Research Briefs

Here's a question most marketers are grappling with today: Which marketing strategies are getting the buzz – and which ones are getting the real gains? To find the answers, we teamed up with MarketingSherpa's Research Director,…

If we had used "638% gain" in this clinic's title, would you have believed it? One of our featured B2B marketers actually removed that gain from his website because many prospects didn't buy it. The clients that saw the gains reported no…

Give a man an optimized landing page and he converts for a day. Teach a man how to optimize his own landing pages and he can plan, make changes, test, analyze and increase conversions for years to come. With apologies to Lao Tzu,…

To stay ahead of the curve with optimization, marketers need to know what's working now — and glean strategies that they can quickly apply to their own pages and websites. In our April 8, 2009 clinic, we took an in-depth look at three…

Regardless of what the best practices for Spanish-speaking websites might suggest, in order to effectively optimize for Spanish-speaking prospects, you must combine cultural awareness with your customer…

Optimization best practices don't come with an iron-clad guarantee. Enter the "wild card" — the unknown performance factor. In optimization, wild cards are those outlier treatments that can, and do, surprise us by outperforming all…

B2B marketers know that their audience needs a different approach than B2C, from the channels to the landing pages, and ultimately, to the sale. So for our February 25, 2009 web clinic, we focused our live optimization contest format…

How aggressive are your email marketing goals for the year ahead? Are you optimistic about growing your lists and response rates, or hedging your bets due to the economic downturn? As marketers face increasing pressure to improve…

One of the greatest challenges to developing your offer pages is proving to jaded prospects that the rewards outweigh the risks. But you can tip the balance in your favor. The key is creating offer pages that minimize Friction and…

It's easy to fall into a rut with optimization and testing. Over time, as you discover which tactics and best practices get results, and then apply them to other channels or pages ad infinitum, you can get lulled into a false sense of…

To discover what really works in optimization, our team is constantly running tests and conducting experiments. After hundreds of these tests, several wins, some losses and surprises, we asked our analysts to identify the most…

To discover what really works in optimization, our team is constantly running tests and conducting experiments. After hundreds of these tests, several wins, some losses and surprises, we asked our analysts to identify the most…

There’s been plenty of gloom, doom, and handwringing over this year’s holiday shopping season. While your best bet is to keep projections grounded, not all hope is lost. Even in a tight economy, the Web has several advantages for…

Do you think your value proposition is powerful? Would your prospects agree? Most of the time, when we ask companies about their value proposition, we hear a description of their business model. But that’s not what most customers care…

Ever wonder if you’re approaching lead generation the wrong way? You may be right. Research shows roughly 80% of leads are regularly squandered. Good news: By optimizing a few key aspects of your lead management process, you can…

If you’re looking for ROI gains and you’re not sure what areas to test first, start with headlines or subject lines. The impact of headlines on conversions is no secret, but the ease of testing (no design, coding, etc.) makes them…

Our August 13, 2008 follow–up clinic on PPC campaigns included a new case study, a review of the two types of relevance, and a live critique of five new campaigns submitted by clinic participants. The pay–per–click ads and landing…

Increasing competition and bid prices are making conversions harder to achieve with paid search campaigns. To maintain a dominant position in PPC, you need to constantly improve your ads and landing pages. The challenge: How can you…

Our June 25 Web Clinic looked beyond our various formulas and heuristics and focused on one vital principle: clarity trumps persuasion. While we used case studies from three subscription sites to illustrate this deceptively simple…