Research Briefs

Your homepage URL is likely directly connected to every dollar that flows out of your marketing budget. It's on TV commercials, business cards, even the side of a city bus. But is it optimized to meet your marketing goals? Or is your…

As the recent “flash crash” on Wall Street shows, entrusting important business decisions solely to technology can lead to disastrous results. If humans had been involved, would the market have dropped so steeply? Would a human have been…

Why do customers buy? Why do they fill out a lead generation form? Heck, why did your spouse agree to marry you? Every action your customers take is essentially a "mini-conversion" and requires clear communication of value to guide…

Social media marketing has been a blazingly hot topic for marketers in every industry this year. But since this technology is so new, there is still a daunting knowledge gap. So we invited special guest Sergio Balegno, the Research…

Over the past several weeks, the MarketingExperiments team has taught extensively about the principles we've discovered from email marketing experimentation and how marketers can apply them to optimize email response. Part 1 and Part 2…

Where is your greatest opportunity to increase email marketing ROI, and how can you capitalize on it? Our research has shown that you can often get more response from the same email list (and same marketing spend) by focusing on a few…

Creative – it's the line item in many marketing budgets that is often the hardest to judge…let alone actually measure. What are you getting for this spend? How do you know if this investment is having an impact on your bottom line?…

While marketers invest the majority of their time and budgets on areas deeper down in the funnel, MarketingExperiments research has found that most of the gain from optimizing a website occurs in the first seven seconds of users'…

Your peers' biggest email marketing challenge (88% find it very important) is to retain existing customers, according to the MarketingSherpa 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. Cost-conscious organizations are trying to offset the…

We conducted hundreds of tests in 2009 to augment the marketing of research partners in a variety of B2B and B2C industries. In our November 11 web clinic, our analysts distilled some of our most valuable lessons of this challenging…

From PPC to offline advertising, you likely invest significantly in driving prospects to your site. But do you put the same amount of resources into guiding them through to conversion? In our October 28 web clinic, we took a detailed…

In recent web clinics, you've learned how to optimize aspects of your site ranging from landing pages to affiliate marketing. In our October 14 web clinic, we took a step back from optimization tactics to focus on maximizing ROI through…

Optimizing for conversion rates is often linked to landing pages – and for good reason. But we all know landing pages are just the tip of the iceberg. In our September 16 web clinic, our research team explored how you can apply our…

Didn't get all your holiday marketing plans locked in place this summer? Don't panic. You're not alone. We know you've been stretched thin this year, but help for your holiday ecommerce marketing efforts is on the way. On…

Picture the salespeople who get on your nerves. They're too loud. Too pushy. They try to seem so clever, but that usually backfires. Just like weak headlines. Trying too hard to sell is one of the biggest mistakes we make with headlines…

How can affiliate marketing help you generate more traffic, leads and sales? What steps should merchants, affiliates and networks take to increase their ROI? Inspired by takeaways from Affiliate Summit and past MarketingExperiments…

With increased pressure to make the most of every marketing dollar, many marketers are taking a hard look at how their PPC efforts are – or are not – delivering now. Beyond ad copy and keywords, research shows that optimizing for…

Web marketers are running tests every day based on intuition, hunches, and test ideas that have ostensibly worked in the past. But this all-too-common approach to testing is fraught with hazards – from validity threats and sample…

As a marketer, the impact of a single successful test can be very fulfilling. But how valuable is it to run one triumphant test? Or even several tests that are not connected to each other in any meaningful way? Serious ROI gains can only…

Organic search results not only attract far more clicks than PPC ads, they're also seen as more credible. Locking in a top-five spot in Google is where you want your site to be – front and center with targeted prospects. Of course,…