I am engaged to be married! Let me show you a little of how I went about shopping for a diamond engagement ring, and the importance of local and geotargeted search. I initially was looking at all styles, and wanted to see a large selection, so I did the most basic of searches for “engagement rings.”

The paid search results needed to use a (unique selling proposition) USP in order to get me to click, especially in light of how competitive the organic field appeared to be. For the most part, those advertising a way to build your own ring were more likely to get my attention, especially because I was looking for a large selection. I could have cared less about discounts and low prices, especially at this point in my research.

I quickly narrowed my interest to platinum rings, and mostly those with solitaire diamonds. A three-diamond ring, or rings that included rubies or other gems just weren’t traditional enough for my taste, or for the woman I’d be giving the ring to.

When it came to categories, it was more difficult to say my taste was classic versus contemporary versus something else. I nearly always liked at least one ring in each category. Ultimately, I was looking for a contemporary solitaire diamond engagement ring with a platinum setting. That’s a bit much to Google, I thought, so I narrowed my Google search to “contemporary engagement rings.”

I still wasn’t interested in buying, but I thought I might come across a manufacturer or designer who specialized in contemporary rings. Mostly, I was disappointed. But at this point, I did begin to pay more attention to geotargeted ads. If an ad was popping up for my location, I figured the advertiser likely had a physical store within driving distance. I was more than willing to discuss engagement rings in person, and an ad that said “DC’s favorite” and another that highlighted Baltimore did get my attention.Ultimately, I did a search for local jewelers, “Bethesda Jewelers”, when a search for “bethesda engagement rings” didn’t satisfy. In the meantime, my father had spoken with the actual “Bethesda Jewelers” and had used them in the past for other jewelry. I went with a ring from them. No ad, no geotargeting, just plain old word of mouth.

Four Takeaways:

1. Research customer intent. Does an ad for “engagement ring” really bring in purchasers? You might be better off with, “Engagement Ring Advice” and pushing your expertise in an ad.
2. What is your USP? Write an ad that sticks out and ultimately targets who you want to be targeting.
3. Geotargeting brings attention to an ad when indicated in the ad copy, in particular.
4. Is your target customer going to buy online? Know your audience and track them through the purchase, even if it’s an offline conversion.

An analysis of entry or landing pages can be particularly insightful if analyzed appropriately. Simply looking at your top entry pages can help show you the pages you can focus on that will have the greatest immediate impact on the overall site performance. Unless you look deeper into the data, however, and combine other metrics in your analysis you will not be gaining the insights necessary to make well informed changes to your site.

So what other metrics should you use in your analysis of your entry pages? A few metrics that will allow you to begin to delve deeper are:

Average Time Spent on the Page: This allows you to assess which pages are the most successful at drawing a visitor in and beginning to spark their interest in finding out more about your products or services.

Percentage who Click Through to another Page: This gives insight into how useful the entry page is at getting visitors deeper into the site and hopefully beginning down the conversion path.

These are just the basics and will only allow you to see which pages have the greatest impact at delivering initial visitor engagement. To see the full picture you must look back at where the traffic came from and also forwards to see the paths they take once they are on your site.

You need to understand if visitors from your various entry pages are viewing your high value content that reinforces your brand and more importantly if they are reaching your ultimate goal of converting them into a customer.

It’s then important to look back at where the visitors came from before they came to the entry page and segment out each source to analyze separately. This will allow you to determine which traffic sources are your top performers and allows you to allocate additional resources to leveraging those sources. This in turn will increase the performance of your site while at the same time saving money by eliminating wasteful spending on campaigns that are underperforming.

The deeper you can dig into the data and the more refined segmentation you can perform the better, but make sure you come back up and bring it full circle by looking at the big picture. Once you’ve extracted the details you need, you must then factor in the costs associated with each traffic source and compare it to what they deliver to your companies bottom line. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how much data you use in the analysis of your entry pages, if you don’t have the ability to come full circle to make real business decisions then you’re wasting your time and your companies money.

It is my day to blog on the Digital Rodeo and unfortunately, I don’t have anything earth shattering to blog about (hey, it happens). Fortunately, some of my favorite Bloggers have a lot to say. Here is a list of recent must-reads:

1.) Pete Blackshaw wrote a terrific post on what text mining tells us about the brand of the ad industry (here’s a shocker: the industry has a bit of a reputation/credibility problem). One of the critical questions Pete asks here is “what is the cost of messaging through the noise of distrust and disbelief?” This is the right question. The WRONG question (and one I’ve been hearing all too often lately) is “what is the direct ROI of social media?”. Failure to understand and embrace Web 2.0 impacts the ROI of every “one to many” tactic in your arsenal. Think about it.

2.) I’ve often thought that the conversation mining potential of social networks is at least as valuable as ad revenue. Why not mine the conversations of your SN and sell the nuggets of wisdom (data versus ads)? Nielsen has an interesting twist on this with their new site, Hey!Nielsen, “the place to make a name for yourself while trading opinions on TV, movies, music, personalities, web sites and more”. It makes sense. Nielsen helps people do what they are going to do anyway in a Web 2.0 world (create, connect, opine) and then uses that gold mine of information to explore and define its own research. This is a terrific example of thinking about Web 2.0 beyond its potential as a marketing tactic (although the indirect marketing benefits in this case are clear).

3.) Steve Rubel has a fascinating post on using Google Reader Search as a trend mining tool. One possible use: If you are trying to mend fences with a handful of Bloggers whose coverage hasn’t been great in the past, you could use Google Reader Search to track shifts over time. I’ve just set up a folder of feeds from the Twitter pages of the Democratic presidential front runners. Just for fun, I think I’ll use Google Reader Search to trend the buzzwords used most often in the candidates’ Twitter updates (house party? donate? speech?).

4.) The Ironman World Championships are coming up on October 13th. This year, our friend and client, Cherie Gruenfeld, will be attempting her 7th Age Group win in Kona (May Pele smile on you, Cherie!). Cherie’s husband, Lee Gruenfeld, is a terrific fiction writer and also blogs for the Ironman organization. Lee’s very funny thoughts on why people attempt this grueling race (a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride and then a marathon) is one of my all time favorites.

Happy reading!

THINK.

A Multi-part Email Strategy series to help you get the most out of your email program. Each Tuesday, I will focus on one aspect of email communications. Please submit a comment if there is an area you would like for me to focus on or a problem you are encountering with your own email program.

Over the past few weeks I have been blogging about different aspects of email communications, and how they can positively impact your organization. Recently I have discussed topics ranging from email frequency, sender name, personalization, and testing practices. Each of these topics were spun-off a blog entry discussing ‘industry best practices’ and ‘industry averages.’ (of which I discussed determining your own ‘industry averages’)

It is important to keep track of your email program very closely. It tends to be the forgotten-step-child in an organization’s Communications or Development group, or the even more – it’s the forgotten-step- child-that-lives-under-the-stairs when it falls to the IT group for support and cultivation.

THINK.

Thinking is something we all do. Like it or not. But in the case of your email program, little thought is given to the power of the medium – even in this Web 2.0 world we are currently experiencing and is impacting the way we communicate and get communicated TO. It’s not just ‘drop some content into the email program and hit the send button and forget about it until next time.’ You must THINK about each email that goes out, and how it impacts your organization and the relationship it is building with your members.

This series will cover and help you THINK about how your program can have a positive effect in member or customer acquisition, retention or donor bonding and cultivation, fundraising and product sales, and just making the member feel like a valued part of the .

To some organizations that already do it right, this series will be a no-brainer and will help you refine your process, to those organizations that are just starting to feel the impact of a large list size that is not responding to plan – this series will help you get back on track, and to those organizations that are just getting ready to press the ‘send’ button for the first time – THINK

THINK first, press later.

The first official part of this series (outside of those mentioned above and in this blog already) is Email Capture Preparation. Getting the name and making sure you understand how keep it.

Here’s a checklist to get you started and for other things to THINK about as we proceed in this series:

1. What are the goals of your email program? And who ‘owns’ the email program (on that note, the ORGANIZATION ‘owns’ the program and list, not a person or group.)

2. Make a list and review the treatment of every place your organizations asks for email

• Is it on every page (and by this I don’t mean buried or hidden in the header, but as a strong call to action in a prominent location on every page)
• Is it on your Direct Mail or other Marketing Collateral? Or anything else that a prospective new-member may come across?
• If your organization or company utilizes telemarketing, are your call center reps trained to ask for email?
• Is it a required to provide email address to access any high value content or other site features?

3. Sign-up for your own email using a secondary email address so that you can see what your visitors/members experience, and take notes on each step.

• Does the process make sense? Is it easy to complete? Do you think you are asking for too much information up front that could be captured in the cultivation process? (do you REALLY need to know their home address just to send them an email?)
• THINK about how much information may actually stop someone from engaging into this email communication with you.

4. Review your sign-up form or process and see if you are asking the correct questions – and make sure the look and feel isn’t too different from the rest of your site:

• First Name
• What name do they go by? (phrase it something like “how may we greet you?”)
• Last Name
• Email address (double entry to ensure a good address)
• Interest areas
• Frequency of communication
• Instructions on how to go back later to change or remove information. Believe it or not, the easier you make it for members to unsubscribe over time you will see fewer unsubsribes.
• What kind of autoresponse is sent? Make sure that someone sits down and THINKS about this copy – it will be the first communication you have with the new constituent – give them a call to action to get them immediately engaged. (please note though, that many email systems DO NOT track the open rates of auto responders. frustrating, but true. also a huge pet peeve of mine)

5. Look at your email system reporting features

• Is it robust enough to give you information on email performance down to the individual link level?
• Does it give you the information you will need to perform advanced testing in the future?
• Is it flexible enough to handle conditional content and segmentation?

BONUS QUESTION

1. What does your email communications and testing calendar look like?

Now that you have sat down and really thought through some basic questions, share them with your team and leadership to get additional input. Next week in Part Two of this series, we will focus on getting that first email (or first refined email) sent and talk about goals of your email program.

See you next Tuesday.

And, whatever you do, THINK before you send.

Silverpop has recently conducted a study to see what is really stopping your members or constiuents from opening their emails from you. Is it that catchy subject line that your marketing associate spent days thinking up? NOPE. Is is all the pretty pictures in the email? NOPE. Is it the time of day the email is sent?

NOPE.

The silverpop study, something my friend over at Silas Partners – Jacob Smith – wrote about today and brought to my attention. (well, he actually gave me an offhanded challenge to see who could blog about it first.) (He won) (I let him.)

The study showed that in their case, it wasn’t the subject line length, or offer, or the avoidance of certain no-no words that caused openers to pause before continuing.

It was the sender. The almighty “FROM” that shows up in you inbox in Outlook or whatever email program you use.

Just like in Direct Mail, it is very important to test a ‘signer’ of a direct mail piece to see who will get a higher response rate. The same goes for email marketing efforts. You must test who your email comes from. We all know it doesn’t really come from the head of the organization when we get it in our inbox, but we can assume that if it has the CEO or President’s email – he (or she) must have seen this message – therefore you increase the credibility of the piece and increase your open rates.

Stop what you are doing right now and look to see who YOUR organization’s emails come from. I can wait. . . . . . . . .

Now that you are back, does that ‘FROM’ name make any sense to the offer or the program? Are you sending emails from info@blank.org

I have a client that is currently working through this issue, as their emails come from ‘marketing3@…” So our first step in testing a new email program is to test the sender name. Remember their are several places that a name will appear. I can appear as the ‘Name’ and or an ‘email address’ depending on the email client. Maybe your emails are coming from just your organization.

You should sit down and map out all of your email communications to determine who the message should be coming from. It’s ok to have mulitple senders, just as long as you are consistent and their messages are always similar.

So, the next time you have an email going out to your list.

Stop and Think.

Time for another edition of ‘Analogy Corner’.

If you’re driving your car back and forth from work, to the shops, etc, every day, you’ll probably believe that everything is going great. Your car gets you from point A to point B, it serves it’s purpose, and you’re happy that it does. Until that day that it just stops. It breaks down. Why did it happen? Why weren’t there warning signs? Well, it happened because you weren’t paying attention to the smaller details, the big picture looked rosy, but underneath small problems were popping up that you didn’t notice. Those problems then either increased in magnitude, or combined with other issues to cause the break down. As for warning signs? They were most likely there, maybe it was a noise coming from the engine that you didn’t notice because you have the radio up loud? Maybe even a warning light on your dashboard that you’ve ignored? It’s at the point when you’re standing by the road, watching cars whiz by, while you wait for assistance that you start to think that you should have been more diligent in getting your car serviced and checked out. Then you wouldn’t be in this mess.

Now, and here comes the analogy, imagine that the car was your website, it’s running along great, you’re getting plenty of orders / donations / sign ups. Then suddenly, it all breaks down. Traffic drops. Sales / donations / sign ups fall off. How could this happen? Why were there no warnings? Just like the car, if you haven’t been paying attention to the squealing brakes, or that strange knocking noise every time you make a left turn, the warnings have been there, you’ve just ignored them.

So what can you do? Well, primarily you need to ensure that you have a diagnostic system in place, and the best diagnostic system for a website is a good, properly implemented, analytics package. Use the analytics package to monitor trends. If you have the ability to do user segmentation analysis, do it, the more granular you can get, the greater your ability to understand and monitor changes in the way your customers do business with you. At the same time, you need to monitor your competition, changes they make to their sites can affect the ranking of your site, and therefore the traffic to your site. Then, there’s the continual SEO optimization. Algorithms change, bad listings can deter people from clicking (reputation management), changes to your site, etc.

So, even when things are ticking along nicely, you need to make sure that you’re listening for any strange sounds and looking for something out of the ordinary, as you don’t want to be standing on the side of the information super highway, watching customers zoom off to other sites, as you sit there waiting for assistance…

In my first post, I discussed social media entry pages. I’d like to revisit this.

Your homepage is not necessarily the first interaction your visitors have with your organization, or the interaction they want to have with you in a subsequent communication from your organization.

People can and should become aware of your site and latest initiatives through multiple marketing channels, including (when appropriate and within budget) radio, television, billboards, email, search, and trade publications. But driving visitors to your online space must not be directed entirely at your homepage. Your homepage can only say so much about you, and is designed to capture as many people as possible in your target audience.

Your accounts on MySpace, Facebook, or Squidoo may be more appropriate avenues for some outlets and audiences, and microsites could have the same effect for keeping people engaged with you in more than a “one-to-many” (push content to the audience) fashion.

Here are some steps to driving through Web 1.0 on your way to Web 1.5 and through to Web 2.0 and beyond.

Beyond Web 1.0 (a social media strategy comes first.)
1. Embrace what is social, even if it’s still one-to-many communication.
Email still works wonders. Give your subscribers reason to react, and a means of reacting through email, forms, surveys, and more. Embrace RSS. RSS is a pull-technology (your visitors have to request it just like email), so syndicate the news and content that could spread throughout the Internet and receive links.

Web 1.5+ Camp
2. Interact with others as you’d like them to interact with you! There are easy ways to become involved, and we highlighted 5 easy social media wins.
Comment on blogs, make videos of supporters, tag content in social bookmarking sites, submit content to social news sites, and ask your membership to engage others. Social news links where voting and commenting is allowed can bring links, visitors, and great brand awareness, as well as involve brand evangelists. I really recommend this! While you’re at it, create a Squidoo lens, a Facebook group, and a MySpace page.

Web 2.0
3. Let people seize control and enjoy the ride! Content is created by the community.
It takes time to build and nurture relationships for co-created content, but it can be done. Start with a blog, add social plugins to review, rate, vote, and submit content, and you’re taking the plunge.

Humans are unique in that we have free will to think and act in distinct ways, so why is it that we often try to force site visitors to act like a machine? Too often sites are designed like an assembly line that tries to force all visitors down the same conversion path. We each have our own motivations, needs, and expectations that need to be satisfied before we commit to making purchase decision. Just as much of the manufacturing world has progressed from the industrial revolution where everything was produced for the masses to today where products can often be customized to our unique needs, so to do websites need to move toward appealing to the various segment groups that come to their site.

These segments aren’t a result of just the target audiences that have been determined by your company, but rather by the psychographics and demographics of those individuals who actually come to your site. Only then can you begin to see what motivates these segments to convert and begin to provide the relevant information that they will need. Some of these segments will share several qualities, but what makes them unique is the sum of these qualities and that is what will shape each segments purchasing process. Your site must appeal to each of these segments and not just to the “typical” visitor. By appealing to only the “typical” visitor you’ll end up with an average site that doesn’t convert like you would like it to.

In order to create a site that appeals to more then the “typical” visitor, you have to design your site based around experiences. Each segment will have a different experience on your site, but unless you understand what each needs in order to have a positive experience you’ll be losing out on an audience who will instead go to your competitors who are appealing to their unique needs.

Take Jim and Sarah for example. Each of them is looking to buy a new TV. Sarah is in her late 20’s and owns her own condo in a very nice area. She loves to entertain and often has small gatherings at her home. While she is quite well off, she doesn’t like to flaunt it by always wearing designer cloths or driving a high end luxury car. Sarah doesn’t watch a lot of TV, but does enjoy watching movies and would like to have a nice TV for those occasions. She doesn’t, however, like her TV to be the center piece of her living room and wants it to be able to blend in well with the rest of her living room. She isn’t interested in all the details and specs of her TV, but instead just wants to know that the TV she is buying is going to give her an excellent picture for watching her movies.

Jim is also in his late 20’s and owns his own condo. He has a high paying job and likes to show his status through the material items he possesses. He is a big gamer and watches lots of TV. He needs a TV that will impress his friends and transform his living room into the center piece of the ideal TV and gaming environment. He needs to know all the specs of his TV so that he’ll know how it will integrate with his other gadgets. It’s vital that he has all the latest technology built into his TV so that he can impress his friends with the most technologically advanced TV on the market. His goal is to have his condo as the place that all his friends want to come to on Sundays for the big football game and for when they get together to try out the long awaited Halo3.

While both Jim and Sarah are interested in buying a TV their purchase process will be very different. If the site they visit doesn’t appeal to both of them then the site will be loosing out on a potential sale. The entry page needs to provide basic information that will appeal to both segments and lead them to the content that will allow them to gather the information that is important to them so that they will make a purchase. Each subsequent page needs to provide links to additional resources that will reinforce the message and also give them the option to enter into the conversion funnel.

If you allow the visitor to be in control and provide them with the information they need, then your sites performance will be enhanced and you’ll have many happy customers. You can coax them along towards the conversion funnel, but you can never force them into it or else you’ll end up with a site that doesn’t meet your visitor’s expectations.

The other day I was giving Simon Heseltine, our Search Director/Guru a ride to Union Station in DC. Simon had parked his car at my house which is near Union Station, and coincidentally only three blocks from the home of Barack Obama. While we were driving, we saw the tell-tale signs of the politically important: large black SUVs and guys in suits talking to their wrists. And, Barack Obama. That’s life in DC.

20 minutes or so later I got an email from Simon saying “We just passed Barack Obama on the street and already he’s emailing me!” I kind of chuckled at this and didn’t think much else of it. Until I read an article from ClickZ titled “Top Presidential Campaigns Took Few E-Mail Breaks in August”

Over the years I have worked on many political campaign sites and for various politically affiliated organizations. RedBoots is currently working with a candidate endorsement site, so I’ve always been interested in the changes over the past few elections on how candidates reach voters and embrace technology. And, how frequently they reach voters. And, how it’s nearly impossible to avoid them. The young, the old, online and offline.

So, this article at ClickZ said that both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards each sent 15 emails in August. FIFTEEN! That’s one email every other day. Obama sent 11. Fred Thompson sent 8 emails and he had only barely announced his candidacy (but he has shown some early adoption to social media sites – exploratory activity perhaps)

I think these campaigns all need to stop and rethink their online email communication strategies, as they will all begin to see serious list burn/churn, and a nosedive in email responses. However, many of these emails are not entirely action driven but offer other information, lots and lots of calls-to-action. Another interesting thing to point out is that each of these emails come from a different sender at the campaign – a tactic to avoid email spam filters and send frequency perhaps?

Many of these emails from all candidates are sent on the same days, so it is possible that undecided voters may have signed up for emails from multiple candidates – and have inboxes overflowing with politi-speak.

I’m also glad that the ClickZ article lists the subject lines of these emails (or many of them…) I’ve always kept a spreadsheet and folder of organizational emails and subject lines to see how language changes over time (Which you should be doing as well). Some of my favorites in the list – in this order:

• “Help Stop a Naked Power Grab” – Uh…what does THAT mean? I wouldn’t have opened this because of the spammy sounding language.
• “You Need to See This” – No I don’t. I got an email like this a long time ago and it was a virus.
• “She’s Going to Give You a Hug“- How? Why? And WHO is going to hug me?
• “Team Rudy Weekly Wrap” – Say five times fast!
• “A Special Message from Johnny’s Mother” – Why is John McCain’s Mom emailing me?

There are many things to learn from the ClickZ article, mostly – think before you have 15 emails planned in one month (most of which asked for money in some way or another I’m sure…) And really and truly vet those subject lines. Your subject line SHOULD set the expectation of the contents of the email. It’s ok to pique interest, but don’t set yourself up for failure by having an overly mysterious or cutesy subject line.

I kinda miss political candidates kissing babies. Not stalking me on email or scaring me with strange subject lines.

One of the first rules of communication or establishing communications with your constituents is to recognize them when they come to your Web site, or are entered into your email stream. It’s just a good practice, and you can say you are doing great customer relationship management.

Or ARE you?

Simon, our Director of Search, or Search Guru pointed out an email he received from IFAW today on behalf of Jessica Alba. The email greeting read:

“Dear HESELTINE”

I cringed. If it were me, I would immediately unsubscribe from the list because is shows me that the organization isn’t careful about it’s data and is making a lame attempt at getting ‘personal’ with me. Nobody, seriously, nobody, calls me HERRITY.

It’s a good practice to regularly cleanse your constituent data to avoid these embarrassing mistakes. Most users/constituents would be happy to periodically update their personal information on a supported organization’s site. Why not send an email to your list that asks them to update their information so they can be better served? (But leave the salutation field blank – or have it read “Dear Loyal Supporter” or something less servant like but will at the same time let the recipient know that they are important and loyal supporters.)

This is also a great opportunity to start segmenting your file so that you can customize communications down the road and increase your overall response rates because you are asking for support on an area that ‘I’ have told you I am interested in.

that’s my rant for the day.