little extra data analysis above and beyond the call of duty to see what we can deduce from building some year over year, rank over rank metrics.

Using a trusty spreadsheet, I built up the numbers in a number of ways.

Let’s start by considering some trends within each year; comparing same year revenue numbers for #500, to #400, to #300 and so on. It is fascinating to see that every year, the delta between the same year hundreds keeps widening at a staggering rate. Pretty cool. Explosive growth, year over year up through the ranks.

The numbers start to tell a different story though when same rank revenue is trended year to year (i.e. Comparing position #500 revenue for the past 4 years, position #400 for the past 4 years, etc) …not specific company revenue, but the reported revenue for the same IR position, year over year. Confused?

Sitebrand's Dan Auns has found some unexpected trends over the last few years from IR500 reports

Knowing that the company in position #1 has remained the same for all 4 years, let us forget the fact that every year a different company occupies every other position. Let’s pretend that my year to year report is for the same 5 companies, year over year, and compare position x00 year over year for the past 4 years…

Almost across the board, the year over year growth rates have been declining year over year since 2005. The two exceptions occur at either end of the report, the #1 position and the #500 position.

The #1 position posted 26%, 38%, and 30% growth.
The #500 position posted 71%, 16%, and 41% growth. Growth across the board, but all over the map and unpredictable at best.

The trend for positions 100, 200, 300, and 400 show a -7% to -9% decline in same rank revenue growth year over year, for the past 4 years. Not exactly the results I was expecting.

Let’s keep in mind that these are growth rates, +20% growth no matter how you slice it is exceptional, and all stats can be spun if you look hard enough (Most often are). What do you make of these trends? Shoot me an email and I will share my workbook with you to take a closer look.

OK, that last sentence was a very politically correct, but you get my point.

The average online shopper doesn’t think like you and I do.

One of the greater eCommerce challenges is to plan your website and online shopping experience around how your visitors/customers think.  Online marketing professionals are smart, well educated and spend far more time in eCommerce than your average customer probably does.   But can e-Tailers honestly say websites are designed around how the average visitor thinks, navigates, behaves, etc…?

When I look at strong online companies who I respect, I find the majority of sites difficult. And I consider myself very much in tune with the world of eCommerce.  Sure, these sites look great, but flashy-cool websites only get you so far.  To me, the best sites always have the simplest designs.  May not be the most appealing website, but why fix what’s not broken?  I like how ecommerce-blog.org puts it, “most people don’t care how good of a graphic designer you have.  Lucas Film LTD may be interested in your work, but the rest of us aren’t”.

All that said, I realize and appreciate the amount of research, development, studies, testing and more that goes into site launches and redesigns.  I’m not saying companies intentionally create overly complicated web experiences or aren’t trying to think like their visitors/customers (in fact, I’d accuse them of trying to do just that… or at least they should be!).  However, I do believe we - as an industry - aren’t there yet.

Perhaps the online marketing community is evolving faster than the customers that fuel it.  Or the problems we’re trying to solve (shopping cart abandonment, low conversion rates, improved marketing strategies, etc…) are pushing for fixes that are far too elaborate for today’s needs.

I fundamentally believe a majority of eCommerce challenges can be overcome with a straight forward and easy-to-use website with clear and dynamic messaging.  Talk to your visitors, keep them engaged and show them the products/information they want to see.

Keep it short and sweet. Do your best to keep your subject lines under 50 characters, including spaces. Stick to one concept, eliminate unnecessary words, and use familiar language. You want it to be a teaser to get people to open the email, not a story that risks loosing their attention.

Be specific. “The Green Thumb Newsletter: June 2007″ doesn’t tell the recipient what they’ll find in the email and gives them no reason to open it. Ask yourself “what’s in it for them?” If the subject line doesn’t tell you, it’s missing a benefit. Here is an example of a subject line that shows the benefit of opening: “The Green Thumb: 3 Tips for Summer Gardening”.

Pique their curiosity. Does your subject line make you have to know what the content inside the email will reveal? Use questions, numbers, challenges and statements that compel the reader to open the email and reap the benefits inside.

Make it personal. Personalized subject lines are a simple way to secure the interest and action of your recipients. They can be personalized based on the content preferences, past purchases or web links clicked by the recipient. You can also personalize with the recipients’ first name, just be sure that your database contains a first name for each recipient or at the very least will display a default such as “Dear Customer” if the first name is not there.

Test it. When you have two strong yet different subject lines, split your list in half and use a different subject line for each group. After a number of tests like this, you’ll have a better idea of what works for the people on your list.

Happy emailing,
Alison

ComputerGeeks.com
True story here… I’m handed the 2009 edition of the IR500 Guide and I randomly open it to page 240 - No. 181, ComputerGeeks.com.  How fitting, they are great clients of ours.  I begin to read their write up and I start to blush:  “The discount retailer of computer and consumer electronics tested a personalization system from Sitebrand Inc. in the summer of 2008 that increased sales 9% on average, or $540,000, in a two-month period.” Wow.  The ComputerGeeks.com team really gets selling online and eCommerce.  Great site and great people.  Big thanks to ComputerGeeks.com

CableOrganizer.com
Flipping to page 364, I see CableOrganizer.com’s write up hinting at personalization being the reason for ROI returns as high as “500% to 700%.” The IR500 Guide goes on to mention “The company also says it is 85% to 90% accurate on delivering content and offers at the right time, with many campaigns yielding a nearly 10% conversion rate.” Pretty impressive, right?  That’s Sitebrand’s impact.  Feel free to read the how’s and why’s here.

Danskin.com
Danskin’s Jessica Koster has always been great to us and ranks among our favorite clients to work with.  Koster and the Danskin team gave us a nice mention in their write up on page 348… “[Danskin] boosted online conversion rates by 56% using personalization technology to trigger customer web campaigns for visitors to the site.  Danskin.com used Sitebrand’s[Segment&Serve] to change the contents of a page based on the user’s geographic location.” Awww, thanks guys.

Many measure the success of a company by the results of their clients and in this case, I think the quotes speak for themselves.  We’re proud to have these success stories and want to sincerely thank you all for working with Sitebrand.

Cheers to all of our wonderful clients and new connections made last week.

This past weekend, I was walking through our local big box hardware store; I needed furnace filters, excitement at its best.  I rounded the corner of the furnace aisle and was greeted by a salesman.  He very quickly realized my intention and prompted me with ‘What size filters are you looking for?”.  Nothing remarkable about that you say.  But ask yourself, how does that compare to the online experience?  The fact that I entered the store obviously meant I was a visitor and the fact that I walked down the furnace aisle meant I could be segmented.  But it was the combination of those facts along with a relevant message that made the experience truly personal, and that’s where I’m going.

Personalization isn’t just about segmenting users, and it isn’t about delivering a unique message to a visitor because you can.  It’s about optimizing the conversation you’re having with your visitor.  It’s about having a dialogue rather than a monologue. The ability to segment web traffic is no different in the online world than the ability to stand in the furnace aisle and whistle Dixie.  The key is combining a set of likely visitor expectations with the information you have, to deliver you guessed it: the right message to the right visitor, at the right time.  I wasn’t asked whether it was my first visit to the store, nor was I directed to the humidifiers section.

So what’s the takeaway here?  It’s simple, don’t get lost in the technology, or with the variety of methods and techniques to get in front of users.  Sure, we now have the ability to stand in that online furnace aisle, and that’s a great thing for Marketers, but that’s not the end of the story.  Success always comes down to relevant messaging, segmentation just places you in the aisle.

After I had the right furnace filter in my hand, the salesman kindly asked if he could help with anything else, “no” is what I said, so he pointed me in the direction of the checkout counter.