Website Magazine September 2016

10 Local SEM Do’s & Don’ts

THE MAGAZINE FOR WEBSITE SUCCESS SEPTEMBER 2016

Optimizing the

EMAIL

EXPERIENCE INSIDE THIS ISSUE...

Web Design for the Millennial Mindset Passport to Selling Internationally Loss-Aversion Principles for Product Pages

PLUS

0 5 P TO

e n Nam i a m o D ions Extens

WEBSITEMAGAZINE.COM

Optimizing the

EMAIL

EXPERIENCE Email can be the connective tissue between all marketing and customer experience initiatives. Those who avoid its regular use, however, do so at their own peril. If enterprises are serious about ’Net success, then now is the time to optimize the email experience by taking a look at the channel’s ecosystem and preparing their brands for a better response from future campaigns.

THIS MONTH IN WEBSITE MAGAZINE Holiday Email Metrics to Track Now

Association Management Software in Focus

The gift-giving season is fast approaching, and brands would be wise to evaluate these specific metrics to understand current and potential performance.

Membership has its privileges for both organizations and users, but the right technology is needed to manage marketing, audience, money and more.

Mobile’s Role in Tomorrow’s Customer Journey

News Feed Optimization Strategies

Every sensible retailer is optimizing their website for mobile, but the truly savvy ones are taking advantage of emerging innovations on the channel.

With ever-declining organic reach, “ranking” on social media networks is taking on more SEO-like characteristics and some of the same rules apply.

Theories of Persuasive Product Pages

Quality vs. Quantity in Website Testing

Modern life requires consumers make hundreds of complicated decisions daily.

Ease shoppers’ burdens by using anchoring and loss-aversion principles.

It’s difficult to talk about testing without hearing about a company that tests “everything.” Even if that was true, they often fail to take into account the quality of the tests.

EXPLORE WEBSITE MAGAZINE’S DEPARTMENTS Net Briefs: ROI Struggles, Hiring Bots & More

Stat Watch: Email Experience for Everyone

Quiz Time:

Small Business Lab: Content Marketing for the SMB

E-Commerce Express: Fundamentals of Selling Internationally

Design & Development:

Conversions are for Optimizers

UX for Millennials

Enterprise Ready:

Mastering Search:

Intro to Tra-Digital Advertising

Top 50: Domain Name Extensions

Local SEM Do’s & Don’ts

Web Commentary: High-Tech Visas

GET THE

DIGITAL SCOOP Check out Website Magazine’s email newsletters covering search, e-commerce, social, design and more at wsm.co/webscoop.

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From the

EDITOR The Magazine for Website Success

Email Optimization and the Digital Experience There’s been one constant and incredibly consistent channel in the realm of digital marketing. While there have been significant innovations in its virtual lifespan, and as many setbacks as experienced Web professionals can imagine, email remains a dominant force on the ’Net today.

What is unique about email is that in many ways it is the perfect balance between the technical and the creative. Web professionals use the email channel not only to communicate essential information, but also to engage their audience, build loyalty and drive revenue. The savviest enterprises are well aware of its potential and are continuing to invest in it heavily even as the ecosystem itself is evolving quickly and dramatically.

In this issue of Website Magazine, readers will get a close-up look at how email can be the connective tissue between all of their marketing and customer experience initiatives. If enterprises are serious about ’Net success, then now is the time to start optimizing the email experience, mastering the intricacies of the channel’s ecosystem, and preparing their brands for a better response and improved performance from their future campaigns.

In addition to the insights and experience-driven wisdom shared in the feature article of this month’s edition of Website Magazine, readers will also have access within these pages to important technology, tips and trends, including practical guidance and insights on mobile’s role in the customer journey, developing persuasive product pages, social news feed optimization strategies, website testing and more. This issue also includes useful information on digital best practices, such as tips on content marketing for small and medium-sized businesses, selling internationally, millennialfocused design, local search marketing, as well as a list of 50 of the most popular new generic top-level domains.

As always, we hope you enjoy this issue and join us on the Web where our editors and experienced contributors share their insights into the technologies, tactics and techniques that are helping today’s enterprises achieve ’Net success.

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*CONTRIBUTORS:

Joe Whyte Travis Bliffen Amit Bhaiya Miriam Ellis EJ McGowan Dan Engel Marty Greif Jason Hickey

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Whether you operate in the e-commerce, information publishing or service provider space,

Website Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 9, September 2016, (ISSN# 1942-0633) is published 12 times a year, January through December by Website Services, Inc., 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018. Periodicals Postage Paid at Des Plaines, IL and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Website Magazine, 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018.

your company relies on conversions to pay the rent. With so much forethought from end-users

Canada Post: Please send undeliverable items to: 2835 Kew Drive, Windsor ON, N8T 3B7

these days, however, actual sales can be more difficult to come by if the right steps and solu-

Copyright 2016 by Website Magazine. All rights reserved. Materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission. For reprints of any article, contact the editor.

CONVERSIONS FOR ALL tions aren’t put into place to propel people forward during and after their research phase. Join us next month when we cover conversion optimization tips and tech for your ’Net enterprise.

*The opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of Website Magazine.

www.WebsiteMagazine.com

Submit to the 2016 MobileWebAwards.

Are you the best of the best? The Web Marketing Association invites you to enter your groundbreaking mobile sites, responsive sites and mobile apps to the 5th annual MobileWebAwards. Get started at www.mobile-webaward.org.

DEADLINE: SEPT 30, 2016

Net

BRIEFS

MARKETING NEWS Horizontal Pins for the Win Pinterest is fast becoming a network of secondary importance, but there are some “tricks” that social media marketers can leverage to improve their performance. The once-darling of the digital world recently published a guide on how to create better Pins by re-purposing content from other networks. What they revealed was that pins with taller vertical aspects performed better than horizontal Pins. Easy enough, right?

Follow Website Magazine on Pinterest and access our visual boards for e-commerce, search, social media and more at pinterest.com/websitemagazine.

Marketers Still Struggling to Measure Social ROI Sixty-one percent of social marketers say measuring the return on investment (ROI) of their social media efforts was their number-one challenge according to Simply Measured’s “The 2016 State of Social Marketing” report. Securing budgets and resources ranked a distant second (38.2 percent), followed by connecting social to business goals (33.6 percent). The data also revealed less than one-tenth (9.4 percent) of the social marketers surveyed were able to adequately quantify revenue resulting from social.

Mobile Catapults Earnings for Facebook One data point from Facebook’s recent earnings announcement has everyone talking. A staggering 84 percent of the company’s revenue in Q2 was the result of its mobile advertising efforts, up two percentage points from Q1 and eight percentage points from the same period a year earlier. Facebook’s mobile advertising, which appears on Facebook, Instagram and its Audience Network, generated $5.2 billion in the quarter.

$ WHO GOT PAID $4.83 Billion

Verizon announced in July that it would acquire Yahoo for $4.83 billion in cash.

$9.3 Billion

Oracle has entered a definitive agreement to buy NetSuite, which its founder already had a majority stake in, for approximately $9.3 billion.

$130 Million

User-generated content curator Olapic has been acquired for $130 million by Massachusettsbased Monotype, the self-proclaimed “company behind type.”

$105 Million

Enterprise social technology solution Sprinkler announced it has received $105 million in new funding, bringing the company’s total funding to $239 million (with a $1.8 billion valuation).

TECH UPDATES Tech Workers Take It to the Bank Technology salaries in the U.S. saw the single largest year-over-year increase in 2015, up 7.7 percent to $96,370 annually according to the recently released annual salary survey by Dice. The wage hikes paint a picture of an overall solid environment for technology professionals with 62 percent earning higher salaries in 2015.

Detect & Eliminate Digital Adversaries Accenture and security solution Endgame have created a “threat hunting” as-a-service offering designed to help enterprises eliminate cybersecurity threats in real-time. The service aims to identify and remove known and never-before-seen threats, which have evaded traditional security methods, by providing continuous endpoint monitoring and reporting for targeted attacks, exposing and eliminating active and dormant adversaries that have infiltrated networks, and listing vulnerabilities and procedures to remediate and prevent future threats.

Bots for HR FirstJob recently launched a recruiting assistance called Mya, and it could show what the future of hiring looks like. The human resource bot will use machine learning and natural-language processing to ask questions and verify qualifications of applicants. Mya can even answer some basic questions from prospects about the company, its corporate culture, policies and benefits.

Learn more about how bots are becoming increasingly commonplace on the Web at wsm.co/wmbotlist.

POPULAR WITH WM READERS The Definitive Guide to Local SEO in 2016 +

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From how to find keywords to stand out locally to the latest trends in local SEO link building, the information offered will guide you toward success for making the most out of each local search engaged in by current and potential customers.

5 Reasons Social Isn’t Paying You Back +

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In the haste of trying to be on every available network, brands often lose sight of what really matters: the results. Start earning a return on investment by identifying common social traps and learning how to avoid them.

8 Simple Rules for Web Design +

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Just a few simple rules for a website can increase traffic and improve the user experience. Organization and consistency is important for any successful website, so the sooner these easy techniques are employed, the better.

Net

BRIEFS WEB TECH WATCH Check out what has the digital community all abuzz with Website Magazine’s #WebTechWatch series, a monthly roundup profiling emerging and established technologies and some of the most useful solutions for today’s Web workers. Submit your own recommendations by tweeting us at @WebsiteMagazine.

APP FOCUS Pokémon Go The release of Pokémon Go in the U.S. created a cult-like following, causing both users and brands to learn best strategies for playing and capitalizing on the game as well as avoiding any risks associated with the app. Check out our recent coverage: ”How Web Developers and Marketers Can Leverage the Pokémon Go Craze” at wsm.co/wmpoke1

QGraph Web Notifications

Amium Collaboration app for files

Dynamic retargeting via Web push notifications

Bot Analytics Zao Employee referral program software

Breakout Room for the Web Instant screen recording and API

Conversational analytics for chat bots

” Is Pokémon Go Putting You & Your Company’s IT at Risk” at wsm.co/wmpoke2 ” Pokémon Go Engagement Tactics for Social Media” at wsm.co/wmpoke3

Keplr

AdStage

Turn datasets into prediction engines

PPC advertising reporting platform

Big Marker

Intouch

Design, promote and deliver interactive webinars

User-centric contact management platform

Prototype Brewery Prototyping tools for planning and building responsive Web projects

Have tips, stories, funding or acquisition news to share?

Tweet us @WebsiteMagazine

Stat

WATCH

Email Experience for Recipients & Senders 65%

A large majority (65 percent) of a retailer’s subscriber list has never purchased from them, but of the 35 percent who have, an overwhelming majority have only purchased once according to 2016 data from Listrak.

Since it is far cheaper and more lucrative to activate existing buyers, Listrak analyzed the post-purchase habits of top retailers to understand the tactics they are using to get “second sales” as well as the shopping habits of repeat customers who bought at least two times from a retailer.

Listrak found that 83 percent of second sales take place the same day as the original purchase, which should encourage retailers to send a transactional email immediately after the sale that includes order info, tracking number, expected arrival date and, perhaps most importantly, personal recommendations of products (only 17.1 percent of retailers, included in Listrak’s study, sent these).

Knowing that the CAN-SPAM Act states content in transactional messages has to only be “primarily transactional,” Listrak recommends including additional marketing messages when retailers have a shopper’s full attention, such as taking the opportunity to cross-sell or upsell based on a shopper’s browsing and purchase history.

Retailers not sending order confirmation messages at the very least will want to get a system in place before the holiday rush to avoid a negative customer experience, according to Listrak. The company also recommends using a clear subject line such as, “Tracking information for your BRAND NAME order” to make it easy for customers to find these crucial messages.

Visit Website Magazine’s Email Experience Channel to discover the latest tips, tricks and techniques for senders at wsm.co/emailexperience.

$108.66 The average order value from email is $108.66, which has declined for three straight quarters.

(Monetate, 2016)

12% Anniversary and birthday campaigns generate an impressive 12 percent conversion rate with 13 percent of clicks resulting in a purchase.

(Yesmail, 2016)

30% Not able to leverage “all data" is the top email performance challenge according to 30 percent of marketers, followed by too much IT involvement (21 percent).

(MessageGears, 2016)

55% Over the course of 2015, mobile opens increased 17 percent and now represents 55 percent of email opens.

(Litmus, 2016)

76% Email phishing attacks cost large companies (10,000 or more employees) $3.7 million annually (due to lost productivity, customer service and regulatory fees), yet 76 percent of marketers have little to no visibility into email attacks on their brands.

(Return Path, 2016)

205 Billion In 2015, the number of emails sent and received per day totaled over 205 billion. This figure is expected to grow at an average annual rate of three percent over the next four years, reaching over 246 billion by the end of 2019.

(The Radicati Group, Inc., 2015)

Quiz

TIME

Conversions Are for Optimizers Of all the possible metrics companies can track, conversions are by far the most important.

Conversions alone, however, do not always reveal all the ways a user’s experience could have been influenced.

From the number and spacing of search engine visits to the percentage and types of emails opened, marketers and analysts are tasked with understanding the experience each user receives at every touchpoint and optimizing each to close more sales, more efficiently (faster

1.

and cheaper). The purpose of conversion rate optimiza-

a. 50 b. 2 c. 10 d. 300

tion (CRO) is to convert more users through a variety of tactics such as improving or adjusting a page’s calls-toaction (CTAs) or testing which layout works best based on the source of a visit.

While CRO can be beneficial to companies in all in-

2.

dustries, retail stands to benefit the most thanks to the 2016 data from Monetate indicates the average conversion rate for retail sites in the U.S. is 3.02 percent with ers, followed by tablets and then smartphones. There’s a

3.

Take Johnston & Murphy as example. Using online and offline data to segment its VIP customers on its website, the

4.

shoppers with a lightbox that contained a free, two-day versions on desktop versus its “non-VIP” audience.

For help understanding the many available opportunities

Get the results of Quiz Time at wsm.co/qtsept16 or by scanning the QR code on the left.

When does shopper engagement (page views and product views) peak? a. Working hours (8 a.m.-3 p.m.) b. Commuting hours (3 p.m.-6 p.m.) c. Evening hours (6 p.m.-9 p.m.) d. Weekend mornings (7-10 a.m.)

shipping promotion – resulting in a 25 percent lift in con-

to boost conversions, take our September Quiz Time!

Which state has the highest average order value (AOV)? a. Illinois b. California c. Texas d. Alaska

lot that can be done, however.

footwear and apparel retailer presented their most valuable

What percentage of customers are influenced to make a purchase by hearing from other customers? a. 10 percent b. 25 percent c. 90 percent d. 55 percent

industry’s historically low conversion rates. For instance,

the majority happening on traditional desktop comput-

Gmail once tested this many shades of blue for their call-to-action (CTA) color to find the highest converting shade…

5.

When are the majority of “second sales” made with a retailer? a. Within 24 hours of a shopper’s first purchase b. Within 30 days of initial purchase c. During the following holiday season d. After they are emailed a promotion

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Enterprise

READY

Tra-Digital Advertising & the Future of Marketing

By Joe Whyte, Director of Digital Marketing at Colling Media

The traditional advertising realm was fundamentally altered when the boom of digital advertising came about in the early 2000s. It shook the fabric of the status quo and split the marketing world into two important segments: traditional and digital.

Over the course of the last 15 years, traditional agencies have struggled to grasp and deliver high-quality digital campaigns. Inversely, digital agencies have had an equally difficult time breaking into the traditional world.

This unfortunate trend has been at the expense of the consumer, until now.

Understanding who we are marketing to In order to fully grasp the power behind tra-digital (traditional-digital) advertising, it is important to understand how media is being consumed across all generations and geographies. Without any doubt, how people purchase, consume and interact with brands has evolved since the emergence of the Internet but traditional advertising isn’t shrinking. In fact, both digital and traditional mediums are projected to increase over the next four years according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Back in 2014, an Experian study found the prolific exposure each generation with buying power has with traditional and digital mediums. The silent

generation, which is 70-plus, is the only generation that consumes predominately more traditional media than digital. They still consume a large amount of digital too, however. What is interesting is that ages 18-69 consume almost an even amount of digital versus traditional media. Therefore, a standalone traditional-only or digital-only campaign could be missing an enormous opportunity.

To go further down the funnel, Google recently released what it calls micro-moments (the belief that in people’s everyday life, there are micro-moments where they turn to Google for an answer/solution to their problem). Typically, people use mobile devices in these micro-moments but that power to capitalize on these instances can be heavily influenced by traditional media as well. Building campaigns to be optimized for these micro-moments is the future of marketing but there are elements to know in order to get it right.

How to start tracking your traditional media John Wanamaker notably said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” This is one of the major failures that exist in the traditional marketing world and has for a very long time.

Major brands may be used to buying traditional media this way but many small- and medium-sized

businesses stay away from traditional media, because they are afraid it is too expensive and won’t generate the business they need. When properly integrated with digital tracking, however, marketers can begin to not just track but also optimize their traditional media in a cost effective way.

Let’s recognize the elephant in the room for just a moment. While there is no way to track 100 percent of all offline conversions, if we can track a large portion of the conversions we can then attribute value to each channel and begin to optimize there. For example: CALL TRACKING Call tracking has been around for a very long time but has predominantly been used for digital campaigns.

Setting up call tracking for all of a company’s traditional media is by far the best way to track leads from traditional media. Putting a tracking number on direct mail, TV commercials, radio spots, and ads within magazines and newspapers will allow brands to start associating value to different traditional media channels.

DATA CORRELATION The second way brands can connect offline-to-online performance is through data correlation. This step is a bit more complicated and is for advanced marketers who have some coding and Excel abilities. Consider utilizing a script, for example, that can automatically increase bids for desired search terms based on TV/radio run times. Marketers can expect to see an increase in search impression share and lead volume during these times when utilizing this tactic.

Companies can use their own database, where analytics data is stored, to query data in order to correlate it quickly. For brands that do not have that capability, correlating the data will have to be a manual process.

Brands can start by running reports based on time of day and include conversions, and then simply export that data into Excel and create a pivot table. Marketers will be able to cross reference their run times with conversions to deduce what mediums and run spots work better than others.

The results of a tra-digital campaign Tra-digital advertising is not just a buzzword, it’s a way of thinking. Combining the power of both offline and

online marketing exposes a brand to its target audience in an ubiquitous way. Let’s look at a case study.

Selling Jacuzzis is not an easy thing to do. They have a high price tag and it’s not an impulse purchase.

It’s much like selling a car, yet they are not necessary items for most people. A local dealer had tried paid search before with no luck and expressed concerns about engaging in traditional media. Their cost per lead was in the hundreds and they were not getting the quality leads they needed. Putting together a comprehensive tra-digital campaign ended up delivering an explosion of leads and sales.

The total amount of phone calls came in at 595 and was pretty much evenly split across tra-digital. In fact, 323 were from traditional media and only 272 came from digital media. Working with a customer relationship management (CRM) system, the quality of leads per channel could be seen (even on traditional).

This helped make the argument that traditional media was working well in tandem with the digital campaigns. Since data could be tracked and correlated correctly, traditional media spend and efforts were optimized in order to allocate budget where the dealer would receive the best results.

Tracking conversions for traditional media is great but it’s only a part of the equation. The bigger picture is looking at things like direct traffic and branded search traffic as they correlate with traditional media buys.

In this case, each time a new set of traditional media ad spots ran, there was a direct correlation between them and site traffic (a fine marriage of tradigital). There was also a correlation between branded searches and traditional media run times.

By bidding on branded search terms while using the TV run time script, the cost per lead was drastically reduced while the number of targeted, qualified leads increased.

Since integrating a tra-digital campaign, the company more than doubled the amount of leads it was receiving.

The failure of digital and traditional media companies doesn’t have to be every brand’s failure.

Engaging in a tra-digital campaign can be done on almost any budget for any size client. The convergence of traditional and digital is here, are you taking advantage of it?

“

“

Combining the power of both offline and online marketing exposes a brand to its target audience in an ubiquitous way.

Local to Social Discover tips to get local audiences to follow your brand online at wsm.co/streetsocial.

Top

50

RANK WEBSITE

Domain Name Extensions Every enterprise will make an important decision related to how their business will be “seen” on the ’Net: they will choose a domain name, and today they have more options than ever before.

The .COM extension, of course, has been the digital standard since the inception of the commercial Web and it is positioned to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Verisign, the administrator of the .COM and .NET registries, recently released its latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief on Q1 2016 and it confirms .COM’s absolute dominance in the digital name space today.

Total domain name registrations worldwide, according to the Verisign report, reached over 326 million at the end of the first quarter – an increase of 12 million from the previous quarter (and a 3.8 million increase in registrations over the past 90 days). Year-over-year, there was an increase of 32.4 million names or approximately 11 percent. The .COM extension clearly remains the option of choice, of course, but things are (slowly) beginning to change.

One of the most interesting findings revealed within the recent Verisign report was that 4.9 percent of all current registrations represent new gTLDs (over 16 million). Expect that total (and percentage of total share) to grow as additional extensions are introduced like .WEB (which Nu Dot Co, LLC, won the auction for at a record price of $135 million, wsm.co/notcomrise). With a greater inventory of descriptive, keyword-rich domain extensions available, it is Web professionals looking to differentiate the experience they provide that are driving adoption (there might also be some minor benefits to search and social marketing campaigns, wsm.co/tldserps).

This month’s edition of Website Magazine’s TOP 50 highlights the current most utilized new generic top level domain name extensions in order to showcase the myriad options available for those ready to make a decision about their next domain name extension.

WHERE TO REGISTER

New Top-Level Domains Now that you know what domain names are most appealing to today’s enterprises, where should you register them? Check out Website Magazine Top 50 Domain Registrars for 2016 at wsm.co/fiftyreg.

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.XYZ .TOP .WANG .WIN .CLUB .MOBI .SITE .VIP .LINK .BID .ONLINE .XIN .REN .RED .LOAN .CLICK .SCIENCE .GDN .DATE .SPACE .WEBSITE .TECH .KIM .RACING .TRADE .REVIEW .LOL .PARTY .WORK .DOWNLOAD .NES .NYC .REALTOR .ROCKS .PUB .WEBCAM .FAITH .CLOUD .LONDON .ONE .GURU .BERLIN .LIVE .OVH .EMAIL .TODAY .HELP .SOLUTIONS .ACCOUNTANT .TOKYO

THE WAIT

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Small

BUSINESS LAB

Content Marketing for the SMB Owner

By Travis Bliffen, Founder of Stellar SEO

In the early stages of a new professional venture, many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are content to keep their finances out of the red while others take off rapidly and never look back.

“

SMBs should share the knowledge they have gained from their unique experiences so that others may learn from their mistakes and avoid common pitfalls.

|

“

16

Either way, this is a time filled with excitement, long days and an overwhelming amount of work to complete. The last thing on the mind of many SMB owners at this point is content marketing or SEO, which is a common but consequential mistake.

SMBs are often forced to work within a limited budget, yet another common excuse for not taking advantage of content marketing, but, again, not a legitimate reason for most. There are some strategies you can implement to see a more immediate return on both your time and money.

DON’T OVERLOOK PAID PROMOTION Many SMBs have been using paid advertising channels like Google AdWords to promote products and services with great success. Fewer SMBs are leveraging paid advertising to promote content though. Thanks to sites like Outbrain (or competitors like nrelate or Taboola), even small businesses can dramatically increase the reach of their content, increasing the likelihood of gaining rank boosting links and referral traffic that leads to customers.

Aside from content promotion on specific platforms, social media is another inexpensive yet productive method of generating quick traffic and potential customers. While Facebook is a commonly used platform, many sites like Reddit will allow SMBs to sponsor their content, leading to a potential flood of traffic.

KNOW GUEST POSTING WORKS Some small business owners are strapped for cash and the thought of spending even $100 to promote their content may leave them feeling stressed. Don’t worry, .com

|

SEPT EMB ER 2016

guest posting is a free strategy that works quickly and is extremely effective when properly executed. The very purpose of content marketing is to reach a targeted audience with information and resources that establish an SMB as the expert in its field. Guest posting allows businesses to do so quickly by leveraging the existing audience of other popular websites.

Most people go wrong with guest posting because they think of it as a numbers game, solely for the purpose of gaining backlinks. Don’t fall into that trap. Local contractors, for instance, would want to look for local sites where they could share some educational DIY tips or a short training video. Business owners should forget about links and focus on reaching their ideal audience with the help of the hosting site.

STREAMLINE EFFORTS Contrary to what many say, more content is not always the right answer. Small businesses don’t need to create an enterprise-level content strategy to see success from their efforts. Instead of trying to publish content covering every topic under the sun, SMBs should take advantage of the data available within their analytics account to discover which topics perform best on their site and refine their strategy accordingly. Before getting started, of course, a business should have identified its target audience. Whenever creating content, SMBs will want to make sure they’re writing to that audience.

CREATE CONTENT YOUR WAY SMBs do not need to write award-winning articles for their audience to benefit from them. Staying with the contractor example, imagine how useful a post would be that explained simple tips for preventing grout from cracking as it dries. Even a simple post, written in first person could provide great value to an audience. Sharing one’s unique experiences and expertise in his or her field is really all it takes to generate content that will help build trust with future customers.

PUT CONTENT INTO ACTION The amount of content being created daily that does little more than pollute the Internet is staggering. Even worse, much of that content is created because of those preaching continual content creation, even when there is not a need for it.

SMBs should share the knowledge they have gained from their unique experiences so that others may learn from their mistakes and avoid common pitfalls. If business owners write every article with that purpose, they will create truly useful content that positions them as experts in their field – which can be rewarded by the search engines and by the end-users themselves.

E-Commerce

EXPRESS

Passport to Selling Internationally Online

By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor

There comes a time in every e-commerce company’s life when it’s time to talk about international sales.

Whether these discussions are driven by customer demand or the need for additional revenue, cross-border commerce shouldn’t be a subject approached lightly considering the many variables at play. Let’s address some of the key items that need to be checked off before selling internationally.

Identify Target Markets There’s no sense in taking all the steps to sell to a country where there just isn’t demand. Before any decisions are made or actions are taken, site owners should identify target markets by looking at who is already actively engaged with the company, across channels.

One way to spot which populations are going to a site is by reviewing audience location reports within a Web analytics system. Marketers can filter these reports by the metrics that indicate the greatest demand for their products including average session duration, number of total sessions, pages per sessions, etc. Retail brands may be surprised by the findings. For instance, the United Kingdom could bring the most sessions outside the U.S., but Spain could have the highest time on site. For simplicity’s sake (since the UK and the U.S. share a common first language), the marketer in this case may decide to

only sell to the UK and U.S. Before deciding on adding additional countries, however, brands should look at other data sources as well.

As the number one social network in the world, Facebook can be used to evaluate international audiences and their interactions with U.S. companies. By going to Facebook>Insights>People, brands will get an overview of where fans live and the languages they speak. Companies that haven’t looked at this data in the past, or even recently, may be surprised yet again by the number of international fans they have and where they are located.

It should be noted, that some countries ban both Facebook and Google for various reasons and have their own popular social networks and search engines, so other data sources will be needed if selling to China, for instance, is a consideration.

From there, brands will need to research the tentatively chosen country’s revenue potential, audience propensity toward international pur- By going to Facebook>Insights>People, brands can get chases and even local an idea of where their international fans are located to use as a starting point of where to sell. product laws.

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Plan (Legal) Product Use Once target markets have been selected, brands will need to consider how products will actually work in other countries. Will it need an adapter to charge? If so, will that be included in the price or added on as an upsell? Will it need to connect to Wi-Fi and will that be compatible elsewhere?

Similarly, are there any local laws preventing this product from being used in the target market?

For instance, baby walkers are illegal in Canada (see image). Believing they cause developmental delays and injuries, the country banned them. Possession of a baby walker could lead to fines up to $100,000 or six months in jail. Who knew? Anyone selling baby walkers has to. Investing in product law research in the beginning will save retailers plenty of time and money later.

Retailers selling “baby walkers” would have a difficult time with their shipments passing customs in Canada, as they are banned there and possession of them come with a hefty fine.

Choose a Shipping Partner(s) About five years have passed since many of the larger retailers (Macy’s, Crate & Barrel, eBay) started shipping overseas. Their globalization efforts established the groundwork for smaller merchants ready to expand.

Both FedEx and UPS provide international shipping solutions before (e.g., showing prices in local currency, displaying total landed costs so there are no cash-ondelivery surprises), during (e.g., custom compliance tools, export documentation) and after the shipment (e.g., fraud protection for sellers).

In addition to the shipping carriers themselves, there are countless solution providers working with them to improve efficiency and experience. Aptos (which acquired ShopVisible and is a spinoff of Epicor), for instance, integrates with Pitney Bowes to help retailers ship to 200 countries in much of the same way they would domestically.

With Pitney Bowes (a company offering information management, shipping, mailing and more), both consumers and retailers benefit. Shoppers not only experience a localized version of a retailer’s global site, but they are also able to use their local currency. On the merchant side, fulfillment seems to be as easy. Retailers ship their goods to Pitney Bowes (just like a domestic order) and then Pitney Bowes becomes the merchant of record, handling all payment processing and fraud management (preventing any bad debt or chargebacks).

Return Policies Even with all the work that has gone into localizing a website for global audiences and shipping products around the world, customers may not be satisfied with their order. It’s a mistake not to establish a returns protocol and process, according to Charles Dimov, marketing director of OrderDynamics, whose company provides an order management system that connects to different data sources, consolidates a retailer’s information and inventory and provides a real-time routing solution. When considering what to include in an international return policy, Dimov advises that retailers keep in mind that the order management and omnichannel retail experience can be more or less mature in certain international markets.

Dimov believes U.S. firms selling internationally will need to place focus on returns management in order to differentiate their retail offering against market incumbents in the future. Marks & Spencer customers in Europe, for instance, can “click and carry,” access real-time inventory for the delivery option of their choice, return items via the most convenient method for them (e.g., in store, postal, InPost parcel lockers, etc.) and in many other ways enjoy a true omnichannel experience that some U.S. retailers have yet to offer.

Even M&S has strict international return guidelines, however. It prohibits returns in several categories like furniture, electrical, beauty and pillows.

To get an idea of what other brands are doing for their international return policies, check out our roundup at wsm.co/wmreturns.

The above checklist is certainly a good place to start when weighing the benefits and drawbacks of selling internationally online. With so many moving parts, however, there’s a lot more to consider including payments (check out how people pay around the world at wsm.co/wmworldpay), U.S. and international taxes (check out solutions that simplify these processes at wsm.co/globetax) and customer support (discover some best practices at wsm.co/worldcs).

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Design and

DEVELOPMENT

UX Design that Connects with the Millennial Mindset

By Amit Bhaiya, Co-Founder & CEO of DotcomWeavers

From the teenagers contemplating future careers to those in their mid-30s settling into family life, millennials are entering their prime spending years.

As America’s largest generation – 83.1 million strong (U.S. Census Bureau) – millennials represent 26 percent of the U.S. population but contribute to 35 percent of retail spending (PFSweb). By 2020, the annual spending among millennials in the United States is projected to grow to $1.4 trillion (Accenture).

Millennials shop online more than any other generation – spending 1,200 hours and nearly $2,000 annually (Forrester). Multiply that by 83 million American millennials and it translates to good news for e-commerce, but only for the retailers who provide an exceptional user experience (UX).

Millennials have a high affinity for technology, which leads to a low tolerance for anything that doesn’t work as expected. According to Statista, 54 percent of the millennials consider ease of use the

primary reason why they preferred a shopping app over a website.

Is it any wonder that nearly 68 percent of online retailers (survey by Boston Retail Partners) rank “improving customer experience” and “engagement” among their top priorities for 2016?

To bring in millennial dollars and, just as importantly, their brand loyalty and social following, online retailers must provide a seamless UX that really grasps their unique mindset.

CAPTURE MILLENNIAL ATTENTION Contrary to their reputation of being impulse buyers, tech-savvy millennials know exactly how to navigate the highly competitive online marketplace to find the best quality, lowest prices and quickest availability. Once they find what they want, they are ready to purchase.

A website’s visual appeal and ease of use is a game-changer for millennials, especially as they browse on their preferred device: the smartphones

CONNECT THE MILLENNIAL WAY Millennials love new things, especially new technology. They literally line up in anticipation of new products, such as wearable devices, and are even thrilled to participate in beta testing. Then, they share their experiences in real-time using everything from social media to product ratings and reviews. Connecting the millennial way requires engaging them on every platform and through various channels.

Social media is the primary means by which millennials hear about products, sales and shopping news. They expect product information, reviews and price comparisons at their fingertips. Marketers will want to ensure their company, products and services have a positive presence on social media. Customer reviews speak loudly to this generation, so compa-

nies shouldn’t be shy about spreading the word.

Millennials, however, will quickly dismiss a review that doesn’t appear to be “authentic,” “natural” or “organic.” Once that credibility is lost, regaining it is next to impossible.

Personalized communication also resonates with millennial users. They’re looking for a customized experience, which makes them feel special to a company. If they’ve purchased a product, a followup “thank you” email with their name actually means something to them.

Brands looking to cater to millennial audiences shouldn’t neglect the details.

CAPITALIZE ON MILLENNIAL DOLLARS

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that never leave their sides. The most recent data shows that almost 90 percent of millennials primarily access the Internet from their smartphones, which makes designing with a mobile-first approach a no-brainer. Graphics and images must be visually engaging and large enough for users to tap, swipe, hover and select on small mobile screens.

The next step involves creating a consistent look and feel – in everything from design to content – across all platforms and channels. Millennials want to know what they can expect to experience if, and when, they shift from their phones to a tablet or desktop. It allows them to pick up wherever they left off and continue on their purchase journey.

Content is also critical in creating a “scanner” format, which quickly informs at-a-glance decisions.

The material has to be clear and concise so that it’s easily understood, but it also needs to be complete in order to satisfy millennial shoppers. If any aspect is missing, they’ll move on to a competitor’s site.

Investing in a UX that captures the millennial mindset looks beyond the first purchase.

Nothing botches an enjoyable shopping experience like a dysfunctional checkout process. Say, “Goodbye, customer,” and watch the abandoned carts stack up.

A website’s overall ease of use must seamlessly transition from purchasing and order fulfillment right through customer service.

Millennials have no tolerance for things that don’t work as expected on the first try. That said, if it’s logical, straightforward and easy, then guess what?

They’ll be back again, and maybe bring some friends along, too.

An easy checkout process, one that includes upfront shipping estimates and multiple payment gateways, etc., does more than improve conversions. It is also a subtle and effective way of creating repeat business, and returning customers breed brand loyalty.

Investing in a UX that captures the millennial mindset looks beyond the first purchase. It extends to creating a long-standing relationship with a smart, savvy and upwardly mobile customer who can give a business their valuable endorsement.

Mastering

SEARCH

10 Local Google Search Marketing Do’s and Don’ts

By Miriam Ellis, Moz

With all of the marketing noise out there on the Web, it can be tough to sort fact from fiction.

With Google’s guidelines tucked safely under your belt, several local search-marketing practices are no-brainers.

Just follow the steps and rest assured there is minimal risk for a Google takedown. However, it can be easy to get tripped up when practitioners: Incorrectly interpret “gray areas” in the guidelines Lack necessary experience or skill set Recommend bad practices, careless of what they could cost their business or their clients Even if local SEO is new to you, or you’re trying to hire a provider and aren’t sure whether they “know their stuff,” understanding these 10 things should not only help you sort wheat from chaff, but could literally save your business from a costly mistake.

5 LOCAL SEARCH MARKETING DON’TS These five factors are widely believed to have the most negative impact on a company’s hopes of achieving high local rankings:

1. Incorrect business category When a business creates its Google My Business listing, it gets to choose categories from Google’s category base.

Picking the wrong categories can make companies invisible in the local pack results.

2. Listing detected at false business address The best local business advice one may ever hear? Fire anyone who suggests a company falsifies its business location to Google. Google reads street level signage and has become increasingly sophisticated at understanding the difference between a legitimate address and a virtual office, P.O. Box or other fake address. Any business location a company lists with Google must be a genuine, real-world location of its business, even if it’s a servicearea business or home-based company.

3. Mis-matching NAP or tracking phone numbers across data ecosystems Google and other search engines don’t assume a marketer or business has entered a correct name, address and phone number (NAP). They will investigate by combing the Web, and gathering multiple mentions of these vital pieces of business data about a company. If most sources match, Google feels “trust” and will reward brands with firmer rankings. But, if a company has variants in its name, address or phone number out there, or a proliferation of indexable,

mismatching call tracking numbers, Google’s lack of “trust” can doom its best ranking efforts.

Marketers or SEOs should take one minute to do a quick check of their local business listing health using one of the many free listing tools out there (discover some options at wsm.co/gotolist). If they discover mismatching NAP info, it’s time to start weighing both manual and paid solution options for cleaning up a company’s traditional listings plus all other references to its business on blogs, news sites, social media, etc.

4. Presence of malware on site Nothing can drive customers (and subsequently, rankings) away from a business like Google’s warning, “This Site May Harm Your Computer.” An infected or hacked website represents an emergency for any business, requiring immediate resolution.

Get Google’s suggestions for recovering from this dreaded scenario at wsm.co/harminfo.

5. Reports of violations on GMB account Google is far from perfect at policing its own local business listings, but customers, competitors and civicminded marketers can lend them a helping hand in the fight against spam, reporting guideline violations directly to Google. Some spammers skate on the idea that Google is too slow or lazy to catch them, but never underestimate how a competitor may respond to any perceived guideline infraction.

5 LOCAL SEARCH MARKETING DO’S These five factors are believed to have the most positive impact on local search rankings. Some of them a company can directly control, while others are the luck of the draw.

1. Physical address in city of search Unless a business is physically located in a given city, it is highly unlikely to be included in Google’s local pack results relating to a city other than its current address. Exceptions to this could include having a unique business model (the only vegan doughnut shop in a 100-mile radius) or being located in a very rural area (just three hotels serving a community of eight towns). SEOs should not pin their hopes on ranking locally for any city the company on hand doesn’t physically occupy. Rather, go after organic rankings with content the business develops for these location-less cities, or spring for paid advertising.

2. Consistency of structured citations “Structured” citations are designated as those that exist on

traditional search engines and core local business directories (think Google My Business, Facebook Places, Bing Places, Yelp, YellowPages, Superpages and Citysearch).

Experts agree that having consistent NAP info on these sources matters most. Marketers shouldn’t forget, however, the unstructured citations (mentions on blogs, online news, social media and small local directories).

3. Proper GMB category associations Covered above, do not pick incorrect Google My Business categories. If companies have the wrong categories, they should definitely take the time to research better alternatives and edit their listing. Google wants brands to choose the fewest, most specific categories as possible.

4. Proximity of address to the point of search This is one of the positive factors over which businesses don’t have direct control, but can indirectly influence.

Search engines like Google know exactly where a user is searching from and strive to show him the results nearest to his physical location. This is observable on desktop devices and even more so on mobile devices.

While marketers can’t, of course, control where customers are searching from, they can ensure the content on their website makes maximum effort to prove their “local-ness” to each searcher. Local landing pages are an effective approach to ensuring that each of a company’s locations is represented by a unique, high-quality, accessible page on their website.

5. Quality/authority of structured citations A local business listings (a.k.a. citations) on Google, Yelp, Facebook, YP and other major players should have more positive impact than citations a company gets from weak, little-known sources. While inclusion in small, hyperlocal directories can prove a genuine boon to local businesses, devoting a lot of effort to getting listed in low-quality general directories is unlikely to yield meaningful ROI. SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF Local SEO is an area of marketing that is still very much ruled by getting the small details right, because, in the end, they can have the greatest impact on the ultimate goal of increased visibility. By reading the fine print and carefully implementing core local search marketing decisions, you are setting up your business for lasting success.

Miriam Ellis is part of the Moz Local team. When she’s not writing the monthly Moz Local newsletter and answering questions in the Q&A forum, she’s helping her clients master their local SEO strategies at her own firm, Solas Web Design.

Optimizing the

EMAIL

EXPERIENCE

By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

Most digital enterprises routinely underperform in one very important digital area – email.

What many brands don’t realize is that email can be the connective tissue between all marketing and customer experience initiatives.

Those who avoid its regular use, however, do so at their own peril. If enterprises are serious about ’Net success, then now is the time to optimize the email experience.

In this month’s feature article, let’s take a look at the email ecosystem and help prepare your brand for a better response from future campaigns.

Making The Case for Email Today One of the many reasons that email has become such a virtual

Email Revenue Strong, Data Access Not So Much Email still generates the highest revenue of all marketing channels according to a recent survey from MessageGears. Discover more about how satisfied companies are with various aspects of their email marketing program and how they are executing campaigns today at wsm.co/messagegears.

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workhorse for brands is because it is possible to customize each and every experience and know an incredible amount about the performance of campaigns down to the user level.

Not only do we know what type of content is driving action and when the optimal moments are to generate engagement, but we also know how users are accessing the emails that brands send, providing a powerful opportunity to optimize the entire experience (and improve) in the future.

In a report released by VentureBeat last year, 84 percent of marketers said email is important or critically important for loyalty. Similar high percentages show how important it is for sales, retaining customers and lead generation. The result?

Fifty percent of marketers anticipated their company’s spend on email to increase during 2015 according to the Direct Marketing Association.

If marketers need more convincing that email is a vital marketing channel, Website Magazine has put together a special supplement online (wsm.co/emailstats16), which provides access to numerous data points that highlight the power of email and the investment marketers are making in its optimization.

The potential of email, however, often outweighs the performance. Recent MailChimp research revealed that open rates vary between 17 and 26 percent, with click-through rates ranging anywhere from 1.3 percent for restaurants to 5.36 percent for those in the hobby industry (everyone else fell between that range with the average click through-rates somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 percent). That all amounts to far less activity with brand messaging than many senders anticipate.

Like other promotional channels online (search, social, etc.), of course, email is evolving and it benefits marketers to know how if they want to better optimize its use.

The Trend Toward Mobile The one trend that dominates the headlines when it comes to email (as well as other channels) is, you guessed it, mobile.

Over the course of 2015, according to the Litmus State of Email Report for 2016, mobile opens increased by 17 percent and now represent 55 percent of email opens (iPhone leads with 33 percent of mobile opens, with Android at 10 percent). Web-based email opens decreased 13 percent consequently, while desktop decreased by 17 percent. As any good Web professional will attest, that means concentrating efforts on design and the experience that results.

The nuances of mobile email design can be complex.

With so many different mobile devices, it becomes essential to follow some best practices to ensure you start out on the right virtual foot (discover some key considerations for mobile email design at wsm.co/emaildev).

Once the case has been made for email, it’s time for brands to turn their collective attention to the more serious matters of email optimization.

Forming a Strong Technical Foundation When it comes to email, reputation is everything. The better that senders treat their recipients, and the more trustworthy they position themselves before the Internet service providers (ISPs), the better chance they will have to see their messages arrive at their destination – the inbox. And the best part is that by following just a few simple practices and understanding how it (delivery) all works, optimization and improvement of email campaign is most certainly achievable.

If senders want recipients to open their email, they have to get past the spam filters first. That means avoiding some practices and adopting others (primarily related to design as well as reputation). Spam filters are somewhat rudimentary but use a long list of criteria (access a detailed list of variables at wsm.co/spammylist) when making their assessment (the spam score). If the score exceeds a certain threshold, emails get flagged as spam and end up in the junk folder.

Optimizing Deliverability New research from Return Path reveals that just 79 percent of legitimate commercial emails worldwide reach their intended target with the remaining ending up in spam folders or blocked entirely.

Email marketers in the U.S. are not exempt, experiencing below-average inbox placement, with just 73 percent of messages reaching subscribers – six percentage points below the global average. U.S. inbox placement was relatively strong in Q2 and Q3 2015 (78 percent and 80 percent, respectively), however, but dropped below 70 percent in the first half of 2016.

Brands are waking up to deliverability issues and solutions are emerging to help curtail the problem. Data solutions provider Return Path, for example, announced the next generation of its “Certification” solution, which will enable email senders to join a certified whitelist based on their sending domain’s reputation. According to Return Path, Certification provides an average lift of 18 percent in overall placement.

While Return Path’s existing IP address-based whitelist caters to large enterprise senders, the new Domain Certification solution will extend the benefits of Certification to small and mid-sized senders on shared IP addresses. Adding Domain Certification will also benefit senders that already have certified IP addresses by giving them greater flexibility to monitor their email streams.

With a strong technical foundation established, enterprises should turn their attention to other aspects of optimizing the email experience.

The Art of Acquisition It doesn’t take a digital genius to see that email marketing remains one of the most powerful and effective ways to increase any number of important indicators of performance – from unique visits to revenue and ultimately growth.

The benefits of having a large email list are immense of course, but getting to that point is challenging for those just starting out. Many simply don’t really realize the investment of effort and creativity (not to mention time and money) required to grow an email list and what it takes to acquire the email addresses of those potentially interested in a brand and its products and services.

It’s not just the cost of sending but all the digital bells and whistles as well, such as the variety of testing and optimization solutions or personalization features that can be added on. That makes it more important than ever to optimize what can be controlled – from the forms being used, to the incentives for subscribing as well as determining what headlines and calls to action work best. Let’s explore some of the acquisition methods being used by ’Net professionals today.

EXIT-INTENT POPUPS: A majority of first-time visitors will exit a website after their initial visit. By using an exit-intent popup, marketers have one final chance to make their case for the visitor to subscribe. While many consider them over-used and annoying they do work quite

Email Workflow Matters Litmus and Movable Ink teamed up to create an infographic – wsm.co/emailflow – on how to optimize a marketer’s email workflow and offers some sound advice for every serious sender.

well as they are true attention grabbers. The trick with exitintent pop-ups is to ensure that the benefit being provided is clear and concise, worthy of the attention of readers. For some inspiration, visit wsm.co/5notsofast to find some well executed exit-intent popups.

TIME-TRIGGERED LIGHTBOX: Interrupting a user as they are in the process of leaving a site may not always be the best fit depending on an audience. Those looking for an effective alternative may want to consider a lightbox with controls over when the popup should display.

For example, perhaps a marketer could elect to trigger a lightbox with a subscription offer when the user is on a site for a specified amount of time or upon arrival at the second page of their session. It’s less intrusive (as the user has shown some level of interest) and can be as effective as any other means to acquire subscribers.

EMBEDDED FORMS: Perhaps the most common method to acquire subscribers is that of the embedded form. All email marketing service providers (as well as marketing automation and customer relationship management systems) provide embedded forms to help their clients acquire subscribers, but even the best executed forms can fall short in terms of catching users’ attention.

The best practice is to use a form with high contrast to the background of the site (so that it stands out) and use a catchy and compelling headline to capture interest.

STATIC/STICKY FOOTER/HEADER BARS: One of the newer approaches to email subscriber acquisition is to show the subscription area in a fixed (static) position so that it is always in the user’s field of vision. Subscription bars can be placed at the bottom or top of a Web page and perform quite well on average depending on the size, location and other factors.

Adding subscribers and recipients is important, but planning for success is what will matter most in the future.

Long-Term Email Success Strategies Email is a powerful tool in the digital marketing toolbox, but like most other promotional mechanisms, it can be misused and abused by brands. With an eye to the future, however, and a commitment to ensuring a useful and positive experience for recipients (the audience of users being sent email) it is possible to ensure a greater level of success over the long term. Let’s take a look at a few of the “best practices” that should be leveraged by email marketers and the enterprises that employ them.

DOUBLE OPT-IN: It’s the simplest way to ensure those who marketers are sending to actually did request communication. Double opt-in is essentially a two-step

process where a user completes a signup form and then receives an email that includes a link to confirm their subscription to the list. Using a double opt-in prevents marketers from adding bogus subscribers to their list, which can have a positive impact on deliverability and overall campaign performance.

LISTS: Some “experts” will argue that it is never a good idea to “buy” a list, but others will suggest this belief is somewhat naive. It can take years to build a substantial list. If marketers are under pressure to grow, sometimes the only way to do that is to get a head start. Lists often contain out-of-date and incomplete information, however, so brands need to develop a strategy that will weed out these users after the first or second send.

HONOR UNSUBSCRIBES: The beauty of technology, and email tech specifically, is that most of the work can be automated. It’s not necessary, for example, to remove each and every user manually from a company’s database as most email service providers offer the ability to manage those that want to unsubscribe. Many senders ignore this step as they wrongfully believe that a bigger list is better, but not honoring unsubscribe request can damage sender reputation and wreak havoc on performance metrics.

ELIMINATE INACTIVES: Perhaps the most difficult process when it comes to email marketing is when the time comes to remove inactive list recipients. If a user has not opened an email from a brand over a specific period of time, it’s unlikely they will in the future. It may be shocking to learn, but it is likely that well-over 50 percent of the average list falls into this category, which can present a number of problems; not only are companies likely paying to distribute email to those inactive recipients but ISPs keep a close watch on bounces and open rates. Brands should do themselves a digital favor and eliminate recipients who have been inactive for six months (no open, no clicks, etc.).

It’s not easy to follow these rules, but they do pay off in the form of better performance and stronger perception of the sender in the future. That’s reason enough to be in compliance with these best practices.

Up to this point, you’ve learned why email is important and many things you should avoid (or simply not engage in).

Email, however, is a creative practice as much as it is technical and strategic and as a result, brands must also concentrate their attention on the content experience.

Content Emphasis The question most marketers have about their email initiatives is what content resonates most with recipients. The answer is relatively simple – the content that motivates them to

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take action. Let’s take a look at how enterprises can emphasize content and keep performance metrics rising.

Develop Hyper-Personalized Content; use demographic and location data and target offers based on past purchase behavior. Doing so will encourage readers to open messages, click through to Web pages and convert.

Test Content Approaches: Use A/B and multivariate testing to determine which subject lines, content and images are working and worth using for future email campaigns.

Get Experimental: Consider the addition of video, polls or emojis in the subject line and measure the engagement that results.

Cross-Promote: Email is just one marketing channel so make sure to promote the availability of exclusive content within email on search engines and social media.

Clearly, content is everywhere, and it’s getting personal in unique ways. Personalized email provider Bluecore and user-generated content (UGC) collection and management platform Olapic, for example, have partnered to help email marketers deploy more “authentic and personalized” campaigns. The partnership can enable marketers to include this real-time, relevant, socially sourced content into their campaigns without any significant investment of time or resources.

Billions of user-generated photos are posted and viewed across social networks each day, and Olapic’s platform will help Bluecore senders streamline the collection, curation and showcasing of that potentially engaging content to use in their campaigns, including those triggered by certain behaviors.

The Practical Side of Retargeting It is the responsibility of enterprises leveraging a practice such as retargeting to provide a path for these users (and users classified under any identified buyer persona) that avoids potential resistance points – like failures in identifying a buyer’s priorities, decision criteria and success factors – and supplements and improves the overall digital experience to achieve the conversion. Email retargeting can be complex, of course, so consider a rules-driven, multi-touch approach that speaks to each user’s unique situation and desired experience.

Beyond Open & Click-Through Rates Explore the many ways to measure email success at wsm.co/emeasuresmb.

Establish a rule that if a shopper fitting a specific buyer persona has not converted in the past month, they will be served an email promoting new information or products from their most frequently visited categories.

On the second interaction, present content/offers on the homepage (or sidebars, footers or headers throughout the digital experience) highlighting recently viewed products, sorting products based on the shopper’s historical product price range or displaying info popular with similar users.

On the third touch, highlight the cart contents and remind the shopper of any promotion he or she might be eligible for, such as free shipping.

Even with the most powerful machine learning and artificial intelligence tools ever developed at their disposal, however, it is often still not enough to enable the majority of enterprises to optimize the digital experience if there is no formal plan in place first to surmount any potential challenges that arise on the user’s path to conversion.

The Email Evolution In much the same way that consumers are shifting their email consumption patterns, the email technology industry is evolving as well – and it is very much for the better. Email and online marketing platform GetResponse, for example, recently announced a beta release of its own marketing automation solution.

Marketers will be able to build automated campaigns using simple “if, then” logic, tag and score leads to build audience profiles, and access visual workflows in order to view the entire communications path, and even leverage tools to track and respond to customers’ e-commerce journeys.

Email service providers are becoming more than just platforms marketers use to hit “send” on their campaigns in order to communicate with their audience. Email marketing provider Campaign Monitor, for example, recently unveiled a new App Store and certified partner program, which includes tools and resources for partners and developers to build apps that work with Campaign Monitor including APIs, guidance, certifications and co-marketing opportunities.

There is a seemingly endless lineup of technologies that marketers use to execute and track their email marketing efforts, and initiatives like Campaign Monitor’s App Store provide the best of the best to simplify and optimize the technology stack and this essential marketing channel for senders.

Who’s Ready to Optimize?

Email is an essential practice for today’s digital brands. By establishing a strong technical foundation, concentrating on the user experience and continually looking for opportunities to improve, brands can dramatically accelerate their ’Net success.

Email

EXPERIENCE Holiday Frenzy Ahead?

Review Email Marketing Metrics for Success This Season

By EJ McGowan, General Manager of Campaigner

While Thanksgiving and Black Friday may seem months away, now is the time for retailers to make modifications to their marketing campaigns for the hectic holiday season ahead. How can retail marketers best prepare themselves for the coming frenzy?

During this calm before the storm, retailers should take a step back and evaluate their email marketing metrics to obtain a better sense of their past campaigns’ performance and prime this year’s initiatives for success. Keep in mind the following so you are ready this holiday season.

Evaluate conversion-worthy content with click-through rates The first metric marketers should evaluate as they plan for the holiday season is click-through rates from past campaigns. How often subscribers click through is a good indicator of interest in email content. If past holiday campaigns have seen high click-through rates, consider recycling (and refreshing) some of that content for this year’s campaigns.

For email marketers, content with a proven performance record is the gift that keeps on giving.

Additionally, use click-through rate as a criterion for A/B split testing to determine which content resonates most with customers. Distribute test emails with varying messages, subject lines and graphics to select groups of recipients. The content variables that drive the most traffic to a website will be the best ones to use for larger campaigns as subscribers start shopping.

Determine top shoppers through conversion data Marketers will want to keep a close eye on their conversion rates to not only determine the health of their campaigns but also get a pulse on customer loyalty. Additionally, consider building a “nice list” with subscribers most likely to fill their stockings with the company’s products. Identify those customers who regularly purchase products and spend the most in stores, and group

them as a brand’s best customers so promotions can easily be sent to them when the holiday season is here.

As companies start to segment holiday campaigns, they’ll want to consider a staggered approach to manage traffic volume increases to their website and call centers.

By referencing conversion data and sending the first batch of holiday messages to their best customer list, this will ensure top customers get the first look at products and promotions while inventory is at its highest point and also reduce the risk of running out of products they would be interested in buying.

Additional factors to keep in mind as marketers plan their campaign’s segmentation are matching promotions, geolocation and time zones: If running multiple promotions, identify the audiences that best match each offer and distribute in batches accordingly.

Look at geolocation data to distribute offers for particular stores to customers located nearby.

Segment for different time zones so that messages arrive in customers’ inboxes at an optimal time of day, regardless of whether they’re on the East Coast, West Coast or somewhere in between.

Look at long-term metrics for holiday cheer throughout the year Beyond immediate performance metrics like clickthrough and conversion rates, keep track of long-term metrics for insight into the overall health of campaigns and a marketing program. Brands should review content that has triggered unsubscribes to determine where messaging could use a refresh, and spend time accordingly to give messages extra cadence as they ring all the way to readers.

Companies must pay special attention if they start to notice an uptick in hard bounces or if their deliverability rate is taking a hit as they are warning signs that a subscriber list may be outdated. Brands should take a close look at their contacts and move any invalid addresses to a “naughty list” so their holiday promotions arrive under all the right trees when it’s time to deliver.

The holiday season will be here before you know it, so make sure you’re taking full advantage of this current lull period. Look at short- and long-term metrics including click-through, conversion, unsubscribe and deliverability rates to get a pulse on today’s performance and a better sense of how holiday campaigns will perform in the next few months. Use this data to drive A/B split testing and segmentation during the holidays to maximize performance during that pivotal time of year.

Mobile

MATTERS

How Mobile Builds the Multi-Channel Customer Journey

By Dan Engel, CEO of Mobile1st

Mobile is madly mutating, becoming ever-more central to the consumer lifestyle and the customer journey.

Under the pressure of always-on, always-connected technology, our rituals of shopping have shape-shifted.

Now customers leapfrog from websites to social media to stores and onto in-store online chat as they embrace the convenience and choice offered by a multi-channel shopping experience. At the hub, linking all the channels, is mobile.

Already by 2014, the majority of time shopping online (62 percent) was happening on mobile according to comScore, while smartphones and tablets account for close to 70 percent (Moovweb) of all interactions with brands today. That’s no surprise, as consumers are spending, on average, up to three hours each day (eMarketer) using their mobile devices.

Mobile is now central to the customer journey, whether it ends online with the click of a mouse or the Ka-ching of a store cash register (or the scan of an iPhone).

Every sensible retailer is taking the minimal step of ensuring a mobile-friendly website, but the more strategic are planning how to exploit the next innovations in mobile and its centrality in the multi-channel customer journey.

No one is certain how far and where this mobile gig will take us. The only sane strategy is to buckle up and hang on for digital the ride.

THE EMPOWERED, SAVVY CUSTOMER: INFORMATION

The customer journey commences with the savvy shopper gathering information. Even before stepping through the doors of the local glittering product emporium, we have done our research, consulted the reviews and narrowed our choices. Among American shoppers, 73 percent (PwC) have already studied up on their preferred product and brands, whether deciding on running footwear or tax software.

No wonder 80 percent of consumers labeled themselves “expert savvy shoppers” in 2015 according to PwC. And as IBM tells us, 52 percent of in-store purchases have been influenced by prior online interactions.

Yes, shoppers definitely appreciate the power, choice and convenience provided by the Internet.

Whether pinpointing stores, browsing reviews, checking prices or learning product details, they are hunting for information and deals online. And if businesses can’t meet and greet their mobile shoppers with a website, online advertisements, or even “push notifications,” then it stands to lose out big time.

This doesn’t necessarily eliminate the visits to the physical brick-and-mortar store, but alters its purpose.

Having gathered key information on price, performance and functionality, in-store shopping is “less about trial and exploration and more about validating assumptions and hypothesis,” reports eMarketer.

When a prospect identifies a wondrous object enticing their desires, be it steaming hot pizza fresh from the oven or a gleaming trinket for a wedding anniversary, the next step in the customer journey is often local search.

Of course the yellow pages are dead. When shoppers hunt for local services, store hours and locations nowadays, they are consulting Google. Moreover, since 2011, search interest in “near me” stores, restaurants, services and retail outlets has jumped 34 fold (source: Google).

Among shoppers conducting an online search for local information, more than a third enter the retailer’s doors within a day. Indeed, fully 18 percent of those who conduct a local search for retailer information end up making a purchase. Online local searches are almost as good as cash in a merchant’s hands.

Merchants need to command a clear presence online with a mobile-friendly website to ensure they are catching that online traffic that turns into their store’s foot traffic. And the website needs to be optimized to ensure a first-page local search ranking.

SHOWROOMING? NOT! JUMPING ONLINE IN YOUR STORE

Increasingly online commerce and in-store sales are two connected, not competing, endeavors. Consumers come armed with data and seek to test their preliminary conclusions with up-close inspections. Moreover, when viewing merchandise in a product showroom, customers often build their confidence toward making that final purchase decision by taking out their phone and going online.

The most common in-store activities accomplished with a smartphone according to SessionM’s 2015 survey are: Price comparisons: 54 percent Looking up product specs: 48 percent Checking reviews online: 42 percent And, seeking coupons or deals comScore adds: Taking a picture of the product: 25 percent Texting or calling someone: 18 percent

Knowing shopper habits, merchants can facilitate their progress to a purchase and build loyalty. Retailers can present bar codes that enable customers to jump online and check product details as well as provide access to both Wi-Fi and their own website with a full range of product information. In fact, 61 percent of customers say they are more likely to visit a store if they can inspect the store’s inventory online.

ATTRACT CUSTOMERS (AND MAKE THE SALE) WITH PUSH NOTIFICATIONS

A major technique to incentivize the customer’s shopping and to potentially close the sale is with “push notifications.”

Push notifications are messages (or emails) delivered to the phones of shoppers who show an interest in services or are inside or in close proximity to a retail outlet. Such notifications can highlight a deal or offer a discount – one tailored or personalized to the customer’s individual shopping history.

Fifty-seven percent (SessionM) of instore customers declare they are more likely to shop at a store that delivers in- Already, beacons store deals with push notifications. are delivering on their Today’s advancing technology means all retailers can entice shoppers with online promise to engage push notifications. Soon, sending a special prospects and enoffer to in-store shoppers won’t just be a commercial weapon possessed only by hance the customer big brands and nationwide retailers. Traditionally, such notifications were pushed experience. to customers who had downloaded an app. Now, Google is rolling out physical beacons, which can be placed in a store to broadcast attractive offers to consumers on their phones.

Already, beacons are delivering on their promise to engage prospects and enhance the customer experience. Innovators, like the Golden State Warriors, offer upgraded seats to those rooting in the nose-bleed section. And Samsonite vows to always let customers know where their luggage is with its built-in beacons.

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THE JOURNEY

As mobile continues to disrupt the business of retail, advancing technology is leveling the playing field among companies small and large. Retailers need to take full advantage of these new possibilities by establishing their prominent online presence, delivering mobile-optimized websites that ensure a seamless friendly user experience and by exploiting the emerging potential of mobile as the central hub of the omnichannel customer journey.

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LOCAL SEARCH: WHERE ART THOU, OH WALGREENS?

Conversion

CORNER

Making Product Pages Persuasive with Kahneman’s Principles

By Marty Greif, Executive Vice President of SiteTuners

If you’re looking for ideas to prime your product pages for conversion, your go-to resource probably isn’t going to start off with questions about Gandhi’s age. Let’s go with that anyway.

Scholars Fritz Strack and Thomas Mussweiler were testing something, and they started doing that by dividing people into two groups, and then asking them at what age Gandhi died. They didn’t just ask that question though. They prefaced the question a little bit differently between the two groups:

He and Amos Tvesrky once asked two groups of participants to estimate the result of a computation.

They were given five seconds to answer one of these two questions: Group 1: 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8 Group 2: 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 The answers should be the same, but the participants didn’t have time to compute. Here’s how they responded: Group 1 Guess: 512

Group 1: Did he die before or after the age of 9?

Group 2 Guess: 2,250 Group 2: Did he die before or after the age of 140?

Keep in mind that both of those statements seem, logically, useless. People who are tangentially aware about Gandhi know he lived to be over 9 years old. People generally don’t live to be over 130 years old. Rationally, the statements shouldn’t influence the guesses about Gandhi’s age, but here’s what actually happened: Group 1 Guess: 50.

Group 2 Guess: 67.

If the first question doesn’t have any logical value, then why did it cause a gulf between the responses between group 1 and group 2?

The answer lies in the way our faulty, irrational, short-cut-loving brains work, and its love for anchoring.

Anchoring Psychologist, author and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman studied the anchoring effect quite a bit.

Note the first numbers the participants saw, and then how high their estimates ended up being. The second group’s guess is over four times larger than the first group’s guess, but keep in mind that the second group started thinking about multiplying 8, 7 and 6, rather than 1, 2 and 3.

That’s anchoring at work; we’re primed, more than we’d like to admit, by what we see first. What we see first has an incredible amount of impact on how we estimate or perceive value in the things we see. Now hold that thought, and look at this Amazon page for an iPad.

Why is the list price there? $499 has no meaningful impact to the user. It’s not what he or she is going to pay for the device. It’s not what others are going to pay for the device. The only reason it’s there is so visitors can anchor against $499 and make the actual price, $294.15, seem like a steal. It works for Amazon, and it should work for other product pages too.

paying a larger price down the line. We tend to view tiny risks related to losses as larger than they actually are. Now, let’s look at that Amazon page again.

Prospect Theory and Loss Aversion Kahneman’s Nobel Prize on prospect theory contained the notion of anchoring, but it also included theories about loss aversion, and how people deal with potential gains versus potential losses. Loss aversion would end up being just as important to online marketing as anchoring.

To understand just how powerful this is, think about how you would decide things in these situations.

Only ‘1 left in stock’ is there to motivate people to act soon.

The idea is that the imagined savings are already at risk; that the $204.85 in savings is something the users can lose, if they don’t act quickly. That’s loss aversion at work.

Scenario 1 You have two options.

Making Kahneman’s Observations Work for You

You can win $940 and have a 100% chance of winning You can win $1,000 and have a 95% chance of winning In most observed situations, the first option would be the preferred one, despite the second having the higher yield. Did your answer match up with common results?

Now, let’s switch it up.

Scenario 2 You start with $1,000. You have two options.

You can choose a 100% chance to lose $950 You can choose a 95% chance to lose $1,000 Those two things are roughly equal for 100 people based on probability (100 percent chance to retain $50, versus five percent chance to retain $1,000). Despite this, most people would choose the second option.

So in scenario 1, people would be risk-averse, but in scenario 2, people would tolerate risk because they would be loss-averse. There are two key principles at play here: Low probabilities are over-considered by people for losses Fear of loss motivates people more than potential for gains This is why insurance works. Paying a small pre-determined price mentally taxes us less than potentially

Like everything else in online marketing, it’s possible to overplay those cards.

Making the “anchor” price larger than the call to action? Probably a bad idea.

Making the ‘stock or time left’ on the offer push critical information below the fold? Not going to work.

Still, it pays to understand the underlying mechanisms within our brains. We are nowhere near as logical as we like to think we are, and that affects how online marketing messages reach us.

That’s the thing a lot of people don’t realize; our brains have essentially not changed for thousands of years, but modern life has made it so there are hundreds of complicated decisions we need to make daily.

The brain, not being very equipped to deal with this, relies on the one thing it can: shortcuts.

Anchoring and loss aversion are very much shortcuts for daily life. The important thing for online marketing is, they are shortcuts that are relatively predictable.

Anchoring biases toward the first thing users see, so you can improve perceived value by showing a high figure users will benchmark against.

Prospect theory biases toward fear of loss, so you can reframe your message to make users act soon.

If you apply anchoring and loss aversion principles and test away, you’re much, much more likely to convince more of your visitors to convert.

Write More Compelling Copy Learn the tricks of the trade at wsm.co/sellstory.

Software

EVERYWHERE

Membership Has Its Privileges Association Management Software in Focus

By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief

Fifty years ago, heck, even 20 years ago, the benefits of being a member of an association were pretty limited when we look back on them today. You might get a quarterly newsletter about the latest trends, a few job announcements, perhaps some periodic discounts for a trade show, and hey, maybe even a tote bag. Things have certainly changed.

Member-based organizations and trade associations have realized the power of digital and are now fully accelerating their efforts to acquire new, younger and more tech-savvy audiences – those with far different demands than their predecessors. As a result, these associations are turning to software to develop better experiences, and better they most certainly are.

Cloud-based software provider YourMembership, for example, announced strong growth of more than 20 percent over the same time period in 2015 for its solutions, which extend far beyond traditional association management features to provide career centers, learning management and advertising solutions.

“We’re seeing the results of a concerted, ongoing effort to retain our customers and keep them growing, while our sales productivity is on the rise,” said JP Guilbault, CEO of YourMembership in a recent company announcement. “The numbers support our leadership role, vibrancy and relevance throughout the industry.

With the completion of the first phase of our platform integration strategy, we anticipate it will contribute to our continued growth.”

Features of the integrated platform include single sign-on and one profile for administrators across the different LMS (learning management system), AMS (association management system) and job board offerings, a member profile synchronization between each (so only one profile needs to be created), the ability to share data between those systems, and of course the management and tracking of enrollments and purchases in one system.

“This integration makes the efforts of organizations more efficient,” said Dan Gaertner, chief product officer

of YourMembership. “With member data hosted on a single platform, it gives associations an opportunity to cross-promote their products. Inevitably, the more we integrate these products and the more organizations learn about their users, the more often they can create greater value for their members by putting relevant content like events, courses and career opportunities in front of their users.”

This convergence of systems and offerings certainly isn’t unique to YourMembership; it extends, in fact, far beyond.

AMS provider WebLink, and Connectik, an enterprise collaboration platform and app, for example, recently announced a partnership that will leverage Connectik’s collaboration features and social network tools to help WebLink customers increase productivity and streamline their internal communication efforts.

Connectik will integrate its enterprise communications solution into WebLink’s platform, which is now being used by more than 800 membership-based organizations and Chambers of Commerce across the United States and Canada.

A self-described “social-first communication platform,” Connectik offers high-powered engagement features that allow organizations to create groups, publish updates, run polls, distribute messages and analyze engagement data. Group members can even interact based on shared interests, as well as keep up-to-date on the latest organizational news and information. In the future, organizations will be able to find and collaborate with business partners using these tools. Other capabilities for internal staff include collaborative calendars, task lists, event pages, file storage, market places and payment processing. Far more sophisticated than the quarterly newsletter sent through postal mail in the past.

“We are constantly seeking ways to help our customers find the best ways to recruit, retain and engage their members,” said DJ Muller, CEO of WebLink. “We are excited to partner with Connectik to offer collaboration and communication capabilities to our customers, which will improve their internal productivity, as well as increase user retention and engagement.”

What association management and related systems provide is an opportunity to boost member engagement and internal productivity. By taking advantage of the best technology solutions available to engage users, build community and improve productivity, associations can further their mission and increase the value they provide their members and those they serve.

+ There are hundreds of solutions that provide associations the ability to manage their members, fundraise and, in general, provide

a more meaningful experience. Learn about how solutions including WildApricot, StarChapter, MemberPlanet and others are helping associations build audiences, create more engaging and meaningful experiences and grow at wsm.co/tech4assoc.

CONNECT WHEN “THEY” UNCONNECT Print captures and keeps the attention of today’s millennial business buyer more than any other medium.* Reach these motivated ’Net professionals by exploring Website Magazine’s many acquisition opportunities.

Reach millennial business buyers now at wsm.co/printsells.

1.800.817.1518 | *Quad Graphics, 2016

| info@websitemagazine.com

Social Media

MAVENS

News Feed Optimization Strategies for Better Organic Reach

By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor

Facebook has delivered another blow to brands looking to organically reach their social media followers on the network, further limiting reach to even people who have indicated their interest by “liking” a company’s Page.

This summer, Facebook announced that “friends come first,” ultimately ranking friends’ posts higher than Pages. The social network took a somewhat unprecedented approach in that it directly stated this update may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for “some Pages” whereas with other updates, Facebook reacted to Page owners’ dismay after the fact.

With already dismal organic reach (some report averages of 6.5 percent while others indicate it’s closer to 1-2 percent), any updates decreasing that figure even more is, simply put, not good news. What’s more, other networks tend to follow Facebook’s lead when it comes to filtering business posts (especially Facebook-owned Instagram), so it’s important to solidify a social strategy here because elements of it can be used elsewhere.

In a way, brands have to start thinking of social media optimization (SMO) or news feed optimization (NFO) in the same way they approach search engine optimization (SEO). Both search and social are vital 36

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parts of a consumer’s day-to-day life and companies will want to do what they can in order to be top of mind on both channels. Not only does social media engagement bring traffic to a company’s website (where conversions can happen), but it also known to impact search rankings and customer loyalty while increasing brand reach, so let’s figure out how to get “ranked.”

INCLUDE IMAGES

By far one of the best tactics to improve engagement on social media is to include interesting and relevant images. On Facebook, it’s reported that posts with images receive 2.3 times more engagement than text-only posts.

When including an image, marketers will want to make sure they follow copyright laws, consider subscribing to a stock photo service, ask customers for photos or, even better, create unique images with the help of a designer or a free- to low-cost service like Canva or Pagemodo.

CONSIDER TIME AND DAY

While there are benchmarked best times to post on Facebook (HubSpot says 12-1 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, 3-4 p.m. on Wednesdays and 1-4 p.m. on Thursday and Fridays), brands will want to look at Facebook Insights to (1) see when their fans are most active and (2) evaluate how posts preform historically on certain days and times. It’s also important to con-

sider where the majority of an audience lives so there is some individual guesswork to examine all the sources of information about “best times” and then understanding individual audiences and their behaviors due to location.

ADVERTISE

Countless studies have been conducted that prove organic search rankings are influenced to some degree (even slightly) by a company’s paid search efforts, meaning the two go hand in hand. While the evidence is just emerging, there are some indicators that Facebook operates in a similar fashion when a company pays to “boost” a post that organic reach starts to increase even before the budget starts to get used. Even $5 a day could help to increase organic reach, and it’s a no-lose situation because that budget is being allocated to an audience that is very targeted to the company’s business as Facebook offers pretty advanced, yet easy-to-use targeting options.

GO LIVE

When Google talks, people listen and the same should be said of Facebook, which has been talking a lot about its Facebook Live feature. The social network is prioritizing Live content in its algorithms and some Pages are even enjoying a 34 percent organic reach on the videos they are posting. This is likely due to not only the algo boost they receive but also that fans are notified when a Page “goes Live.” As a reminder, typical posts receive anywhere between 1-16 percent depending on the Page.

RESPOND TO CUSTOMERS (FAST)

As many know, Google takes issue with companies that don’t offer a good user experience (UX) and that comes in many forms, from website bounce rates to reviews to incomplete Google+ profiles. With the similar UX priorities, brands would be wise to ensure their customers are being responded to on the network. Facebook’s emphasis on social customer service can easily be seen in its release of “badges,” which reward Pages that have a response rate of 90 percent and a response time of 15 minutes within the last seven days. Not only that, but Facebook even offers Instant Replies, so brands can set up an automatic reply when someone messages them on their Page such as, “Thanks for contacting us! Our team is reviewing your inquiry and will respond within 12 hours.” Since customers expect near real-time responses on social media, 12 hours isn’t ideal but at least expectations are being established.

While it’s not set in stone (or anywhere for that matter) that customer service on Facebook impacts organic reach, it’s likely that a brand will (if they don’t already) have some sort of quality score that impacts their ranking and how their posts will be delivered to their audience.

BE MORE ACTIVE

Brand mentions are happening more and more on social media networks (inside a company’s posts and outside) and businesses would be smart to monitor those mentions with a social media management tool like Sprout Social, Hootsuite or Buffer (for Twitter and Instagram). By responding to public compliments or complaints, brands are investing in their social UX and there’s no doubt that Facebook will reward that in some way as consumers consult social to search for products and services.

ASK FOR REVIEWS

Once again, similar to Google, brands will want to encourage their social followers to include reviews on their Pages. This may not have a direct impact on organic reach but Facebook algos could take into consideration how highly a brand is rated when deciding what percentage of fans should see their posts.

CREATE SHARE-WORTHY CONTENT

The way that Facebook phrased its news feed announcement clearly indicates that “shares” are very valuable. The “shares” metric is mentioned multiple times throughout the announcement, so marketers should understand that “shares” might be most important to track in this updated news feed. To increase shares, create content that is relevant to an audience, is timely and accounts for the kinds of topics that have been shared by a Page’s audience in the past, which requires a little manual effort since “shares” are lumped into “engagement” in Facebook Insights.

THINK POST-CLICK

With the majority of Facebook users accessing the network on their mobile devices, brands must ensure that when a person actually engages with a post and clicks through, that the page is friendly to their device as well as relevant to why they clicked. Bounce rates could absolutely be taken into account in Facebook’s evolving news feed algorithms. Similarly, brands will want to consider what their actual posts will look like on mobile devices. Facebook offers a mobile and desktop preview function for those scheduling their posts on the network directly (rather than through a third-party app).

GET RANKED

Like SEO, social media optimization stands to get even more complicated but a focus on user experience and authenticity is key to success on both channels, so continue growing your Pages and delivering great content.

Capture & Convert Four ways to get consumer attention and keep it at wsm.co/keepatt.

Insights on

ANALYTICS

When It Comes to Testing, It’s About Quality Not Quantity!

By Jason Hickey, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Target

It’s difficult to talk about testing without hearing a statistic that comes across as truly ridiculous like, “Company XYZ runs a zillion tests a year — no, really!” Even if these statistics are true, they fail to take into account the most important thing: whether the tests themselves are high quality.

If you are running tests just to run tests, you’re missing the mark. Running a certain number of tests per week, month or year does not mean that you are testing in the best ways possible. In fact, it does not even guarantee you’re running the right tests at all.

Organizations should first focus on developing and running only high-quality tests. Once they have accomplished that, they can increase the quantity to test a wider variety of factors.

QUALITY TESTING METRICS

It’s not uncommon to attend a quarterly business review and be asked to provide facts and figures that prove a business is doing better than it was in the previous quarter. Too often, people rely on proving their company’s progressions simply by showing that they’ve run three times more tests than they did in the previous period.

Just increasing the number of tests, however, doesn’t take into account the results of those tests at all.

Instead, marketers should look at what tests are telling them. Tracking records of return on investment (ROI), win rate and implementation rate can guide brands in understanding whether they are running tests that actually matter to their business.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

Testing can help companies understand if they are ac38

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tually seeing an ROI. Whether an investment of time or dollars, it is immaterial. It’s crucial to use testing to understand what brands are getting out of their campaigns. Optimizing any campaign is an iterative process, and testing is a key component of understanding what works and what doesn’t.

WIN RATE AND IMPLEMENTATION RATE

Win rate helps marketers understand what percentage of tests was statistically significant as well as conclusively positive. This is not the case with every test. Sometimes a test might be run to help determine whether A is better than B, but the test does not give a conclusive answer.

It happens, and organizations should be aware of how often it is occurring with their tests. If it is happening frequently, it could be an indication that tests aren’t differentiated enough or they are testing too many variations for a property’s traffic and conversion levels. Not every test is going to be a winner, but every test should be an opportunity to learn. If no tests are winners, it may be time to evaluate the ideation strategy. The bonus is that tracking win rate lets marketers measure how much better they’re getting at testing over time.

Imagine an online retailer who runs 10 A/B tests in a quarter, six of which showed statistically significant results. This is a pretty good rate of success. Knowing that recommending related products in the checkout page like, say, a shirt to go with the jeans a customer bought (test A) is better than no up-sells (test B) is only half of the battle. To reap the rewards, checkout upsells must become the new default site experience (where it becomes the new control to be tested against and the cycle goes on and on). If the IT team only implemented three out of six winning experiments, the business is only getting to take advantage of half of their potential ROI. Implementation rate, on the other hand, is the rate at which marketers actually do something about the tests that have conclusively positive results. One could argue that the implementation rate may be the most important metric to track with regard to testing.

Implementation can often be lost in the testing cycle.

Let’s say, for instance, that an online retailer runs an A/B test and finds that having the product price and purchase button on the left (version A) is better than having those details on the right (version B). That result is not worth very much if they don’t take the time to implement the winning version.

Without using newly discovered knowledge to improve the customer experience, marketers are testing only for testing’s sake. Tracking implementation rate can help marketers understand which tests they acted on, why they acted on them, and what the results were of their actions in both the short and long term.

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Web

COMMENTARY

Zuckerberg’s Pony in the Immigration Reform Race

By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor

Most Americans agree that the immigration system in this country is broken but to what extent, how it should be fixed and how it has anything (whatsoever) to do with the technology industry is up for debate.

Last year, Pew Research found that strong majorities of both Republicans (89 percent) and Democrats (79 percent) think the immigration system needs major change or needs to be rebuilt, and that’s what the Mark Zuckerberg–backed fwd.us initiative (with support from Bill Gates, Marissa Mayer and other prominent tech leaders) wants to draw attention to particularly around three Increasing the num- areas: border security, visa reform and a pathway to citizenship for ber of H-1B Visas for creating the 11.5 million undocumented immitech, specifically, grants in the U.S. In terms of how that will all be could be a short-term achieved, fwd.us is self-reportedly fix for Silicon Valley. “agnostic about the details,” but the initiative may serve its own interests.

Website Magazine learned more about fwd.us at an event hosted on its behalf in Yorba Linda, Calif., where a panel of politicians and tech executives discussed immigration reform.

Michael Dubin, for example, founder/CEO of Dollar Shave Club (recently acquired by Unilever for $1 billion), “jumped at the chance” to get involved with fwd.us after witnessing how losing the lottery for highly skilled workers uprooted one of his top technical employees. For the unfamiliar, H-1B Visas allow employment of foreign workers in occupations that require highly specialized knowledge like in science, engineering and computer programming, but acceptance

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is competitive and random (the U.S. received nearly 233,000 petitions last year but only 65,000 were chosen from a computer drawing for the general-category cap and 20,000 for advanced-degree exemption).

Zuckerberg and his lobbying group want to increase the caps for H-1B Visas, because if there’s one area tech cares about, it is competition. There’s a widely reported skills gap in tech, of course, leaving the unemployment rate of IT professionals much lower than state or national averages (in many cases about half according to Upp Technology). Increasing the number of H-1B Visas for tech, specifically, could be a short-term fix for Silicon Valley.

Long term, one has to imagine that access and affordability of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education has a better outlook.

Some fwd.us panelists, however, want assurances that when the country invests in education, those who receive one can stay, innovate and employ here. Fwd. us, for example, reports for every foreign-born STEM graduate, 2.62 jobs are created for Americans.

Regardless, plenty of tech companies believe the current skill gap is to their disadvantage, so they have started coding camps, worked more closely with colleges, empowered young women, etc., but kids only grow so fast – and Election Day is looming so candidates have their opinions on the matter too.

Donald Trump has taken a direct aim at the tech industry stating, “More than half of H-1B Visas are issued for the program’s lowest allowable wage level, and more than 80 percent for its bottom two.”

Therefore, Trump proposes to raise the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs forcing, “companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas. This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.”

While most of us wouldn’t say it like Trump, it’s clear there is no one answer to immigration reform. Most of us ourselves are walking contradictions on how to fix a broken system (calling for competition but not more visas or calling for better border security but definitely not a wall).

As far as tech in the U.S. goes, the industry can create jobs and keep us competitive on a global scale regardless of where a person is from who is initiating it. On the other hand, we need a better long-term approach to get under-served communities empowered and involved in tech with or without visa reform. Nobody has all the answers, but fwd.us is starting the conversation even if “it’s complicated.”

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