At our Email Messaging Optimization Certification Workshop here in Miami, our team has crammed a few day’s worth of training into a single day-long certification session.
I have to admit, trying to cover and convey these proceedings really underscores some of the limitations of live blogging and Twitter. There’s a tangible energy in these live, interactive optimization workshops that consistently gets lost when we try to whittle down the session into our own 140-character tweets, or use live blogging.
Honestly, I’m not sure how to solve this. It’s like the difference between attending a live concert and hearing a :30 song preview from iTunes. The impact is nowhere near the same.
With that caveat on the table, while we’re working on the interviews and follow-ups that we’ll be posting here and in the MarketingExperiments Journal, you can find real-time bits and pieces from the workshop via the @MktgExperiments Twitter and updates to this blog post, as well as from our friends @BigMarketing and @MarketingSherpa.
A few takeaway points and quotes from the morning …
- When email list growth increases, revenue per name also typically increases due to higher level of engagement from new registrants.
- The #1 factor in success with your email capture: Are you getting the right names, not just more names?
- Specificity converts: Your offer needs to match the thought process going on in your prospects’ mind.
- Think of every email capture form as a mini landing page. Look at it that way and ask: is it offering an inevitable decision?
- If you’re only thinking about optimization in terms of the page elements, you’re missing the “why” questions that help you get to the root of the prospect’s thought process and needs.
UPDATE: More principles and points to ponder …
- When using incentives, the incentive needs to be clearly understood on its own; when the two offers (the primary and incentive) are conflated, conversion rate will suffer.
- Friction and anxiety are different. You should not try to fix or over-correct for them in the same way.
- Value proposition and benefits need to be communicated — but many pages start from the point of assuming visitors already know more than they do, and they try to cram in too much from there.
- We’re seeing many pages that try to attract and convert repeat visitors in the same way as new visitors.
- As marketers, we need to stop thinking in terms of a target audience; we’re dealing with real human beings with wants, needs, and problems they’re trying to solve.
- Many of us are concerned about our ability (or inability) as copywriters to persuade prospects to take action; the truth is, clarity trumps persuasion. Heard that one before?
UPDATE 3/16:
Get more of your live Tweet fixes from Email Summit:
UPDATE 3/23-25:
More Workshop and Summit follow-ups from …
Our friends over at Sherpa: Email Summit Wrap-Up Report: 8 Takeaways on Segmentation, Triggered Campaigns, Web 2.0 Integration and More
And HubSpot: Interruption Marketing Incites Anxiety; Inbound Marketing Builds Trust
And AWeber: Increase Profit 2300% and Other Key Takeaways From MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit
And Blue Sky Factory: MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit 09: Top 3 Takeaways
Photo: (le)doo (is alive)
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