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Email newsletters are a great way to stay in contact with your subscribers. I use this strategy for my businesses as well. But when I consult different companies and analyze their email newsletters, I come across some common problems. They're not using these emails as a marketing tool. Just sending a newsletter for the sake of meeting your weekly or monthly requirement is not effective. Your newsletter is a valuable marketing resource, and it's time for you to start writing them as such. If you need to improve your existing newsletters, read this post. This guide is also great for anyone just starting out with newsletters. If you follow my tips, tricks, and advice based on my personal experience and research, your next newsletter will be a conversion machine. Here's what you need to know to make this happen. Give people a reason to opt inLet's take a step back for a minute. For you to get conversions in the first place, you need to have an active list of email subscribers. The best way to do this is to give them a great reason to opt in. Just saying “sign up for our newsletter” isn't appealing. How can you approach this? Value. Pitch people with value. Give them an incentive to sign up. Check out this example from the Lands' End website: Customers who sign up for their newsletter will get 25% off their orders. It's a no-brainer for customers to opt in. But the value doesn't stop there. They continue by saying their newsletter subscribers also get access to exclusive offers. This implies they'll get other discounts in the future as well. Besides monetary discounts, think about other ways your company can add value to prospective newsletter subscribers. It depends on your company and your industry, but try to get creative here. For example, an airline could offer priority boarding to customers who subscribe to their newsletter. You could provide free online seminars or e-book downloads to anyone who signs up for your newsletter. If your company hosts events, you can offer free parking passes or free entry to subscribers. Just think outside the box. The more people subscribe, the greater your conversions will be. Stick to your goalWhat do you want your newsletter to accomplish? This should be the first question you ask yourself before you start writing. If you don't know the answer to this, how will your subscribers know what to do? Here are some common goals for email newsletters:
There are tons of other goals your company might have. But if you're struggling, use these to get started in the right direction. Pick one and go with it. Trying to jam all these into one message is complicated and will confuse your audience. Here's a great example of a newsletter with a simple goal from Litmus: The goal of this newsletter is clearly to increase clicks to improve their engagement rates. Rather than just writing a lengthy article about the pros and cons of single vs. double opt-in landing pages, they give their subscribers an option. They'll get different content based on which CTA button gets clicked. You can use a similar strategy in your newsletter, even if you don't want to be as direct. First, introduce your goal with the headline or opening statements. Then, discuss it in greater detail throughout the message by mentioning it once or twice. Finally, end with a strong call to action like in the example above. Emphasize it. Don't make it ambiguous. The customer should have a clear direction of what action to take after reading your newsletter. Craft an enticing subject lineYou can't get conversions from your email newsletter if nobody opens it. Your subject line can make or break the success of this marketing campaign. Once you understand how to increase open rates with different subject lines, you'll have a better chance of getting high conversions from your newsletters. Take a look at this data about how recipients view the subject lines of a message: As you can see, the subject line can determine whether or not the message gets opened or reported as spam. How can you entice people to open your newsletter? For starters, make sure your subject lines are not boring. Subject lines such as “March Newsletter” don't give anyone a reason to open their emails. Be personal: 82% of marketers report that personalized subject lines lead to increased open rates. Furthermore, 75% of experts say personalized messages drive higher click-through rates. One of the most common ways to personalize a subject line is by using the recipient's name. Another enticing way to encourage opens for your newsletter is a time-sensitive subject line. Come up with a way to create a sense of urgency. There's valuable information in your newsletter that needs to be read right away. Breaking news is something your subscribers would want to hear immediately. According to studies by MailChimp, time-sensitive words in the subject line with the highest impact on open rates are:
Use these terms when you're coming up with the subject line for your newsletter. Be consistent without annoying your subscribersWhen people subscribe to your newsletter, they expect to hear from you on a regular basis. Make sure you deliver the newsletter to your subscribers as promised. If they signed up for a weekly newsletter, you'd better send them a newsletter once per week. If they signed up for a monthly newsletter, sending them an email three times per year isn't delivering on your promise. Slacking off on your consistency will damage the reputation of your brand. Your subscribers won't be interested in converting because your credibility is lost. Conversely, people won't be happy if they are expecting a monthly newsletter but instead get emails from you three times per week. This is annoying and could cause them to unsubscribe or report you as a spammer. Take a look at the top reasons why subscribers report spam: Getting too many emails is at the top of this list. I see this happen to companies all the time. Just because a person gave you permission to send them emails doesn't mean you can take advantage of that privilege. Discuss relevant contentAs you just saw from the research above, people also unsubscribe from emails if they think the content is irrelevant. It's important for you to stay on brand and on topic at all times. For example, let's say you've got a company that manufactures various home goods like couches, coffee tables, and lamps. You shouldn't be talking about the local weather, politics, or recent sporting events. It's irrelevant to your brand, and it's not what your subscribers want to hear about. Also, it's a pretty good idea, in general, to stay away from controversial topics in your newsletter. I'm referring to things like religion, politics, race, and things of that nature, unless, of course, your business is in one of those spaces. People have a different perception of industries based on the relevancy of their email content: As you can see, the retail industry leads the way in this category. So if your company is in the entertainment, travel, media, or non-profit sectors, you may want to reassess the topics of your newsletters. One way to make sure you deliver the most relevant content is by letting your subscribers choose what they want to hear about. They can also decide how often they want to hear from you. When subscribers are initially signing up to receive your newsletter, let them customize these options. Here's an example of what I'm talking about from Envato Tuts+: By default, new subscribers receive all emails. But if they want to hear from this brand only once a month, they can unselect the Weekly Digests option. These subscribers can even decide what type of content they want to hear about. People who want to get newsletters about music and audio may not be interested in code or web design topics. If you employ this strategy, you won't have to worry about your subscribers thinking your content is irrelevant. This creates more work for you because you'll have to write multiple newsletters each week and month. But it's worth it because your conversion rates will be much higher for each campaign. Add visuals to enhance your contentIf you've been reading my blogs for a while, you know how much I love using images and other visuals to explain concepts. While your newsletter isn't a blog, you can still use the same strategy. You need to understand not everyone will read every word of your content. The average subscriber only spends 51 seconds reading a newsletter. Furthermore, people only read about 20% of the text on a page. If you want your message to resonate with your audience, include visuals. Pictures and infographics make it easy for people to scan through your content. Even if they aren't reading every word, they can still get a general sense of your message. This relates back to the notion of sticking with a common goal throughout your newsletter. Take a look at this information about how visuals can impact a reader: People are visual learners. Using images and videos can help people process and retain information better. Don't be afraid to add these elements to your newsletter. Plus, visuals will make your message look a lot more organized. Nobody wants to read giant blocks of text. Measure your resultsThe only way to find out whether your newsletter is converting is to take the time to actually measure that. Whatever email marketing software you're using should have these analytics tools built directly into the platform. Take advantage of them to see how you're doing. Look at things such as:
Identify which types of newsletters had the highest conversions. Continue using the same strategies. If some of your newsletters had terrible conversion rates, you need to understand what went wrong. Did you not have a clear goal? Was the content irrelevant? Once you figure out why your newsletters aren't converting, it will be easier for you to make the necessary changes. But you can do this only if you're actively tracking the results of each campaign. Tell a storyAs we discussed earlier, people don't dedicate lots of time to reading the text and reviewing newsletters. You've got to come up with ways to keep your audience engaged. Stories are interesting. Once you hook your audience with a captivating story, they'll continue reading it to find out what happens. What story should you tell? Get creative. You can tell your story or a story about your company. Again, just make sure it's relevant. Don't be boring. Research shows storytelling helps boost conversions: It's also an effective strategy for B2B marketers. Not all your newsletters should be a story, but it's definitely a good idea to throw some into the mix from time to time. ConclusionYour email newsletters are an effective way to communicate and market to your subscribers. If you write them correctly, you'll see higher conversion rates. But you need to get people to opt in to your newsletter in the first place. Give them a reason to sign up. Before you start writing, make sure you have a clear goal in mind. End the message with a strong call to action reflecting your goal. Don't rush when you're creating a subject line. Use words and phrases that are personalized and create urgency to increase your open rates. Be consistent and deliver relevant content. Let your subscribers decide how often they want to hear from you and what topics they want to read about. Use visuals and storytelling tactics to increase your conversions as well. Make sure you measure the results of each newsletter to see if it was successful. If you follow these tips, you'll notice a drastic difference in your newsletter conversion rates. What strategies are you using to boost conversions from your email newsletters? A form of this article originally appeared on Stitch Labs. Stitch Labs is a purpose-built inventory management software to help brands improve customer experience and scale efficiency. Download the original guide here. When we talk about the future of retail, industry news is abuzz with the idea of brands creating experiences for their customers. Consumers want more than an email newsletter-they want easy tracking and personalization. They want more than a product-they want community. The experiences we read about in headlines are often grandiose and costly, like virtual fitting rooms and same-day shipping. So, how can small- to mid-sized brands keep up with this trend in a cost-effective, creative way? With the help of scrappy teams and technology to automate processes, these brands are not only keeping up with the trend, but also are redefining it and leveraging it to grow. In this guide, we'll discuss different approaches for building a memorable customer experience and how successful brands are executing on these creative ideas. Automated Personalization Isn't a ContradictionMost businesses under-invest in customer loyalty, even though establishing some type of loyalty program is one of the most obvious ways retailers enhance their customer experience. Instead, they often put all of their eggs in the new customer acquisition basket. While this approach may work well in the early days of a business, it can be detrimental for scaling later. In order to set your business up for future success, you'll want to think early on about a backend system that will scale with you. You'll also want to think about today's first-time customers who you hope will become tomorrow's loyal brand advocates. As you grow in resources, you can consider many types of loyalty programs that will help you track and analyze customer behaviors and reward repeat purchases. If you're starting out, there are simpler-yet still scalable- ways to personalize the customer experience. Customizing gifts based on the product someone buys is a thoughtful-yet realistic-way to make a customer feel warm and fuzzy about your brand. Chubbies, a clothing brand with an emphasis on the weekend lifestyle known for their colorful shorts and hilariously quirky marketing campaigns, figured out a way to send gifts without breaking the bank. With their target customer in mind, they created add-on gifts like branded koozies, coasters, and baseball cards that fit within their lifestyle theme but are significantly less expensive than sending an additional item of clothing. The gifts can match the purchases, too. For example, sending sunscreen when someone buys a swimsuit, or golf tees when a customer purchases golf shorts. This program is able to delight the customer in a personalized way, without having to know personalized information about the customer. In automating this process, they can quickly swap out a gift that isn't garnering excitement and track orders so customers don't receive the same gift twice. Their customers are surprised and delighted to receive add-ons and their loyal social media followers will often post their latest gift, thus increasing brand awareness in addition to fostering loyalty. Using Data To Improve Customer ExperienceThe previous section is all about personalising the offline experience with your brand, but what about improving the online one? The better you know your customer, the better the experience you can deliver – on and off-line. Data from customer behavior on your eCommerce site allows you to better understand your customer and therefore engage with them in a way that is deeply personalized to their experiences with your brand. With customers being bombarded with emails and offers that have little relevance to how they've interacted with a brand, you can stand out with more targeted, personalized engagements. To do this, a tool like Kissmetrics collects person-based behavioral data, defines and tracks key customer segments and then enables you to engage more effectively across email, facebook and more. You can segment by location, products purchased, time between events, etc. The more detailed you make your segmentation, the more easily you can personalize your messaging. Why does this matter? Because when you create refined segments of your many different customer types and tailor messaging uniquely toward just that segment you're creating yet another delightful moment between your brand and your customer. Not to mention better suited engagements increase purchases and brand loyalty. Collaborations: Combine Forces To Get New CustomersWhile brands obviously want customers to love their products enough to buy from them time and time again, we know no customer is 100 percent brand loyal. Even your most loyal customers have other brands they love and those are the very brands with whom you should consider working. Topo Designs, a Denver-based outdoor apparel and bag company, has partnered with brands like Woolrich and Chacos (not direct competitors, but other brands Topo's target customer loves!) to create unique, limited-edition items that they then promote across both of their customer bases. Even if your brand doesn't have the desire or resources to make physical products with another brand, there are many ways to collaborate with lower barriers to entry. Find brands with similar audiences and aesthetic and stock each other's items in your brick and-mortar stores. Create a themed “swag bag” with several other brands and host an Instagram giveaway by having followers tag three friends for a chance to win. Similarly, host a giveaway where those who enter to win agree to sign up for your and your partners' email lists. Austin-based metallic tattoo and accessories company, Flash Tattoos is always finding ways to collaborate with brands who share target audiences. Entries can be as simple as tagging friends in an Instagram post or you could go so far as to have people fill out a form to ensure you're capturing email addresses (and even additional information you can use to collect data). Keep in mind, the more involved the entry procedure, the more desirable you'll want to make your prize. Events: The Low Cost Way To Get Foot Traffic In Your StoreWant an even easier way to collaborate with other brands-without having to give away free product? Consider hosting an event at your store (or theirs). Modern Citizen, a San Francisco-based women's apparel brand, hosts a series of events both with and without partners to foster a sense of community while getting people into their physical store. For one event, they teamed up with Fashion Incubator SF, a nonprofit that supports up and coming fashion designers. They hosted an open discussion with the two founders and answered questions from the audience-which was made up mainly of their exact target demographic. The total cost of the event was buying donuts and coffee for 30 people (who each purchased $10 tickets to attend, the proceeds of which were donated to Fashion Incubator SF) but they were able to establish themselves as thought leaders and make sales from the shopping attendees did after the talk. Additionally, they sent an email after the event thanking everyone who attended and included a 15 percent off coupon code that expires at the end of the month, encouraging further shopping as well as a sense of urgency and immediacy. But what if you don't have a physical store? Brands everywhere are using popups to boost awareness and collect data in a cost-effective way. Whether it's renting a booth at a local fair or event or even creating a mobile trailer to determine the best location for your next (or first!) brick-and-mortar, temporary shops are great ways to gauge interest and build hype without breaking the bank. Build a CommunityMany brands are still at loss when it comes to Amazon. Is it better to adopt a, 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' approach, or try to compete as best you can with the behemoth? Building a community is small to mid-sized brands leg up on Amazon. They may provide same day shipping and low costs, but they don't provide the customer experience that's only increasing in importance for today's consumer. One team hyper-focused on building a community and showing their customers they're much more than a shoe brand is Freda Salvador. Through their mobile shoe trailer, in-store events, and collaborations with other brands, Freda Salvador is everywhere their customer is. Similar to Modern Citizen, the Freda team hosts in-store events that both increase foot traffic and brand awareness while simultaneously creating a sense of community between customers and the brand. They often choose tangentially related concepts that their target customer is interested in-like a flower arrangement workshop, a skin care workshop, etc. Since they aren't actually selling anything Freda-related at the event or even talking about their brand, this is a great way to foster a sense of community in an authentic way. Have a Backend That Supports Your InitiativesThere are so many creative ways to enhance your consumer experience but even the most well-intentioned plan can have the opposite effect on customer retention if your backend can't support it. These creative ideas are great ways to connect with your customer, but you first and foremost must master the most basic customer experience: getting the right product, to the right person, at the right time. If someone can't count on your brand for clear and descriptive product pages, easy checkout, and speedy delivery, you've already fallen behind. So, before you begin creating the experience of your customers' dreams, get organized and make sure you have the right systems and people in place. Stitch Labs provides brands with visibility into their inventory at all times and across all channels, allowing them to be more efficient with their inventory. Stitch connects to your eCommerce site, 3PL, and marketplaces to make sure inventory numbers are accurate and you know where a product is at all times. This level of control lets you not worry about inventory, so you can focus on what matters most-your customers. Conversion rate optimization is like the banana peel in those really cheesy video clips. It's pretty obvious it's there. We all see it. But we all know it will trip you up when you get too close to it. Because that's the punchline, right? Except tripping up on optimizing conversions for your business isn't such a funny joke. Not only is failure keeping you from growth, but it could also be pushing your business towards the red. And while you might acknowledge conversion rate optimization (or CRO), it's definitely not something you should be afraid of. Instead, you should chase it just as much as you do anything else in digital marketing, if not more. That's why I want to share with you some of the hard lessons I've learned from my own failures with CRO. I want to save you the silly slips that end up on your gag real. And shortcut your way to the real money-making deals. If it ain't broke, do I need to fix it?I sometimes have the question posed to me, in some form, whether I truly think conversion rate optimization is such an essential task. In short, yes. To elaborate, I believe that your business is built around conversions. The more often a visitor to your website's business completes a goal, like clicking through a landing page, the greater your chances are of making a sale. And when you have someone convert by purchasing a product, you just made x amount of money because of a conversion. Every click is an increase in the potential for your business to grow, so optimizing clicks is vital. So calculating your current conversion rates is the first step every entrepreneur should take when discussing CRO, and thankfully it's a pretty basic principle. In this example, we have three page visits but only two conversions, which means our conversion rate is at a strong 66%. It won't likely stay there as page visits grow, but you see the basics of how we calculate conversion rates. Actions divided by sessions equals conversion rate. Optimization kicks in when you take the same page you've been tracking and start changing elements to see if you can get more conversions. This illustration helps show the process. Variation A has a healthy 23% conversion rate, while variation B dips to 11%. This tells you that you're better off going with variation A for this audience. Your next step would be to find a new way to run this test with the same element, or change to a different area of the page and see what you can find. The more you optimize and combine your winning elements, the better your conversion rate will become over time. And the potential benefits of CRO, when done properly, are pretty astounding. I don't know about you, but a 49% increase in conversions would be a very impressive increase for my business. And taking the average revenue per visitor up from $3 to $4.50 might not sound like much, but it's a jaw-dropping increase when you start crunching numbers. But let's get to the meat of this issue. What can you do to streamline your conversion rate optimization and start improving revenue? I've worked on CRO projects that have generated hundreds of millions of dollars. And to help you learn from my successes and failures, I've boiled down the basics to help you understand what to look for and why you should look for it. Here are the lessons I've learned the hard way. so you don't have to. Lesson #1: Play for the long-termLet's get this out of the way now. All of this advice can help you generate millions of dollars in revenue for your business. But these results will not happen overnight. Or maybe even this year. The reason for this is that conversion rate optimization is all about long-term gains. When I first started focusing on building my CRO strategies, I initially thought I would see conversion improvements all the time. I was wrong. While I did see small improvements from time to time, the drastic jumps I had hoped for came infrequently. Even when I spent money on consultants, I would question whether my investment was worth the small gains I made. But then I looked back through my years of data and realized that there were periods of drastic improvement. And when I ran the numbers, I saw that my revenue more than made up for the price of my consultants. That brought me to a realization. This is all about long-term persuasion. CRO is not a get rich quick scheme. It's a be patient, work hard, and get rich scheme. It's all a game of establishing lifetime value. Lesson #2: Gut-testing will be gut-checkingI'm all for business owners following their gut when it makes sense. Just not when you're running tests. I have good reasons for this too. Mainly, you'll likely just waste your time and money with unnecessary failures that could have been avoided by a little pre-test data gathering. But perhaps more egregiously, you'll be ignoring the insight of your existing and potential customers. Alienating your customers is the last thing you want to do. The big takeaway here is that more data is better. If your ideas take less than five hours to test, there's a good chance that you're not devoting enough time to collecting the data that will give your testing direction. Which means you may need to spend weeks on gathering information about relevant ideas before you make a change. Remember how I said this was a long-term process? So gather as much information as you can beforehand to give direction to testing. One way you can do that is with a simple customer survey. Using open-ended, multiple-choice questions like this in a survey of your existing customers can help pinpoint elements that contributed to their conversions. You can then use that information to change the elements that your existing customers claim would have helped them. For example, if you get significant feedback that your landing page's headline wasn't a big factor in conversion, you may not need to test it much. But your gut reaction may have initially been to start with your headline. See what I mean? Don't just jump in based on your gut. Gather data and move with precision. And if you do want to start making changes immediately, I recommend using proven conversion optimization methods to optimize your conversions before you leap into testing. Try conversion scent methods for example, like with this retargeting ad. As you can see, this method maintains the “scent” of your digital marketing by creating and maintaining the same look and feel across all of your efforts. You can use this stylistic approach to help conversions and improve the consistency of your optimization testing results without making gut decisions. Then, when your data gathering is complete, you'll be able to test new methods. And you can even test the effect of a method like conversion scents as you branch out, too. Because it may not work best for you. The point is, you don't know until you have enough data to tell the difference. But for the beginning, my advice is to rely on best practice and gather data to inform your testing. You'll see more improvement faster by leaning on the successes of others and building your own methods on top of that. Lesson #3: Performance is importantOne of the elements I see slip a lot when businesses perform CRO tests is their overall site performance. What they don't know is that this can inadvertently skew their data and make their test results ultimately useless. Why do I say that? Take an element like load times, which are incredibly important for increasing conversion rates. When you let a load time bump above four seconds, you're already creating a huge spike in your bounce rate. Or, an equally huge dip in your conversion rate. And it's a fairly common occurrence amongst marketers to inadvertently increase load times when adding imagery, copy, or any other new element to a page. When Moz performed an extensive redesign of one of their landing pages, they noticed a significant increase in load time as well. To help mitigate the effect they used a few tricks to make it easier to fully load their page even on a slow connection. The results were pretty amazing. They were able to shrink their load time by 40% and provide a 17% lift in the overall performance of their landing page. All of this was based on one performance oriented element. Pretty wild, right? But load time isn't the only thing you should consider. I also see a lot of businesses ditch underperforming keywords and landing pages because they don't see a reason to put effort into an inherently low performer. That's a million dollar mistake to my mind. I think your underperformers are just showing red flags that call for a little extra attention. Take AutopilotHQ for example. They took their underperforming keywords and decided to revamp their approach completely. They created individual landing pages and performed A/B tests for each. When they spent some significant time with each, they saw drastic improvements. The kicker here? It only took a week, and they saw huge increases in conversions. So don't just abandon your poor performers. Give them more attention, and make sure none of the technical elements of your website are working against you. Lesson #4: Test your A/B testing softwareThere's an assumption out there that all A/B tests are created equal, but this isn't so When I first started A/B testing, I had a few strange instances where I saw drastic increases in conversion but no additional revenue. This wasn't because my sales process was flawed, it was because I had inaccurate A/B test results. How could that be? To be honest, I'm not sure why any A/B tester would purposely try to skew a user's results. You rely on accurate data to make informed decisions, so getting unreliable data from a test will just persuade you to use a different A/B testing platform. Either way, I always recommend testing the initial variation of your landing page as both elements of your A/B test to tell you if your A/B tester is telling you the truth. I call this the A/A test. If your results look even remotely different, like this graph: You should probably switch testing software immediately. Here's how you could do this on a platform like Optimizely. When you open up your dashboard on their site, you'll want to start a new test. Click on the Experiments tab, then create a new A/B test. Now, you'll need to fill in some basic information about your test and include the URL of the landing page you'll be conducting your test on. Once you input this information, you'll be back on a dashboard that looks like this: As you can see from my notes, you'll want to leave both your original and variation #1 alone. The idea is to test identical pages for their similarity, thus testing the accuracy of your actual testing software. To get started, you'll have to add a Metric. You can choose one metric or many. For now, let's just test a metric related to general page visits. You'll be given the option to track an increase or decrease in total conversions, unique conversions, or a few other options. Once you've added a metric to your experiment and saved it to the project, you'll be able to fire up the actual testing. Now, you'll be able to track the performance of your single page using the two “variations” we've created. Since they're the same page, you should get very similar results from both. They might not be exact, but as long as they're close, you know you have an accurate testing tool. And there are tons of A/B testing tools out there to choose from. Use one that's both helpful and accurate. You'll save time and money. And you'll be making informed decisions with the degree of certainty that only testing can give. Lesson #5: Test one variable, and only oneWhen scientists run tests, they look for something called “causal relationships” in their data. In simple terms, that means they look for how the piece of data related to or caused another in their experiment. To control the flow of these relationships, they will only change one variable at a time while keeping a “control” variable the same. But when it comes to digital marketing, I see the very common mistake of testing multiple variables all the time. It's even promoted as a winning feature by many testing platforms. I'm not so sure they're right. This practice is known as multivariate testing, or the idea that testing multiple elements of a landing page, email, or anything else can help you increase your conversion rates. My biggest grief with this is that it encourages businesses to test too many elements at once, thus nullifying any tangible results from the test. Here's an example from that shows how a multivariate test works. Let's say this is the original email. You have a very clear understanding of your email, its performance, and the tendencies of your audience. But on email B, you change both the time of day you send the email, the formatting of the email itself, and the subject line. That's three new elements. Not surprisingly, the results are different. It just so happens in this case that your open rate and click-through rate see a decline. Bummer. But now what do you do? In this case, they went with the original email for their final list of receivers. And what a win, they got a better response across the board. My issue here is that the final email is the exact same as the original email, but now you have a higher open and click-through rate. What did you learn from email B? Nothing. Because you don't know what caused the potential change. For all you know, one of the two lists is a group of outliers, and you can't trust your data to make a decision. I see this problem every time I examine data from tests that contain multiple variable changes at the same time. The data I got back was ultimately useless. And the further you dig into the logic of this, the more my point makes sense. If I change two elements and see a 15% increase, did element A cause the increase, or element B? Was it a combination of both? Instead of getting answers, your questions compound exponentially as time goes on with no actionable results. Change one headline. Test. Change one body of text. Test. Use this data to your advantage, and don't confuse yourself. Lesson #6: Remember your ultimate goal is revenueA lot of talk goes toward conversion rate optimization without acknowledging the fact that we're really focused on revenue optimization. You want more money because that keeps you in business and lets you achieve your goals. And even though it might negatively affect conversions, sometimes revenue optimization takes you on a different path. Like raising or lowering prices. Let's say you sell 100 products at $50 at a 5% conversion rate. That would make you $5000. But if you put that same product on sale for $45 and sell an extra 50 products, you just made $6,750. But you didn't change a single element of your landing page or email. You just changed the price. What I'm trying to convey (again) is that your overall focus needs to be on your long-term goal. Incremental wins in conversion rates will eventually lead to big wins in revenue, like when I helped Adore Me boost their revenue by $5.6 million. This means focusing on the big picture, or macro conversions over micro conversions. A macro conversion is a big picture goal like buying a product. Micro conversions are small wins like clicks and email address that don't necessarily equal revenue. If a test boosts micro conversions but not macro, find out why. If it's a permanent effect, drop your short-term gains for the long-term picture. If you keep this in focus, you'll stop your efforts from being bogged down in tiny details that are ultimately irrelevant. Lesson #7: Drastic changes = drastic resultsYou'll eventually hit a point where the low hanging fruit has been picked. Congratulations, you're now at a crossroads. You can either keep trying to provide minuscule improvements to your conversion rate and maybe see some revenue increase. Or you can start making drastic changes and take a jab at your own explosive growth hacks. If you've hit a wall, consider adding elements you haven't before, like video. They've had success, with up to 20% increases in conversion rate. This video from Mint is a great example of an “explainer video.” Or like when I changed my contact page on Quicksprout into an infographic about my inbox. These are the types of changes that get you noticed and can shake up your conversion rates when you've hit a dead end. It's where you can really input your own flair to help take your brand to the next level. ConclusionConversion rate optimization is only hard if you make it hard. If you can avoid the serious pitfalls that others experience, you'll be well on your way to improved conversions and revenue in no time. Just remember that this is a long-term endeavor. There are no overnight success stories here. Don't make gut decisions. Your data will beat your gut 99% of the time. Optimize your site's performance and take time to ensure your testing software is accurate and reliable. Don't fall prey to the quick-fix lure of multivariate testing. One variable at a time is the only way to get actionable feedback. Above all else, remember that you're here to improve revenue, not just conversions. The big picture always wins. As long as you make incremental improvements over time, your conversion rates will turn into multi-million dollar improvements. What tactics have you seen successfully improve your CRO tests? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. Your company is ready to launch a new product. This is an exciting time for you and everyone else involved. Depending on your industry and brand, you've spent months or potentially even years developing this product. As you approach the final stages of development, you're starting to get a bit anxious. I can totally relate to this feeling. You've spent so much time, effort, and money on this that you want to make sure that it's successful. If your new product isn't a hit and doesn't sell, it could be a crushing blow, both financially and psychologically for your brand. Here's what you need to realize. Your product may be outstanding, but if you don't promote the release properly, nobody is going to buy it. Sure, you may get the occasional sale from someone walking through the aisles of your physical location or browsing online at your ecommerce store, but that's not enough to drastically increase your revenue. There's no reason to wait until your product launches to start promoting it. That way the introduction phase of your product life cycle will have higher sales. Building hype for your new product will have consumers anticipating the launch. That way, you'll start to get sales immediately on release day. If your last product launch wasn't too successful, you might need some tips on how to improve your strategy the next time around. That's why I created this guide. It's also great for anyone who is releasing a new product for the first time. Here's the best way to build hype and drive sales. Identify your market segmentFirst, you've got to figure out who will be using your new product. This isn't the same thing as identifying the target audience of your brand. Sure, you already know who your customers are, but will all of your customers be using your new product? Here's a really basic and obvious example to show you what I'm talking about. Let's say you have a clothing brand. You sell a variety of products for both men and women. The new product that you're releasing is a sports bra. Obviously, the market segment here is athletic women. You can develop a customer persona to get more information about this segment of your customer base. Here's an example of what this looks like. This is really important for brands that have a diverse line of products. Not every single customer of your will be interested in the new launch. So it's a waste of time, money, and resources if you market to everyone and anyone who walks through your doors. Instead, take advantage of your customer information that you have on file. You may have email lists segmented into certain categories. Send out messages to the subscribers who fit the description of your customer persona. Work backwardThink about your end game and start there. It's an interesting strategy, but it helps everyone on your team get on the same page. It's always a great idea to follow the advice of successful companies. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, says that his business employs this strategy for new product launches. Write a mock press release. Explain exactly what your new product is and why you made it. Talk about the top features, benefits, and differentiation factors. Keep this description clear, concise, and to the point. Come up with a potential frequently asked questions list. What kind of problems, inquiries, or instructions would a customer have if they bought the product? Put yourself in the shoes of a neutral person who has no prior knowledge of the product and how it works. Will they be able to figure it out? Outline the customer experience. Determine how different people will use the product. Imagine every possible circumstance that the item could be used for. Next, write your user guide. This should be a step-by-step instruction page that describes everything the customer needs to know about how to set up, use, and troubleshoot the product. Once all of these steps are outlined, it will make it easier for your company to brand the product and make sure that it's ready to be marketed accordingly. Start testing your productYour new product needs to be tested constantly. It doesn't matter what it is or what kind of industry you're in, testing early will improve the final performance. This statement holds true for both physical products as well as intangible products, such as software. Testing needs to happen during each phase of development. Testing early will make your life easier in the long run. But it also has promotional benefits. If you can get your product into the hands of beta testers and focus group participants, it can start to build hype. You're killing two birds with one stone here. First, you're getting valuable feedback to ensure quality control. Second, you're getting the word out about the new item. These testers could be influencers within certain industries. They may have blogs, websites, or connections to people who do as well. If they talk about their experience on social media, you can start to get free promotion without putting in any effort. You should encourage your testers to do this. Blog about itBlogging has exceptional benefits for businesses. Promoting a new product is no exception to this strategy. Take advantage of your existing blog. You've got to find ways to talk about your new product without sounding too salesy. Your audience knows that you're biased, so you can acknowledge that. Say something like, “Obviously, I know I'm biased, but I've been working in this industry for a long time. This product is revolutionary and will change the way you do things.” Talking about the product in your blog will build anticipation for your regular readers. They're already familiar with your voice and brand, so they make be likely candidates to make a purchase when the item finally gets released. Take a look at some of the other benefits of blogging. Blogging about your product will help you generate new leads and get more traffic to your website. These are both ideal scenarios for anyone who is getting ready to launch a new product. The more traffic to your site increases the chances that you'll get more sales. You can also guest blogging as a strategy to talk about your new product. In most cases, this is free advertisement to a new audience. The website your blogging for benefits because they get new content without having to do any work. You benefit from the exposure. So it's a win-win for everyone. Tease your audienceSometimes the best way to build hype is to be mysterious. Don't give it all away in your first promotional campaign. People are curious by nature. If you tell them everything they need to know right away, they don't have a reason to follow up to get more information. But if you use teaser promos, it will stimulate their curiosity. Here's an example. In 2017, Sony released the Xperia XZ Premium. This product won the award for the best new smartphone at the 2017 Mobile World Congress. After winning an award last year, Sony released a teaser video to build anticipation for the 2018 MWC. The video is 23 seconds long and doesn't provide too much information. First, it shows and a hand, and then curved lines appear above it. Then the video displays the date for the 2018 conference. As you can see, Sony released this video at a perfect time. The promo aired one week before the event. This gets people talking. Are they releasing a new phone? Does it have a curved screen? People let their imaginations run wild. Now, consumers will keep coming back to see if the brand releases further updates. Promote your product at a special eventThis piece of advice piggybacks off of our last tactic. Big events are a great time to talk about your new product launch. You've got lots of eyes and ears on the event, especially if other companies in your industry are participating. Events will also have other media outlets attending. So the press can hear about your new product and talk about it on their blogs, TV shows, or podcasts. All of this is free promotion. It gets the word out there and gives people something to get excited about. In addition to pitching your product at an industry event or conference, your company can hold especially event that's only for your products. Apple does this every year. They use these keynote events to talk about the technology and features behind all of their newest products before they get released. During their September 2017, they used this special event as an opportunity to announce six new products.
As you can see from the list, there is a huge variety between these products. They've got new phones, watches, TVs, and operating systems. Since Apple does this every year, their customers are always ready for the events. The speakers discuss how all of the new products work and highlight the top features. Then, when the product is finally available for purchase, customers already know what to expect. Apple is an industry giant. So it's definitely not a bad idea for you to follow their lead and apply this strategy to your company. Add a video demonstration to your websiteYou've got to take advantage of videos as a marketing tool. I'm sure you're using it for other areas of your business, so promoting a new product launch shouldn't be an exception. 64% of customers make a purchase after seeing a branded video. More than half marketing experts across the world say that video content has the highest ROI compared to other content marketing strategies. Furthermore, 95% of information gets retained when it's watched in a video. This is ideal for a new product release. Since your product isn't available for purchase yet, you want to make sure that your promotional campaigns are memorable. Take a look at how Vantage Robotics uses this strategy to promote a new product on their website. They've got video demonstrations for how the product works. This is very important for certain industries, especially for those of you in technology. If you're selling a t-shirt, you don't need to really explain to your customers how it's used. But if you're selling something like an aerial camera that follows people around and records a video, then there is probably a bit of a learning curve. Video demonstrations help eliminate confusion. This relates back to what we talked about earlier, in terms of writing out your FAQ and user guides ahead of time. Your video can answer any potential questions. Plus, when people see your product in action, they'll be excited about the release and lined up to buy it. Use all of your marketing channelsDon't just use your website to promote your new product. Take advantage of all of your existing marketing channels. Exhaust every resource. Social media is a great place to start building hype. With the option for your followers to like, comment, and share your posts, it's a perfect way to get even more exposure. Plus, you'll be able to get more engagement when you promote your products on social media. Customers will be able to ask questions and hear back from you. Don't think that your marketing efforts need to be restricted to just a couple of channels or some posters inside your physical store locations. The more marketing channels you use, the greater the exposure will be. Start taking pre-ordersWhy should you wait until your product officially hits the market to start making a profit? Collecting money for pre-orders is a great way to build hype. Now, customers are invested. Making a purchase early shows them that your product is real and not just a concept. They'll also start telling their friends, family, and social media followers about their excitement. Take a look at how this strategy was used for the DronePhone. They market this pre-order as a way for consumers to be one of the first people to get this product. If you're releasing something that's groundbreaking or revolutionary, this is a really cool pitch. ConclusionDon't wait until your product is released to start marketing it. Start building hype in the early stages, even when it's still being developed. Segment the market within your overall target audience. Test your product and blog about it. You can use teaser videos to generate curiosity from your customers. Promote the product at a special event and use video demonstrations to show how it works. Use all of your marketing channels as a promotional method. Start collecting money with pre-orders. Once your product is ready for launch, make sure everything is working properly. You don't want consumers to experience any problems. Get your sales team ready. Your customer service representatives need to be educated and ready to answer any questions. Don't lose momentum. Keep promoting your product hard, even after the release. If you follow this guide, you'll have a successful and profitable product launch. What strategies is your company using to build hype for your newest products? What if there was a way for you to find your competitions most niche ideas without having to conduct an in-depth audit of their site? Wouldn't that be great? Just think about what it could do for your own digital presence. If you know what you're up against quickly, you have a clear path to create more nuanced content. So you'll be doing your SEO a favor. And that means more organic traffic and conversions. Sounds good, right? Hold on to your hats then. Because I have a secret weapon that can let you steal your competitors' ideas in seconds. It's 100% free to use too, which means anyone in any industry can use it. In fact, you probably already know the basics. There's even a good chance that you use the platform every day. That's because my secret weapon is Google's search operators. And here's why you should start using them immediately: What are search operators?Google search operators are commands and characters that you can input into your search bar that expand or limit your search. They can be used for just about any purpose, including competitor research. This really comes in handy when you have an abundance of information on Google, but you don't want to see what particular people have to say on a topic. If your competitors aren't showing up immediately in your search results, a traditional search won't be very helpful for research. And scrolling through every search results would take way too long. When nothing is showing up in search, and you don't have time to wade through all the information that's available, search operators are a lifesaver. How do you use search operators to find your competitions ideas? Search operators can be your friend for SEO, content marketing research, and many other reasons. Unlike many of the specialized tools that are available, these are ready to be used immediately by anyone. So to give you examples of how you can conduct research, I want to use a consistent hypothetical throughout this post. Let's imagine you're a small web design firm that helps marketers and wants to take on DIY, low-cost or free online solutions like Canva.com. How would you go about researching their content, marketing strategies, and audience? Checking out their entire site would be a chore. So would simply Googling “Canva competitors.” This might be helpful, but it's going to send you on a wild goose chase as you click through other websites. There are just too many search results. 185,000 to be precise. You would be scrolling for hours to find the links that actually lead you to relevant and helpful information. But what if you could simply pull up their best-performing pages in one go? That's where search operators help, and why I want to show you how to use them. Just remember that this advice is to help you discover and innovate, not just copy. Let's get started. When in doubt, use command chainsActually, one word of advice before I get started. The catch with Google search operators is that they can be tricky in application. And they're not always best without an additional operator or two to help them. So with many of these examples, you may still have trouble narrowing down your competitor research if you're using them alone. Command chains allow you to use more than one search operator to sharpen your results. These command chains will help you find an elusive page, or they could also act as shortcuts for the beginning of your search process. Whichever way you decide to use them, chaining search operators will help you get the results you're looking for in no time. As I go through my advice below, I'll show you powerful ways you can chain these commands and steal you competitions ideas. Let's start with a filter you can use pretty much universally. Command #1: site:Site: is a basic command you can use to find a page on your competition's site without having to wade through everything else they've posted. It restricts your search results so that they stay within the confines of a particular site, which means your results are hyper-focused. It's a great operator to use for when you want a quick list of actionable results instead of a laundry list of unusable sideshows. So let's say you're researching Canva and want to see only pages on their website. You can go to their site and click around, which might take a while. Or, you can input site: canva.com into Google and let it work its magic. Here's what you'd get: Notice all of these are specifically from Canva.com. And you'll also notice that even an absurd amount of searches in, it's still all from Canva.com: Which means no wading through ads, extra material you're not ready for, or walkthroughs on how to use some obscure feature. Just a concise list of pages from a single site. By quickly browsing through this list of pages, you can develop a shortlist of ideas that you can use for your own designs. But there's a flaw with the example I just showed you. In the example above you have design templates, infographics, a wireframe tool, and even more as your scroll. You even have pages in different languages, as well as 1.2 million results. That's still not very helpful in the long run, which means you'll need to start adding to your search. Let's say you specifically want to stand out in infographic creation. How would you research this? Just add the phrase “infographic creation” to the search bar after you input the site: operator. This is a much narrower pool of results at only 702. Now, you can browse through and find relevant pages to your specific search topic. By clicking on a post, you get a direct look at a few extra tidbits as well. Let's look at the top infographic post for example. You immediately learn a few things and have ideas for how you can reach out to a competing target audience. You also see how popular the article is in this case, and can get even more ideas by scrolling through the piece. Now, just rinse and repeat with the other top-performing pages, and you've created a list of targets to aim your efforts at. Simply putting the search terms “infographics” and “Canva” can lead you to the same results, but it can also leave you wading through tons of competitor content showing others how they can use Canva. That type of search doesn't provide insight into Canva's digital marketing strategy, so including the site: operator narrows your search significantly and helps you get better results. Command #2: intitle: or allintitle:The second operator command you want to look at is actually two commands that do roughly the same thing. The intitle: and allintitle: operator commands search for pages that have only your selected search terms in the title of the page. They're great for finding exact-match quotes or phrases that someone knowledgeable in your industry (like a competitor) might use as a headline for a blog post or landing page. Here's an example of how you can use the intitle: operator to get a narrower picture for your search results. Let's say you do a basic search for “infographic template.” Congratulations, you now have over 24,100,000 results to sift through. That should take roughly the rest of your life, right? You don't have time for that, so let's narrow the results by using our intitle: operator. That's better. You now only have 925,000 results, which means you've already narrowed your search by 96%. So you're already seeing improvement. The thing is, this still isn't very specific. And even though you won't necessarily notice, this search operator is only modifying the word “infographic.” If you include intitle:template, you'll get a different and much narrower result. Now you're down to 244,000 results. That's an almost 99% narrower field of results. Impressive, right? And you'll also notice this is the same result as inputting our second operator allintitle: infographic template in favor of the more obtrusive intitle: infographics intitle:template. That's just hard to write anyways. So you've significantly narrowed down your results to pages that only have your search term in the title. You've weeded out 99% of the sites you don't want to see, and can now browse through a specifically curated list of highly relevant results. That makes this is a great tool for finding other high-performing pieces of content with your specific keywords. It also gives you a benchmark for what you have to beat. But there's a way you can make the results even narrower. How do you do this? You add back in the site: operator. Let's get back to looking at our friends from Canva by inputting our first modifier. You just knocked your results down to only four results. There are too many decimal points in the percentage to share for that, but suffice it to say you've really narrowed things down. But you now have specific results about infographic templates that are native to Canva's website. Now whether or not these exact examples are helpful, the principle applies when you're doing your own research. If you're still getting too wide a pool of results with the intitle: or allintitle: operator command, drop the search down with an additional modifier. It's much more helpful for competitor research than a traditional Google search. Cool, right? Command #3: intext: or allintext:The intext: or allintext: operators allow you to search for a word or phrase, but only in the body text of the page instead of in the title. The allintext: operator, much like the allintitle: operator, will help pinpoint pages that have phrases or larger groups of text without having to type intext: a million times. That means you're getting a more specific look at copy and seeing where else they're putting content that points toward your specific topic. It's especially helpful in researching your competition's on-page SEO footprints and how Google categorizes them. Once again you notice that without a site modification, you're given a wide variety of high-performing posts you can pull from. You can see that your results are now based entirely on specific words and phrases that are in the text body of the page, including hints towards your target audience of marketers. Now, in this case, many of them are also in the title, but I'll show you how you can still use this as a tool for narrowing down our search to find specific ideas. Let's go ahead and add the site: operator command back into the search for Canva. You once again have a very narrow pool of search results, just 533 down from your starting point of 3.5 million. You also have a promising looking article that I've highlighted that gives tips and inspiration for the Canva user. When you click on the page, you don't have to go far to find out that this post is indeed for marketers. It's also well-liked, so you know you can get some good ideas from this post. Now all you have to do is scroll through, read the post, and take your competitor's best ideas and make them better. But notice that you didn't see this page on our previous search. If you hadn't narrowed your search to look at the text, you might never have flagged this popular post that's aimed at the marketing crowd. It's always possible you would find it, but with the right search operator input it was one of the top choices. Which means you saved a lot of time that would have otherwise been spent in frustration. Command #4: Exact search with quotation marks: “word”Our next command is another method you can use to find exact matches to a word or phrase, which is especially helpful for competitor keyword research. By using quotation marks around your keywords, you can find results that are an exact match as opposed to the broader spectrum you'll see with a normal search. It can be used as a more generalized method of finding sites that are targeting your exact word or phrase. Or, it can lead you directly to specific words and phrases on a site of your choosing, like a specific competitor. Let's see how it works on a search for “infographics for marketers.” These results are perfect because you can now see a smaller list of exact word matches in both the title and body of your search results. This is especially useful when you compare it up against a non-exact match search of the exact same phrase. The very first thing I noticed is that I was getting results for “marketing” vs. “marketers.” While you might say this is semantics, I see a very big difference in a generalized page for marketing rather than a specific page for marketers. My search results are already muddy, and I haven't made it past the fourth-ranked post. So I hope you can see just how useful an exact match for your search terms can be even for a more generalized search. But let's not stop there. You want to know if your competitors at Canva are targeting this keyword, so let's add our site: operator into the search bar as well. It seems that Canva might not be directly targeting this keyword, which means a few things. It's very likely that there's nothing more you can learn from Canva on this keyword, which is a letdown. Or, you can now see an opportunity to present yourself as a solution in opposition to Canva for your audience of marketer based on this keyword. Do you think you would have reached that conclusion without an exact match keyword? Probably not. You may have unintentionally ranked for a keyword like this, but now you have a clear decision on what otherwise would have been a shot in the dark. So use this operator as a generalized method of finding how others have implemented a keyword or keyword in their SEO footprint. Then go and attack the keywords you find with top-notch content. Command #5: Exclude Words: (-) or Add words: (+)Sometimes when you're researching your competition, you'll need to include or exclude certain search times to find the results you need. In those cases, you can use the (-) or (+) symbol to add or remove specific words in your search that you absolutely want to see. As you could probably guess, the minus symbol is exclusion. Say you want to find information about Infographics but don't want to see too many examples of infographics. So you modify with -examples, and here's what you could get: You're now given another potential source of infographic template sites, like Venngage and Choose MyPlate, which you can draw ideas from. You also don't have to search through an extensive list of example infographics that might dilute your search for more specific advice. On the other hand, the plus sign is the symbol of inclusion. Notice the difference it makes when you use it for infographics related to content marketing: This is our basic search without the operator attached to it. 1.1 million search results isn't too bad, but let's see what happens when we add our inclusion modifier. Now we're cooking. Only 146 results, which means we've once again succeeded in narrowing our results into a very curated selection based on our unique search term. If you feel like you're still getting too many results, or if you want to add in an even stricter modifier, you can add you exclusive term back in like this: You're now down to just six highly specific results, just like we achieved with our other search operators. By taking a look at this specific content, you can dive deep into your competitor's ideas and then innovate as appropriate. Command #6: Related:The last search operator I want to look at will help you cast a wider net and find more resources to draw ideas from. In other words, if you want to open up the playing field, use the related: operator. Related: gives you sites that are similar to a specific target domain. Instead of taking a hyper-focused approach, you can see who else is out there in your space trying to do what you are. You may find a good idea that helps you stand out from the crowd. So let's return to Canva and see if Google can help us find sites that have a similar model. Only nine results, which is a huge success. You now have a fresh list of extra sites that you can repeat all of this research with. Use the insights you steal from your competition to launch your own custom content and overpower your competition. Then rinse, wash, and repeat, because you know they'll be moving forward with you. ConclusionIf you're stuck in the idea generation phase of creating digital content, you need to get out and see what your competition is doing. But as we've seen, sticking to traditional search methods can give you watered down search results that don't give you an actionable path forward. Instead of stumbling through these results, narrow your research by using Google search operator commands. These commands will let you filter by site, title, text, or even find other sites that are related to your competitor's. You can customize your operators as much or as little as necessary to give you the best results. They can take your search results from a list millions to a single, highly specific page of results. Stop frustrating yourself with endless scrolling through your search results. Start using search operators to save time and start stealing your competition's best ideas. Have you used operator commands to figure out what your competitor is up to? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. I can't get no satisfaction. Aside from hearing it as the chorus in a rock n' roll classic, it's a phrase you never want to come from your customers. No customer satisfaction = no retention. No retention = shrinking customer base. And bad word-of-mouth. And plummeting profits. Yes, you need a great product. Yes, you need a competitive price. But the future belongs to the experience around your product or service, through each stage of your sales funnel. In fact, Walker Consulting predicts that experience will be the key differentiator by 2020. Not the price nor the product itself. It will first and foremost be about the experience – and customer satisfaction – you provide.
In essence, their satisfaction with your brand, your product, your service, your messaging, and more, will make or break you. Are you ready for that? In the 2018 Digital Trends report, Econsultancy asked which opportunity businesses were most excited about for the year ahead. The #1 response? Customer experience (aka CX). More than content marketing, more than mobile, more than personalization, and more than social. Experience – and by extension, satisfaction – beat out some very heavy hitters. The good folks at Walker also discovered that 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better CX. Businesses are going to focus on customer satisfaction and experience, and consumers are actively looking for those brands that deliver on the promise. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? But of course, you may have more questions than answers: how do you achieve customer satisfaction? How do you increase customer satisfaction? How do you define customer satisfaction? Let's dig in. What Is The Meaning Of Customer Satisfaction?Before we explore it in more detail, we need to define customer satisfaction itself. At its most basic, customer satisfaction measures how your product, service, and overall experience either falls short, meets, or exceeds customer expectations. How you measure it varies from business to business. Some may base it entirely on retention and repeat customers, while others may create a numerical value based on data and/or customer feedback. Regardless, it measures, rates, and attempts to manage how happy your customers are with you, your products, and your brand as a whole. Happy = good. Not-so-happy = bad. It's really that simple. Why? Glad you asked. The Importance of Customer Satisfaction in BusinessIt's obvious that satisfied customers are a good thing. However, it may be a bit harder to articulate exactly why. The short answer: companies that prioritize customer satisfaction grow and increase revenue. Those that do not, don't. So, are you prioritizing customer satisfaction and success? And if you're nodding your head, are you absolutely sure? Less than half of surveyed consumers – only 48% – believe the brands and businesses they buy from are actually doing so. Growth and revenue are key elements of a successful business. That goes without saying. BenefitsBeyond the growth correlation – if you actively work to increase customer satisfaction, you're more likely to see an increase in revenue – there are plenty of other reasons to make it a top priority. Take word-of-mouth, for example. It matters, especially in the ultra-connected and always-on digital world we call home. We can instantly share our experience with a brand with thousands of others on social media and review sites like Yelp. And aside from that potential reach, we trust and seek out online recommendations:
That's a lot of potential goodwill and positive publicity. But it works both ways. 60% of consumers share a bad experience with others – and they tell 3x as many people – compared to only 46% who share the good ones. The takeaway? You'd better do your best to ensure each customer interaction is a positive one. If you don't place a premium on relationship marketing and customer satisfaction, you won't be aware of problems or complaints until it's too late. Once the word is out, it's out. As the saying goes, you can't manage what you don't measure. If you prioritize keeping your customers happy, you'll a) reduce the number of unhappy ones, and b) know about and work to resolve dissatisfaction that much faster. Win-win. But the benefits of a customer-first approach don't stop there: Brand loyalty
Brand buzz Brand trust
Measure, understand, control, and improve. Customer Satisfaction GoalsSo, what should your customer satisfaction goals include? Hard to say. No one knows your business better than you. Your goals may not be my goals, and vice versa. Generally speaking, you want to keep things simple. Use the SMART goal system (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-limited). Set only 1-2 at a time (otherwise they start competing with each other). Write them down (studies show you're 2-3x more likely to follow-through). Keep them realistic. Your first goal should be to start collecting customer satisfaction data if you haven't already. That's a no-brainer, and we'll get into the how in a moment. Identify the problem spots, the bottlenecks, and the frequent complaints. After that, your goals may include reducing churn or increasing retention by X%, reducing the number of contact points with repeat customers, decreasing complaint response time, increasing the NPS by X%, experiment with different communication channels, boost the number of “completely satisfied” customer interactions, reduce shipping time, and so on. What would most benefit your business and your customers? Go with that. Learn How to Measure Your Customer SatisfactionNow we get to the meat and potatoes. It's all well and good to plan and promote customer satisfaction within your business, but how exactly does that play out in the world? Hubspot recommends a simple acronym to remember the steps: OCCAM (as in Occam's Razor, the idea that the simplest explanation or approach is usually the best one):
You can't get much simpler than that. Begin by asking yourself: Why? Why am I doing this? What do I hope to accomplish? What do I want to get out of this? A customer satisfaction survey is one of the easiest and most reliable methods for getting a snapshot of satisfaction levels around a particular element of your business (your products, your complaint resolution, your customer service, and so on). Popular methods include:
Next, determine who will receive your survey, and when. Immediately after a purchase? At the end of an online chat? A week after a complaint was lodged? Look to your goals from the first step for guidance here, as the who and when is determined by what you're trying to accomplish. The cardinal sin of data collection is doing nothing with it. Once you have the data, make sure you analyze and use it to make improvements. Otherwise, you've wasted everyone's time and effort. Some methods are easy to analyze – NPS is simply the percentage of Detractors subtracted from the percentage of Promoters – while others are more complicated. Many customer satisfaction tools have built-in analysis as part of the service. If not, a quick online search can provide dozens of tutorials and how-to guides. Surveys with a single question and a multiple-choice answer are typically best, but don't be afraid of longer ones with open-ended questions. They require more effort in both creation and analysis, but they also provide deeper and more varied understanding. You get what you put in. Once you have some insight, use it. Make adjustments. Unclog bottlenecks. Remove friction. Make it easy and convenient for your customers to get what they want and do what they need to do. That's the whole idea. 3 Customer Satisfaction ExamplesLooking for some inspiration? Here are three examples of the satisfaction game done right: In ActionTrader Joe's is a popular chain of grocery stores with 470+ locations. They have a truly remarkable return policy that puts customers completely at ease and removes all friction, especially those thinking of trying a new product. They will literally take back any product – even if it's open and/or partly consumed – without a receipt. No. Questions. Asked. The policy includes food, beverages, and alcohol. Don't like that new wine or beer? Bring back what's left, get a refund.
With a generous return policy like that, you can bet everyone is recommending them to their family, friends, and followers. Read or Leave a Review Click the upside-down triangle, and you can select the star-rating that matters most to you, and instantly read the comments left by those consumers that rated it as such. What problems did people have that resulted in a 1-star rating? What pros motivated others to give it five stars? Not only is Amazon collecting mountains of valuable data on customer satisfaction to answer those questions and more – allowing them to identify common complaints and issues – but they're also leveraging that data immediately as testimonials – both positive and negative – for those thinking about making a purchase. One-click. One stop. And that's one of the many reasons why Amazon is the king of the e-commerce game. Customer Satisfaction Survey Dashlane is a password vault and manager. Already one of the most popular in the niche, they're not resting on their laurels. This simple NPS survey was sent out via email to existing customers, literally takes just seconds to complete, but collects priceless data and makes their customer base feel warm, fuzzy, and appreciated (their opinion matters). The Best Strategies to Improve Customer Satisfaction and RetentionConvinced yet? You should be, so let's jump into some of the best strategies for better customer satisfaction and retention. Net Promoter ScoreThe NPS is one of if not the most popular strategies for gauging customer satisfaction with and loyalty to a particular brand. It's simple, easy to calculate, and boasts some excellent completion rates because it takes just a few seconds to complete. One basic question (usually a straightforward one like “How likely are you to recommend us/this product to your friends and family?”), and a scale from 1 (least likely) to 10 (most likely). That's it. Anyone answering from 0-6 are called Detractors. They're your unhappy customers, and they can do a lot of damage to your reputation if left to fester. Passives are those that answer either 7 or 8. They're satisfied, but not really enthusiastic. Your Promoters are those customers responding 9 or 10. They're happy, loyal, and frequently recommend your brand and products. Your NPS is a quick calculation: Percentage of Promoters – Percentage of Detractors = Net Promoter Score (a value ranging from a low of -100 to a high of 100). Just knowing your score instantly tells you how your customers feel about you. But you can do so much more with it: segment your customers into promoters (reward and encourage them), passives (what can you do to increase their enthusiasm?), and detractors (what issues are making them so unhappy?), collect “reasons why” (most services allow for a follow-up open-ended question about why they responded as they did), drive reviews and improve retention. The Likert scale survey can deliver most of the same benefits, too. Social Media MonitoringThe internet is awash in people talking about, well, everything. It's your job to keep abreast of what people are saying about you, your brand, and your products. You can't sit back and assume everything is hunky-dory. To that end, social media monitoring has become a keystone of digital existence. And there's a long list of top quality tools and services that do it for you (more on that below). Select one, set a few keywords and phrases, and start listening. The faster you “hear” that someone had a bad experience, the faster you can reach out and try to fix it. Likewise, the faster you “hear” someone had a great experience, the faster you can reach out and thank them, possibly offering some special reward or discount for their patronage. Listen. Respond. React. Ask for FeedbackAsk and ye shall receive. The simplest way to improve customer satisfaction and retention is to ask for feedback. Consumers are ready, willing, and able to provide feedback and reviews…if you ask them. Far too many businesses don't bother. What better way to find out exactly how they feel about everything and anything than asking them directly? It might be a message on social media, a short email, a pop-up on your site, a push notification, a link at checkout or the end of a chat, or anything else you can think up. The method isn't all that important. The asking is. Customers want to feel appreciated and recognized as individuals, not just dollar signs. Asking for their opinion gives them that, and gives you the concrete data you need to make good business decisions. They feel respected. They feel valued. And that's half the satisfaction and retention battle right there. Provide SolutionsAsking for feedback is one thing. But how do you use that to improve customer satisfaction? You provide solutions. If they're unsatisfied with some aspect of your product or service, it's easy to offer excuses and get defensive. That benefits no one. You need to provide solutions to their complaints. Shipping takes too long? Offer an express option. Customer service not available at midnight on a Tuesday? Launch a chatbot or self-serve help center. Their problems + your solutions = better satisfaction and retention. Try implementing these four strategies to increase customer satisfaction today. Not tomorrow. Today. This isn't an exhaustive list, but it will kick start things and deliver some quick wins to motivate you and make you hungry for more. Customer Satisfaction Tools And MethodologiesNo matter what strategy or method you're considering, the tools exist to make it fast, affordable, and convenient for businesses or any size or budget. Net Promoter Score Social Media Monitoring Customer Feedback Online Reviews User Testing Email Survey No matter what you need, a Google or Bing search will find you dozens of tools and services to get the job done. Then, do it. Ask the right questions. Make the right decisions. Are Customer Satisfaction Surveys Useful?Ah, the $64,000 question. Is it worth it? Short answer? Yes. We've already seen the connection between prioritizing customer success and revenue growth. That alone makes it a worthwhile exercise. Identifying satisfied customers allows you to nurture them into loyal customers using reward programs, special incentives, personalized content, and more. A focus on customer satisfaction makes you stand out from the masses. Not everyone is doing it yet. Make an impression now. Satisfaction surveys bridge the gap between what you think you're doing, and what your customers believe you're actually doing. For example, 80% of surveyed CEOs said they deliver an exceptional customer experience, but only 8% (!) of customers agreed. That's a serious disconnect. In 2018 and beyond, the customer experience and satisfaction is everything. What is The Best Way to Deal With a Difficult Customer?No matter how hard you try, you will encounter unhappy, upset, and difficult customers. How you deal with them will determine your overall success. You can't make everyone happy all the time. Don't even try. When a difficult customer crosses your threshold – digital or otherwise – follow a few best practices:
Of course, they are other tips and tricks you could employ in the situation, including some psychological strategies if you want to get fancy, but the steps outlined above are the simplest way to turn a difficult customer into a satisfied one. How To Treat Customers And Provide Them a Good ServiceWith respect. It goes deeper than that, of course, but treating them with respect at all times goes a very long way in creating happy, satisfied, loyal customers. In addition to that:
We could devote an entire post to this subject. Suffice to say, follow the golden rule: treat others as you'd like to be treated. You may be a business owner, but you're also a customer at other times. What do you look for in exceptional customer service? Do that. Common Questions About Customer SatisfactionThe quality of questions you ask determines the usefulness of the answers you get. You can – and should – ask questions about every aspect of your customer service:
Ask how well a product meets their needs. Ask about the most important missing features. Ask which features are most important to them. Ask them what one thing they would change. Ask if they'd recommend your business or product to a friend. Ask if they're likely to buy from you again. Ask about the ease in which they accomplished their purpose (make a purchase, make a complaint, resolve an issue). Ask about your competition. Ask, ask, ask. Ask questions. Get answers. Then ask why they gave that answer. Keep it short. A multiple choice or scale question with a short input field to explain why is about all you need. ConclusionCustomer satisfaction is your business, regardless of your product, industry, or niche. You must make it a priority. That's true today, and will only increase in importance in the years to come. Collect, analyze, and use data on customer satisfaction for every stage of your funnel, every interaction and touch-point, every product launch, and more. Pick and choose your moment, of course, as no one wants to be inundated with surveys all the time. But no area is off-limits for selectively surveying and asking for feedback. That's how you improve. That's how you grow. And that's how you turn customers into repeat customers and repeat customers into cheerleaders. About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. If your sales are starting to plateau or decline, you've got to come up with a new strategy to get a cash injection into the business. Even if your company is doing OK right now, you have to ask yourself whether your current business model is sustainable in the future. It's always important to analyze the trends and plan ahead. Are you utilizing a customer loyalty program? If you have a loyalty program in place, that's great. You've at least identified it's necessary. But now, it's time to make sure it's actually making you money. If you don't have a loyalty program set up, that's OK for right now. However, I'm going to explain to you why that needs to change soon. Even if you don't have a customer rewards or loyalty system in place, I'm sure you know how these work. You might even be a loyalty program participant at someone else's business. Basically, these programs collect consumer information, and each customer gets some kind of card, ID, or login information to track their spending habits. Members get rewards, based on how the program is set up, which encourages them to keep coming back. Punch cards or stamp cards are both super basic versions of a customer loyalty program. The local food truck outside your office might give you one of those cards and reward you with a free sandwich on your tenth visit, for example. As long as you can get customers to keep coming back and spending more money, the program will be successful. I'll show you different ways to implement this strategy. Why customer loyalty mattersLoyalty is important because it's easier and less expensive to market to your current customers as opposed to acquiring new ones. You've got a 60-70% chance of selling something to your existing customers. But you've got only a 5-20% chance of getting a sale from a prospective customer. Plus, acquiring a new customer can be up to seven times more expensive than retaining an existing customer. Furthermore, a returning customer will spend 67% more money than a new customer. All of these statistics prove why loyalty is so important, but now it's up to you to make it happen. If you don't act fast, one of your competitors could come up with a loyalty program that steals your customers. Here are some of the best ways to implement a customer loyalty program. Create a basic point systemLet's start with something simple. Point systems are a very common way to encourage customer loyalty. For example, every dollar spent earns the customer one point. Those points can be used to get discounts and promotions. Some of these point systems could have a cash value or be used to make purchases. You could even give the customer ten points for every dollar spent. It makes them feel as if they are earning more. Here's an example of how a credit card issuer uses a point system to encourage customers to spend more money on their cards: Points can be used to purchase electronics or other products through their platform. Customers can track their points by logging into their customer profiles. If they see something they want, they'll spend more money to get more points. Eventually, they'll redeem their points for the reward they want. It's a very simple but effective concept. You can easily implement this type of program into your business model. Charge an annual feeCharging the customers upfront to participate in the loyalty program is another strategy that has lots of benefits. For starters, you're collecting additional money right away whenever someone joins the program. That extra bit of cash can boost your bottom line. But you're also still getting the added benefits of customers coming back and spending more money. If a local pizza shop gives you a punch card and you're not happy with the pizza, you can just throw the card away and never go back. But that's not the case if you pay for a loyalty membership. Amazon Prime is a perfect example of this program in action. They charge customers $99 per year to become a member. One of the top benefits of being an Amazon Prime member is you can get free two-day shipping on your purchases. Prime customers will always visit Amazon first if they want to buy something before checking out other websites. Why would they pay for shipping or wait a week to get their package when they can get it in 48 hours at no extra cost? They already paid for the membership, so they might as well use it. There are other added benefits to this membership, like free TV, movie, and music streaming options. Use different program tiers based on spending habitsYou can also come up with a loyalty program that rewards customers based on how much they spend. It's one of my favorite strategies. Implementing this method accomplishes a couple of things. First, it encourages customers to spend more money. But it also rewards your best customers. A customer who spends $2,500 a year shouldn't have access to the same rewards system as someone who spends $50, right? The Sephora Beauty Insider program is one of the best examples of this type of loyalty system: It's a simple concept. Anyone can sign up for free to be an Insider member. This free membership comes with perks like a birthday reward and free beauty classes. Once an Insider member spends $350 in a calendar year, they get bumped up to VIB status. VIB customers have access to all the Insider benefits plus a couple of extra advantages. If you've got a VIB card, you'll also get a gift each month and a free custom makeover once a year. Sephora's best customers can become Rouge members. This status is only for people who spend more than $1,000 a year. It's an elite club. Rouge rewards members get free two-day shipping on all their purchases, unlimited custom makeovers, and invitations to private beauty events. Sephora even has certain products that they sell only to Rouge rewards members. If you want your top spending customers to get more rewards, you should consider this type of program for your business. Work with another brand to get more exposure for your loyalty programOnce you come up with a loyalty program, you'll need to find ways to promote it. Otherwise, your customers won't know it exists. But as you know, marketing can be expensive. That's why you can partner with another company to increase the exposure of both loyalty programs. You'll get free promotion every time the partner company pitches the rewards system. A great example of this strategy is the partnership between Delta and American Express. Here's a look at one of the cards on the American Express website: They are promoting a Delta SkyMiles card. The card comes with lots of benefits for the customer, the airline, and the credit card. As a cardholder, you get special treatment whenever you travel with Delta. Card members don't have to pay to check their bags and get priority boarding benefits. They also receive discounted in-flight purchases and extra bonus points whenever they make a Delta purchase. Points can be used to get discounted flights. This card is great for Delta because it encourages cardholders to fly with them as opposed to another airline. American Express loves this card because it charges an annual fee and can make money on interest. But the benefits help justify the cost and make the membership worth it to the customer. As you can see based on everything I just talked about, this strategy of partnering with another company also incorporates some other strategies I talked about previously. This program uses a points system and also charges an annual fee. So don't be afraid to mix and match some of these programs. Turn your loyalty program into a gameGet creative. Your customer loyalty program doesn't need to be stale and boring. Find a way to spice it up and add some excitement to the mix. You can create a game that encourages customers to keep buying from your brand. The more they shop, the greater the chances they have of winning the game. Here's a great example from Vons grocery store: They've created a Monopoly game for their customers. Every time customers check out at one of their stores, they receive Monopoly tickets. They take the tickets home and try to fill a board, which is issued by the store. The tickets and boards are completely random. When the tickets match the board, customers can get discounts, prizes, and even a chance to win a $250 million jackpot prize. This type of loyalty program is exciting. The best way for customers to increase their chances of filling the board is by spending more money. When a receipt gets printed at the store, it tells the cashier how many tickets the customer is eligible for. That way, the customers who spend more money get more tickets. It's similar to the loyalty program with the annual pricing tiers I discussed earlier, except instead of the spending being rewarded on an annual basis, it's rewarded based on how much was spent per visit. Create a loyalty program that focuses on your company missionYou can also come up with a loyalty program that speaks to customers who have the same vision and mission as your company. This is different from the other types of systems I've discussed so far. It also depends on the type of company you have. The TOMS' One for One campaign is a great example of this method: It's a simple concept. For every product purchased from TOMS, the company will help a person in need. The idea started like this. TOMS would donate a pair of shoes to a child in need every time a pair of shoes was purchased on its website. If you buy ten pairs of shoes, ten pairs of shoes would get donated. But since then, the program has evolved to help underprivileged people in countries all over the world in more ways than just providing them with shoes. The TOMS customers get a different type of reward. It's a reward of helping other people. Rather than getting points or getting gifts for themselves, the TOMS customers would rather help people who need it more. If your company has a mission or vision similar to this one, make sure you promote this to your customers. You'll still be able to create a sense of customer loyalty in those people who are in the giving spirit and want to help. ConclusionCreating a customer loyalty program is a great way to drive sales. It doesn't matter whether you're a brick-and-mortar small business or a global ecommerce platform, this strategy will help your company grow. That's because it focuses on customer retention. It's cheaper to market to your current customers than to find new ones. Plus, your loyal customers spend more money. Rewards programs keep these customers coming back. Try something simple, e.g., a basic points system. You could also charge members an annual fee to collect extra money upfront. Consider creating a tiered program that rewards customers who spend the most money. Partner with another brand or turn your program into a game. As you can see from the examples I've discussed, you can even combine some of these strategies together. If you follow these tips, you'll notice an increase in sales. What type of strategy does your company use to retain customers with a loyalty program? |
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