Once upon another time in a world before Graphic User Interface (GUI) I used to sell things. I won’t bore you with my progress from nightclub DJ to retail high-end home HiFi, to car stereos (sold enough to buy a house), to outside sales, but let’s just say that for all intents and purposes, sales is sales….
One of the key things that separates a good sales person from a not-so-good sales person is that the good sales person is never afraid to ask for the order – and the money!
So what does that have to do with email marketing? I’m glad you asked….
First we need to get on the same page on a couple of things.
- Marketing is everything that you do to that brings qualified customers to your door
- Sales is collecting the money in exchange for a product or service
Next we need to understand some basic functions of an email marketing message.
- After sender recognition, the Subject Line causes a message to be opened (Note: sender recognition alone is not enough to cause a message to be opened)
- A Value Proposition gives the recipient a reason to want to purchase
- The Call To Action drives clicks
- Conversions happen at the landing page
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on….
One of the more common situations that I hear is, “We get great open rates and lots of clicks, but not very many conversions…. Why?”
It’s gotten to the point that I hardly have to look anymore to diagnose the problem – they’re still selling on the landing page!
Selling at the landing page works for things like Search or ad placements, but for email it’s different. Why? Because you’ve already “sold” in the email message. The landing page is there to take the order and that should be its primary purpose.
This is email marketing, people, not Direct Response TV with “But wait, there’s more!” Asking for the order is Sales 101!
You’ve given the recipient a reason to open your message with your subject line. You’ve captured their attention and explained what’s in it for them with your value proposition. They’ve got their credit card in their hand while clicking on your call to action, and you want to keep selling them something that they’re already ready to buy? And you wonder why people don’t convert….
This ain’t rocket science. I know this because my step-father is a rocket scientist and he tells me that if he has his money in his hand and is ready to buy he’s done being sold. He doesn’t need any more speeches, pitches, or convincing. If he did he wouldn’t have pulled his money out, and if the sales person would rather keep pitching the sale rather than taking the order, he’ll leave. Plain and simple; and I’d bet many of you would do the same.
Take a look at your landing pages.
Is the landing page a copy of your email message with an order form?
Is it lit up like the Vegas strip on a Saturday night having more distractions than a teenage boy at an all girls school?
Are you giving a bevy of options that lead away from the desired action – like giving you money?
Are you more concerned with making your landing page SEO/SEM friendly than you are taking the order?
Seriously, what is the core purpose of your landing pages?
So here’s my challenge to those of you that have good open and click rates, but fall down on conversions using the types of landing pages I’ve just described: Strip out all of the crap and focus on taking the order and see what happens.
If your conversions increase, let me know. And if they don’t, well, I’ll give you your money back….
Great post John, but what about the eTailers who now try to sell more in their emails than ever before? I can see your challenge working on something specific that is in the call to action in the email, but if the CTA is simply 50% off all T-Shirts, then it wont really work so well.
It’s nice when you can delete and start over….
You’re right. It might not work so well in those circumstances. I would expect that some things will be spelled out in the message with the value proposition and call to action. The value, of course, is that if you shop and purchase T-Shirts using a discount code (either printed or loaded on the click), you’ll save 50%; and let’s say that the CTA is “Shop Now”.
The landing page should be a shopping page where recipient can go straight to shopping for T-Shirts and not be distracted with shorts, ball caps, belts, shoes, or socks.
And certainly you’re not going to land the recipient on a page that has the same offer and value proposition and then ask them to take the same action that you just asked them to take, which is, “Shop Now”. That’s kind of redundant; you might as well just have a subject line that says 50% off T-Shirts and nothing in the message body but a link that says, “Click Here” if you’re going to do that.
The premise is the same, though, keep it focused and make it easy for the recipient to collect on the value that you proposed and to take the action that you asked them to take. Don’t distract from the primary objective, which is to sell T-Shirts (even if people that wear T-Shirts often also wear socks, or shorts, or ball caps, or….)
Ok, it’s late on the east coast so I will be brief : )
Following your theme of 50% off T-Shirts, perhaps another nice way to provide value through the program is AFTER the person buys a red and a green t-shirt, you have a trigger message that highlights another related article of clothing such as shorts or belts that go nice with the T-Shirt, preferably with an image of the product using the same color or a complementary color in the images of the product being featured. Of course that requires several images, and fairly sophisticated trigger messaging system using cart data, but that would be a great way to provide value without just giving a discount (or you can give a discount on the trigger item and not on the first item).
Ahhh all good points, but eTailers today are worried about AOV/basket size and they want to cross sell and promote other items from their email. It boils down to who owns the landing page after the email is sent. In most cases, the online team and not the email team own that page and they are often not willing to pigeon hole the customer to just one thing to convert. No matter how hard you try to convince them of your theory..it wont work in most cases.
You make valid points guys..but reality is that in orgs today..usually the email team is looked at as the email team and the UE/landing page experts as a result of the email.
John, love this post as it simply shows the step-by-step role of each stage of engagement online. There is room for optimization at each stage. From delivery, to open, to click, to landing page, to conversion. Improve (or shorten) any one of these and you improve the bottom line.
Andrew, I hear you… and if you haven’t already seen this, you must, it’s classic: http://dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html
@morgan classic man. thanks for sharing.
Thanks for all of the great responses, and to Morgan for the link!
I had this nice response all typed up and then did a “Luke” (inside joke :)) and lost it….
When in the enterprise I faced many of the same challenges that Andrew mentioned and that Morgan linked to. The best that I could do in those situations was to make sure to share campaign and program stats – and what they meant – with those in charge of pages. The more reasonable people understood and accommodated; the less reasonable usually weren’t around long enough that it made that much difference. After all, if they’re not reasonable on one thing they’re usually not reasonable on others….
Part of the problem with retailers throwing everything but the kitchen sink in an email message really kind of undoes the principles of segmenting. Segmenting isn’t just grouping recipients, but matching recipients to products or services. If you’re going to send a laundry list of all products and services to all recipient segments, then what’s the point of segmenting recipients@f0
Thanks again for the great comments!
Email marketing should create AIDA, attention, interest, desire and action. I would prefer one that’s to the point and takes me directly to shopping rather than ‘All about me!’ page. Good points. 🙂