Don’t Let Your Site Let You Down

Source: By Karen Talavera, President, Synchronicity Marketing

True response, also known as conversion, in the email marketing channel, occurs 95%  on a Web page. If you’re like most email marketers you’ll be driving campaign responders to your Website via click-able links in an email message. Unless your ultimate objective is simply to generate site traffic, what happens when those prospects arrive on your landing page(s) makes the difference between a successful email marketing initiative and a flop. That’s because what happens on landing pages is the process of conversion – the completion of your desired call to action, whether that be registration, purchase, download, or some other transaction. It is vitally important that after the monetary and time cost that goes into an email prospecting campaign, your site validates your offer and supports your conversion process quickly, seamlessly, and without distraction. To be sure it does, follow these four steps:

1. If you don’t already have a page on your site that specifically relates to the primary call to action in your email campaign, develop a landing page (or “bridge page”) to literally bridge the gap” between your message and your standard Web site. If your email marketing campaign is deployed in HTML, then ideally your landing page creative will mirror its design.

2. Don’t send responders to your home page or they could end up almost anywhere on your site and probably won’t find the path to conversion on their own. You’ll likely end up with a high abandonment rate and frustrated visitors if you “dump” responders onto a busy or cluttered home page.

3. Outline the optimal conversion path/process you’d like responders to take on your site, then test it yourself to be sure it is fast and flawless. Ensure data fields and forms work, electronic payments can be handled, and page load times are not too long. The more
efficient your conversion process, the higher your conversion rate.

4. You’d be amazed at how one tiny flaw in the programming of an order entry or registration page can kill conversion from an email marketing campaign. You can’t work too closely with your IT or Web group and in fact, the more you involve your developers in understanding your marketing objectives and online conversion processes, the more interested they’ll be in helping you succeed.

5. Track Beyond the Click-Through in the online world it’s possible to track and gauge a wider range of response behavior than in the offline world. For example, we know it is difficult if not impossible to discern the extent of interaction occurring with a direct mail piece prior to conversion. We know some level of involvement with the piece happens (it may be opened, it may be read), but almost never know at what point that engagement ceased if the prospect does not ultimately respond. So it’s essential in email marketing to track a variety of response actions in order to evaluate the performance of both the email marketing message and the conversion destination(s). Open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate each play a critical role in determining ROI, which is why it’s not enough to measure click-through alone. It is possible and not unusual to see high (by offline standards) click-through rates in email marketing, often upwards of 10% or 20%. But unless conversion is also measured, you’ll never know if you delivered on your campaign’s promise. You also especially need to track conversion – and all the steps involved in it – to be able to diagnose a potential problem with your landing page, Website or payment/sign-up process.

Finally, even tracking online conversion isn’t the final frontier. Studies have proven that email marketing influences both instant and latent responses, both online and offline. Only by tracking conversions within and across response channels (if distinct multiple channels exist) can you measure the totality of your campaign’s performance.

The beauty of any direct marketing medium lies in its accountability, and permission email is no exception. In fact, email marketing is more measurable, more accountable, and more instantaneous than almost any other direct marketing channel. What other marketing activity can not only give you a birds-eye view of exactly what’s working and how well, but also deliver lightning-fast results and insight you can quickly apply the next time around? Done right and with a little practice, prospecting with permission email will allow you to reap the benefits of direct marketing in the burgeoning online world.