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Empty aisles. Echoing footsteps. Silence where there used to be chatter. Real-world retail is clearly suffering. And now new research suggests that if bricks-and-mortar merchants want to survive, they should go virtual big-time. Flatland is calling.
According to the recent report, U.S. consumers are steadily moving online. Why? Well, a heap of them (94% of the study’s respondents) are comparing prices. And a solid number are looking for coupons (67%), while many are simply enjoying the virtual shopping experience (93%).
So, how might traditional retailers catch this wave? If you apply your years of retail prowess online, your results could surprise you. Here are a couple of examples:
- Sears recently unveiled a multichannel-services platform called “Shop Your Way,” designed to allow seamless shopping across all Sears channels, Retailer Daily reports. The Shop Your Way page offers a range of options: Shop online and pick it up at the store, shop by phone, get an online helper or sign up for Sear’s in-home service.
- JCPenney launched a virtual-runway feature on its e-commerce site that allows online shoppers to use “3-D” technology to try clothes on online, Retailer Daily says. Cool stuff.
Features like these help evoke the old-style store experience in brand-new ways online.
Make those retail charms virtual. Retailers can actually hold an advantage online—when they find new ways to make the virtual experience echo the store experience their customers have grown to love.
Source: Retailer Daily.
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The best email offer in the world won’t accomplish much if it never reaches your intended recipient. Beware: there are strong forces at work these days trying their best to block your messages! In a recent MarketingProfs article, Debra Ellis discusses three distinct deliverability hurdles faced by today’s email marketers. Meet the spaminators:
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that err on the side of caution when determining whether an email looks like spam or not. “[A]void all spam triggers,” she advises. “They include specific words and characters in the subject line, low text-to-graphic ratios, and repetition of target words within the body of the email.”
Junk Box Filters (JBFs) with settings that are likely left by recipients in a “suspicious” default mode; the most effective way to evade this snare is to get recipients to whitelist your email address. “If you want this … you have to ask for it, and provide quality content,” Ellis says.
Much-Needed Individuals (MNIs), aka your subscribers. “This is your toughest spaminator,” she admits. They can terminate you with a couple of clicks. “Your survival depends on your ability to entertain, engage, and enlighten.”
How can you heighten the chances that recipients will open your email, click through and—most importantly—close the sale? With good ol’ engagement. “If your emails are engaging,” says Ellis, “your customers will look forward to them and even pass them along to their friends.”
Be a hero: take steps to stop the spaminators. “A small investment in time can result in astronomical growth in loyalty, branding, and sales,” Ellis concludes.
Source: MarketingProfs
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In a post at the Email Experience blog, Spencer Kollas argues that marketers shouldn’t spend their time worrying about the rates other companies achieve with their email programs. The reason, he says, is that those numbers could have little bearing on your activities. “If the industry is getting an 88% delivery rate, but you are getting a 90% delivery rate,” he asks rhetorically, “does that mean that you should stop trying to improve it?”
And, notes Kollas, you might be comparing apples to oranges. If, for instance, an industry-specific survey reports an average delivery rate of 85% and an average open rate of 5%, it creates as many questions as it answers. “Without standardized metrics,” he reasons, “how do we know if all of the companies that were surveyed actually determine their numbers the same way?”
So, while industry averages can be instructive, it doesn’t really matter if you’re ahead of the curve or behind it—your goal should be the continual improvement of your own performance, and the increased ROI it brings.
“When marketers focus on what others in the industry are achieving,” says Kollas, “they are spending less time focusing on their own programs. To me, it shouldn’t matter what others are achieving; it matters what you’re achieving.”
Source: Email Experience.
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Imagine that a typically obnoxious B2B-marketing email has come to life—and he wants to talk to you even though you can’t remember where you met or why he has your address. In a highly entertaining video, Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports adopts the off-putting persona, and shows us why we never want to be “that guy.”
“Hang on! Hang on! Hang on!” he says as the video begins. “Don’t press the spam button. This is not spam. This is me. Remember? Remember Me? Recognize me? Face. Look at the face. Good, it’s coming back to you? Excellent. We met at a trade show about eight months ago … I think. You were maybe expecting me to come around a little earlier. Yeah. We had other priorities.”
Brownlow, as our personified email, then proceeds to break every single rule in the book:
He acknowledges that Tuesday morning between 9 and 10 might not be the best time for the recipient—but he’s not going to argue with statistics that say it is.
He explains why the salutation “Hello, First Name” should suffice for the purposes of this conversation.
He then segues seamlessly into the purpose of the email: “Let’s talk about the important thing, which is … us.”
It continues in this vein until he begins to wrap up with the telling statement, “It’s been fantastic talking at you.”
Brownlow puts a compelling spin on “don’t do this” recommendations—and delivers plenty of Marketing Inspiration—by imagining every bad email cliché as a living, breathing, smarmy human. And it isn’t pretty
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“We all like the comfort of the crowd,” says Mark Brownlow in a post at the Email Marketing Reports blog. “The knowledge that others went here before us tells us we’re on the right path.” Because of this tendency to trust the wisdom of crowds, he argues, you can encourage opt-ins to your email list by demonstrating how popular you are. Some suggestions:
Highlight testimonials. If a subscriber sends unsolicited praise, ask if she’ll allow the use of her name and comment; if she will, display the comment at your sign-up page.
Use indicative text. While Brownlow notes he has yet to do A/B testing on the following tantalizing line, he has noticed an increase in sign-ups since its addition: “Over 3,000 marketers, agencies and businesses already benefit from their email subscription…join them:”
Add dynamic social proof-indicators. Icons that display real-time subscriber numbers; widgets that proclaim the number of recent subscriptions; scrolling displays that update whenever someone new signs up: all might play an influential role in someone’s decision to join.
Brownlow does offer a few caveats. If you’ve positioned yourself as an exclusive club with limited membership, or haven’t yet reached the point where subscribers join on a regular basis, this approach might not work. “[Y]ou might actually discourage opt-ins when your widget says you have 23 subscribers and the last one signed up in 2007,” he says. And remember: test every new addition.
It’s OK to crow a little. By adding testimonials or positive stats to your sign-up page, you could boost your opt-in rates.
Source: Email Marketing Reports.
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You’ve undoubtedly developed a great elevator pitch for your company, product or service—that informative-yet-concise summation designed for delivery in the time it takes to travel from the lobby to the 17th floor. But what about visitors to your Web site—do you have a punchy way of telling them, in two minutes or less, what you do?
In a post at the American Express Open Forum blog, Guy Kawasaki extols the virtues of short videos that successfully communicate complex ideas in a streamlined, comprehensible way.
To make his point, Kawasaki uses a video he made for the Web site Start Cooking. In under a minute, the demonstration succinctly shows viewers how to prepare his recipe for chicken teriyaki. “[The site’s] method of showing how to prepare food blew me away in terms of effectiveness, speed, and simplicity,” he notes.
The same principles apply to just about any business topic, and Kawasaki highlights a video from Email Center Pro. “Email services can be hard to explain to people as everyone thinks of ’email management’ as different things,” Sabrina Parsons, the company’s CEO, told him. “We were challenged in making the tutorial to clearly explain what our email management solution was, and why people need it.”
There’s more to this Marketing Inspiration than simply making videos. “The explanation has to be fast, interesting, and compelling,” notes Kawasaki. “I don’t know of a better way to do this than this type of video.”
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When writing copy for email messages, landing pages and a host of product descriptions, marketers need to be more than clear and concise; they must also persuade readers to click through and take action. To help you achieve this goal of engaging—and gently goading—readers, Brian Clark of Copyblogger offers tips like these:
Say it again and again. If people are going to agree with you, they need to be clear on your position. According to Clark, successful repetition requires finesse. “To stay on the good side,” he says, “make your point in several different ways, such as directly, using an example, in a story, via a quote … and once more in your summary.”
Feel their pain. “You want the reader to know unequivocally that you understand his problem because you’ve dealt with it and/or are experienced at eliminating it,” explains Clark. Set the stage with a challenge that would create stress for your prospects—then put their minds at ease by proposing a solid solution.
Gaze into the future. Prognostication can be a dangerous game if you don’t know what you’re talking about. “But if you can back up your claims with your credentials or your obvious grasp of the subject matter,” Clark says, “this is an extremely persuasive technique.”
Do what it takes to draw them in. A technically flawless marketing message will only succeed if it also makes a convincing, believable case for your product or service.
Source: Copyblogger.
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We all know the cliché: you have 1.5 milliseconds to grab a prospect’s attention at your home page and convince him to stay. So why, then, are so many B2B Web sites still not that “sticky”? According to a recent post at eMagine’s B2B Web Strategy blog, it’s because too many businesses assume that site visitors already know what their company offers. Big mistake.
“Even if a user has sought you out in a search engine, or visited your site as a result of a marketing promotion, they still need a reminder upon impact that they have arrived at a site that might solve their business problem,” eMagine insists.
So, how do you show them they came to the right place? According to eMagine, it’s by presenting key “tiers” of information:
Tier One: Tagline. A memorable tagline sets a “tone” for your site. But beware: “A common mistake is using this brief catchy type of message alone,” eMagine cautions.
Tier Two: Descriptive/Value Proposition. This is your condensed elevator pitch. “This can be the most difficult sentence to write on your entire website, but also the most important, hands-down,” eMagine says.
Tier Three: Specific Solutions. A bulleted list of solutions, your vertical markets served, etc. “If done effectively, this is where each of your prospect types can quickly identify their problem or their industry,” eMagine says.
Don’t assume they know you. Apply the “tier” test to your home page to help ensure you’re getting your corporate message out there loud and clear.
Source: B2B Web Strategy.
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There are lots of good frozen-yogurt shops in Simon Glickman’s Pasadena, California, neighborhood. But one—21 Choices—seems to enjoy bigger crowds than the rest, and he explains in his Editorial Emergency newsletter how the small storefront keeps customers coming back from more:
- It delivers plenty of atmosphere. Unlike most corporate chains, the environment is quirky and inviting—multiple television screens flicker with cooking shows and vintage cartoons while the teenage staff “sing and shimmy” to a Motown soundtrack.
- It makes customers feel valued. When the line moves slowly, staffers require no coaxing to hand out samples, genuine apologies and coupons for free yogurt. If it turns out you don’t like a flavor combination, they’ll replace it without charge, and Glickman’s wife once received an extra scoop because an employee liked her sock-monkey key chain.
“But the company’s service ethic goes much further,” notes Glickman, “and this is where you should put down your Snickerdoodle Swirl and pay particular attention.”
Simply put, 21 Choices excels at thinking in terms of community:
- Personalized touches include a poster by the front door that lists regulars by name.
- Since customers care about environmental issues, the shop made the switch to biocompostable cups and spoons. “A handmade sign explains that this move has added to their overhead and resulted in slightly higher prices,” he says. “No one seems to mind.”
“No matter how much money and resources are allocated to make a business like this fit into a community, there’s no substitute for earnestly getting to know and embracing that community.”
Source: Editorial Emergency.
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“Oh, no! I thought that sale ran through today!” Your customer planned on grabbing a bargain, only to realize she got to your store a day after the sale ended. Is there any way you can still convince her to buy? Well, read on.
One researcher recently worked with a kitchen-and-bath store to offer consumers different coffeemakers “on sale.” Customers were told they had just missed a $25-off sale on a Cuisinart coffeemaker. As solace, one group was invited to get the Cuisinart for $10 off. Another group was given a choice of either the Cuisinart or a similar Krups coffeemaker at $10 off.
Turns out, 87% of the latecomers who were offered the Cuisinart at $10 off said “no thanks.” However, of those who were offered either the Cuisinart or the Krups at $10 off, only 60% said no: 40% made a purchase.
Why did the offer of the Krups boost sales results here? The researcher suggests that consumers may transfer the “negative affect” (regret at missing a sale) to the promoted product itself, leading to a lower opinion of the product.
The message for marketers? You might want to “time sales of different brands, or even of different items in [a] product line, to ensure that a consumer who misses a sale on one product can find another sale on a different yet similar product,” this researcher suggests.
Keep those options coming. When one item goes off sale, consider offering similar products at a slight reduction, to keep sale latecomers happy.
Source: “Releasing the Regret Lock: Consumer Response to New Alternatives after a Sale,” by Michael Tsiros. Journal of Consumer Research.
Empty aisles. Echoing footsteps. Silence where there used to be chatter. Real-world retail is clearly suffering. And now new research suggests that if bricks-and-mortar merchants want to survive, they should go virtual big-time. Flatland is calling.
