Daniel Burstein says, “Testing your email marketing can help power some pretty impressive results – like a 100% increase in clickthrough or a 114% boost in revenue. But … let’s be real … it is harder to test your email than to just send a single version of the email idea you come up with. One challenge with email marketing – to keep your customers clicking and coming back for more, you need to endlessly come up with new messages and ideas for every email you send or set in an automation platform. However, when you test your email marketing, you don’t get to create just one email... [...]

Paul Cheney says, ““Philip Morris & Co. (now Altria) had originally introduced the Marlboro brand as a woman’s cigarette in 1924,” according to Wikipedia. In 1954, however, that all changed. Launching what’s known as one of the most universally successful advertising campaigns in history, Leo Burnett created The Marlboro Man. Whatever you think about smoking, put it aside for a second. Right or wrong, The Marlboro Man produced serious results for Phillip Morris. The thing that’s interesting for readers of this blog is that Phillip Morris’ team did it by employing a repeatable... [...]

Selena Blue says, “Coupon. Free download. Discount code. Gift card. Complimentary ebook. These are just a few of the countless types of incentives marketers use to influence customers to say “yes” at the final macro-decision – whether that’s making a purchase, filling out a lead gen form or some other form of conversion. Incentive can be just what some customers need to commit to an action you want them to take. But how can you ensure your incentive offers are having optimal effect on conversion? Here are three tests you could use to optimize your incentive offers. Incentive Test... [...]

Selena Blue says, “At the heart of every test or optimization effort should be an informed hypothesis. However, best practices can lead us astray. So where can marketers find inspiration for their next experiment? The answer often lies with our customers. This week, our sister company MarketingSherpa has a team of reporters at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago, hosting the official Media Center of the ecommerce event. Courtney Eckerle, Senior Managing Editor, MarketingSherpa, sat down with Matt Clark, Global Head of eCommerce and Digital Marketing, Newark element14,... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “Snapchat. Mobile marketing. Virtual reality. Marketing automation. As marketers, we have a tendency to focus on the newest, buzziest, most-hyped ideas and look at the giants whose shoulders upon which our industry stands. Claude Hopkins lived far before any of these buzzy terms. Even before TV commercials. He’s one of the most influential advertising professionals in history, yet many modern marketers have probably never heard of him. After all, his seminal work – Scientific Advertising – was published almost 100 years ago. Hopkins’ career resided in a sweet... [...]

Liva LaMontagne says, “Traditionally, brick-and-mortar stores have displayed their products in their windows, enticing passers-by to come in and learn more, perhaps meet and talk with the owner and other shoppers, and, ultimately, fill their shopping baskets and purchase the goods. Today’s digital stores (ecommerce websites) are striving to achieve the same goals as their brick-and-mortar counterpbrick-and-mortararts, with varying scopes of products ranging from unprecedented breadth (e.g., Amazon) to narrow specialization (e.g., your local cupcake bakery). Though ecommerce stores come... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “Marketing and advertising are distinct majors in college. Most agencies are advertising agencies, and most departments inside companies that promote the sale of product are marketing departments. Why the distinction? Are these two words synonyms, or is there a real difference? A high-level, ephemeral topic like this isn’t something marketers spend most of their time thinking about. They’re too heads down, focused on budgets and marketing automation and copywriting. I know I am. But I recently started taking MMC 5435: Messaging Strategy and the Centrality of the... [...]

Paul Cheney says, “During last week’s Web clinic, “Does Fear-based Marketing Work?,” we looked at a recent Twitter test run by MarketingExperiments’ parent company MECLABS Institute in promotion of the latest issue of the Executive Series. Which tweet do you think achieved a higher clickthrough rate? Here’s some context in case you need help choosing … In Tweet Version A, the message is straightforward. “Customers are more willing to engage with newspapers than you might think.” In Tweet Version B, the message taps into an implicit fear that a marketer may have — that poor... [...]

Ken Bowen says, “During our May Web clinic, Does Fear-Based Marketing Work? How one company saw a $45 million increase in revenue by changing their messaging tone, we capped off the webinar as we usually do – by live optimizing a page submitted by you, the fine MarketingExperiments reader. This month, we offered feedback on a page sent in by a reader named Chris. Chris’s page was for Walking Inside, a self-help and life coaching service offered by Emotional Intelligence Coach Anne Beaulieu. Even though the page does a lot of things right, we were quite critical of the submission in our... [...]

Ken Bowen says, “When evaluating the effectiveness of our content marketing efforts, one of the most difficult metrics to pin down can be lifetime value. When you’re talking about a blog post in particular, which can lack the “stickiness” of infographics, charts or webinars, estimating life cycle gets even trickier. For years, the industry rule of thumb has been that most blog posts have a life cycle of approximately 30 days. What methodology led to this 30-day theory? Was it just a random guess based on some marketer’s gut feeling or anecdotal observations? Who knows. Our Florida... [...]