Running a contest or a promotional giveaway is one of my favorite ways for a company to connect with their customers. But like so many other aspects of business, I see too many people doing this wrong. That's OK â for now. While it may sound simple, promotional campaigns like this aren't as easy as just picking a name out of a hat. You want to run a giveaway that creates brand awareness and generates a profit for your company. When done correctly, this won't cost much at all. Contests can even generate some free advertising for your brand. This is especially true if you use social media as the platform for your giveaways. 89% of marketing experts said that social media increased exposure for their company. In addition to exposure, social media marketing:
That's what you need to remember. Giveaways are a marketing tactic. So if you're not using these tools to promote your brand and ultimately increase profits, you're doing it wrong. I've got plenty of experience in this space. I'll show you how to run a profitable giveaway and provide some examples for you to follow as well. Figure out what kind of contest you want to runAll promotional contests are not the same. There are three main types of promotions that you can do.
If you're running a contest, it means that the participants are doing something that requires some sort of skill and effort to win a prize. Some popular contests may include a photo, video, essay, or caption. The winners are selected by some sort of vote or judgment. Here's an example. The picture that has the most likes will win this contest. A sweepstakes, on the other hand, requires no skill, and it's based completely on chance. Winners get determined randomly. Purchases, payments, and other considerations cannot determine the winner of a sweepstakes. A lottery means that contestants made some sort of purchase or monetary consideration in order to participate. For example, buying a ticket for a chance to be selected would count as a lottery. Don't do this. In fact, state and federal laws have restrictions against these kinds of giveaways. So it's in your best interest to just stick to contests and sweepstakes. Before you get started, ask yourself if you want to just give something away randomly or if you want there to be skill involved. There's nothing wrong with a sweepstakes, but personally, I think contests are more effective. When your customers know that their efforts will increase their chances of winning, it gets them more engaged with your brand. Choose the right platformNow that you've decided whether or not you're going to run a contest or sweepstakes, it's time to figure out how where you plan to host it.
All of these are viable options. In fact, you could potentially run the same contest through multiple platforms. Select a winner on each one. That could get your customers to participate more than once and increase your brand exposure even more. Here's an example of a website contest from Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. It's very professional and well written. With that said, you don't want to limit yourself by running a giveaway solely on your website. How often do people visit your site? Probably not as often as they use social media platforms. That's why I recommend using social media as the primary platforms for your giveaways. It's a great way to establish brand loyalty. The people who follow you on social media are already interested in your business. Running a giveaway here will peak their interest even more. Plus, any actions that they take such as liking, commenting, posting, or sharing will get viewed on the newsfeed of all of their friends. Set a deadlineIt may sound simple or obvious, but you would be surprised how often I see this mistake. Your deadline needs to be clear, for a few reasons. Let's say a customer or prospective contestant wants to enter your giveaway. If they don't see a posted deadline, it could turn them away. This person may just assume that the deadline has passed, even if you haven't chosen a winner yet. You're missing out on a chance of getting more exposure if this customer was going to share the information on their social media platforms. Another reason you'll need to post the deadline is to avoid late entries. Pretend you're running an Instagram contest where the winner is selected by the most number of likes on a photo. You choose a winner but a few days later someone posts a picture that gets more likes than the one you selected. This contestant contacts you for their prize. Now what? You're put in a tough situation, and overall it's not a good look for your company. Adding a deadline to your giveaway is too easy for you to forget. Look at the example above. See how easy that was? Next time you run a promotional giveaway, make sure the deadline is clearly posted. It will save you some headaches down the road. Make sure the rules are clearPiggybacking off of my last point, you don't want to have any confusion while you're running the contest. Depending on your location, rules may vary from state to state. So you'll want to make sure that whatever you're doing falls within legal regulations. Here are some things are commonly included as rules for a contest:
If you're running a contest on a specific platform, make sure that you're compliant with those rules and regulations as well. Here's a link to the Facebook guidelines for running a promotion, which is definitely something that I recommend you review before getting started. For example, you must acknowledge that your promotion is not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated with Facebook (the company) in any way. Facebook also prohibits using phrases like:
So while you want to encourage posts and shares, just make sure you do it within the rules. Here's a snippet from TMZ's contest rules and regulations. The full page is much longer, but they clearly and thoroughly post everything to avoid any potential confusion, liability, or legal trouble. If you have a long page of rules, consider providing a link to your website for a full explanation. That's more efficient than trying to post something as long as the above example as your Instagram caption. The prize needs to be relevantWhat are you giving away? It needs to be related and appropriate for your brand and image. Let's say you're a company that specializes in snowboarding and ski equipment. Running a contest that gives the winner round trip tickets to the Bahamas doesn't really speak to your audience. Flying them out to a ski lodge in Colorado would make much more sense. If you're giving away a physical product, include a photo of it. Telling the contestants that you're giving away a new camera isn't as effective as showing them the camera. Here's an example of a giveaway from Ticket Master. It's relevant. You can buy tickets to sporting events on their website, so they're giving customers a chance to win a trip to the Super Bowl. Although they didn't include an image of the actual tickets, the Super Bowl logo is just as effective. Visuals speak to people more than words. That's why it's important to incorporate them into your promotion. Create a customized hashtag for your giveawayHashtags are one of the best ways to promote your brand on social media. So come up with something unique that speaks to your company as well as the promotion. If you're having trouble coming up with something, you can use an online resource like Hashtagify to come up with related tags and trends for your industry. Use that as a guide to create your own, but make sure nobody else has used it before, so there's no confusion. For those of you who already use hashtags successfully to promote your brand, make sure you come up with a new one for each contest. Here's a great example of how High Society Freeride used a unique hashtag to promote their giveaway. Notice how they effectively used capitalization, so the hashtag pops and is easy to read. #OneLifeMakeItCount reads much better than #onelifemakeitcount. The hashtag can be the way you find a winner of a contest. Just click on the hashtag to view all the pictures, videos, and posts. That's the easiest way to review and judge which entries were the best. The hardest part about using a hashtag is just coming up with a creative one in the first place. After that, it doesn't require any effort or money from your company. Hashtags can also increase engagement and make it easier for you to spread the word about your giveaway. Make sure mobile users can access and participate in your contestI mentioned earlier that you shouldn't just run a giveaway through your website. Keep mobile users in mind when you're coming up with this marketing strategy. Mobile users spend the majority of their time using apps. So consider using platforms that are strictly for apps. Instagram is a top choice for this. Facebook and Twitter also have mobile applications, which is why earlier I recommended social media platforms as the top resource for giveaways. If your company has its own mobile app, run your giveaway through there as well. You can send users who downloaded the app notifications of the promotion directly to their phones. Allow contestants to share the contest with friends and familyTo get the most exposure, your giveaway needs to be shareable. Earlier I mentioned that some platforms, such as Facebook, prohibit you from using certain statements to encourage sharing. With that said, you can still include social sharing icons on your website. Here's a great example of how Fatherly did this to promote their sweepstakes. Again, the whole idea behind this giveaway is to turn a profit for your company. Allowing users to share this content will drive more traffic to your site and potentially improve conversions as well. Notify everyone when you've selected a winnerThis relates back to what we talked about earlier about establishing a timeline. Take your deadline one step further. For example, the date for participants to enter your promotion may be the last day of the month. However, it could take you up to a week or two to go through all of the entries and select a winner, especially if it's a contest with lots of participants. So make it clear when a winner has been announced. Look how Starbucks does this to announce the winners of their red cup contest. Make sure you have the winner's consent if you're going to reveal their identity. All of that should be clearly outlined in the rules (which we discussed earlier) to avoid any problems or confusion. ConclusionDon't run a giveaway without a clear goal or reason. Like every other business decision you make, this will require some thought and planning. First, you need to determine which kind of giveaway you're going to run. If you want the winner to be completely random, you should hold a sweepstakes. Contests are better if you want there to be some sort of skill, voting, or judgment involved in determining the winner. Run the contest on multiple platforms. Social media works best for establishing customer loyalty and increased brand awareness. It also makes the promotion more shareable. Set a deadline and clearly post all of the rules for your giveaway. Make sure your prize is relevant to your brand. Creating a unique and customized hashtag will help you promote your brand and get more recognition. When it's over, make sure you announce to everyone that a winner has been selected. What do you do after that? Continue to run more contests! If you follow these tips, it will be profitable for you every time. What unique hashtag will you come up with to promote your giveaway on Instagram?
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Your company needs to be active on Instagram. Establishing a social media presenceis essential for businesses to thrive in today's day and age. But posting pictures isn't enough. You need to take your Instagram strategy one step further and take advantage of posting stories to your profile. What's an Instagram story? If you are unfamiliar, they aren't complicated to figure out. Users have the opportunity to upload videos and photos that expire after 24 hours. Some people think Instagram copied Snapchat with this concept, which to an extent is true. But regardlesss, I think it's an efficient and professional way to market your business. Here are some statistics on what can help you increase engagement: What can you take away from this? Use these tips when you're adding something to your Instagram story.
Keep this information in mind as we continue to go through different ways to promote your business with Instagram stories. How to post a story on InstagramFor those of you who haven't done this before, I'll give you a step-by-step guideto adding stories to your profile. Step #1: Click on the photo icon in the top left corner: From your homepage, you'll see this small camera. Tap it to proceed. Step #2: Take a picture, or select one from your camera roll: From this screen, you'll have some options.
After you tap on the icon from the previous step, Instagram will access your phone's camera. To take a picture, tap on the circle located on the bottom of the screen. If you want to take a video, hold the button down to record. You can add a video up to 15 seconds in length. Furthermore, you can upload previously recorded videos or pictures from your phone's camera roll by tapping on the small square in the bottom left corner of this screen. Step #3: Select a format: You've got some options here as well.
Normal is self-explanatory. Boomerang creates an image similar to a GIF.Hold down the button for a few seconds, and the clip will play forward and backward continuously. Rewind plays your video in reverse. The hands-free option gives you a chance to put your phone down to record a video. That's a great option if you're doing a demonstration requiring both hands. Step #4: Add a location: Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to access these features. You can tag a location or add other cool effects like the time, temperature, or other stickers. Step #5: Include some text: If you want to write on your picture or video, simply tap anywhere on the screen to access the keyboard. From here, you can change the color of your text as well as the size, angle, and location of it on the screen. Step #6: Choose a filter, and add it to your story The filter is optional. If you want to add certain effects to your photo, swipe left or right on the screen. Once you're happy with the way everything looks, simply tap the Your Story button at the bottom left corner. You can continue adding multiple pictures and videos to your story by repeating the process. Each part of the story will play in the order it's uploaded. See how easy that was? Now, I'll give you some tips for what to include in your story. Offer discounts and other promotionsConsumers love to get something at a good price. Give the people what they want. It may be the reason why they are following your profile in the first place. Since stories are posted only for 24 hours, it's a great opportunity for you to run a flash sale for your followers. Here's a great example from Paleo Passion Foods: This sale can be exclusive to your Instagram followers. Or you can use Instagram as just another channel to advertise an existing promotion. Try both methods to see what kind of response you'll get. You can try using different promo codes to see where your customers are coming from. Looking at the above example, this company could use a code LD20 for their email subscribers. Then, they can compare the metrics from this promotion with those of their Instagram story to see which campaign was more successful. Take over another accountReach out to other Instagram accounts related to your brand. See if they will let you take over their profile for a few hours. It will give you a chance to reach a wider audience than just your existing followers. But why would someone let you do this? You might have to give them an incentive. If they usually let companies take over their account to promote their personal profile, you can explain why your business is the perfect candidate for their next one. However, if that's not something they normally do, you may need to return the favor. Let them take over your account as well so they can get the same benefit. Just make sure everything is screened and appropriate before you post it. You can use other platformsto promote an Instagram takeover as well. Buffer Social promoted this Instagram takeover on their Twitter page. It's a great opportunity for you to get followers from other channels to start interacting with you on Instagram. Celebrity social proofLet's take the profile takeover strategy one step further. Instead of just posting on another brand's account or letting them advertise on your profile, you can get a celebrity to take over your account. If they promote the takeover on their personal account, you can get their followers to check out your profile as well when they view the story. Plus, this strategy generates social proof. Here's an example of how Shopifydid this on their story: Amber Mac is a Canadian television personality. She has nearly 25,000 followers on Instagram. By getting her to take over their story, Shopify potentially increased brand awareness with 25,000 new prospective customers. It's a great idea. People will take advice from people they know. Even though they may not know Amber Mac personally, if she stands behind something, it must be good, right? That's the power of celebrity social proof. Create mini versions of your website contentYou can use an Instagram story to promote other pieces of content on your website. Let's say you have a blog and you're trying to get more readers. Put snippets of the content in your story. Here's an example of how Real Simpleapproached this strategy: This story shows a sample of what their followers will see if they read the blog. It teases the viewers and piques their interest. But they don't give it all away in the story. It's a great technique for increasing click rates and conversions. Go liveInstagram lets you stream a live video story as well. Consumers respond well to live content. It gives you a chance to have a more authentic interactionwith your followers. When you're live, the viewers have a chance to comment in real time. Respond directly to those comments, and call out users by name. It's a great way for you to increase user engagement. Do a Q&A segment to encourage lots of comments on your live video. Once you finish, Instagram gives you the option to keep your video posted as a story for the next 24 hours. Take them behind the scenesShow your followers what your business is up to on a daily basis. Taking people behind the scenes will make them feel as if they have access to exclusive content. Look at how Happy Socksincorporated this method into their Instagram story: Viewers got a chance to meet some of the employees. It shows you're human. Nobody wants to support some nameless and faceless brand. Adding a human element to your marketing campaigns can help customers feel more connected to your brand. Earlier, I talked about how faces can impact how people feel about an image. Happy Socks definitely achieves this by showcasing real people in the office. Encourage user-generated contentUGC can grow your businesswithout you having to put in too much work. It's one of my favorite forms of social media marketing. The key is to get your customers to promote your business for you. But how do you accomplish that? Use your story to run a contest. Create a hashtag, and encourage users to post photos to win a prize. Look at how Starbucksdoes this in their Instagram story: This post will get users to share a photo that has the Starbucks logo on it. When these posts pop up on the newsfeeds of their followers, they could give someone the urge to buy a coffee from one of Starbucks' locations. Overall, it's a great way to promote brand awareness. It gets your name and image out there without costing you any money. Use your story to promote UGC. Launch a new productUse Instagram story to reveal a new product to your customers. You should obviously promote the release on other channels as well, but don't forget about Instagram. It will encourage your followers to stay connected and engaged with your brand. They'll know that if they continue to follow your profile, they will get instant access to new products. Look at how Instagram has surpassed Twitterfor marketing: Marketing experts have recognized how powerful Instagram's platform is. They are using it to generate profits. Make sure you're using all the features to your advantage, and don't forget to mention new products in your story. Run a sponsored storyIf you're willing to spend some money on social media advertising, you can create a sponsored story. The story will appear in your target audience's feeds. In 2012, Facebook bought Instagramfor $1 billion dollars. If you want to advertise on Instagram, you go through Facebook's platform. Here's a quick step-by-step guide to running a sponsored story. Step #1: Select a primary marketing objective: What's the goal of your marketing campaign? I think some of the best options are:
Consider those choices if you're having trouble coming up with an objective. Step #2: Create an advertising account: Before you can proceed, you'll need to provide some more information. Your personal profile may not be the same as your advertising account, so you'll set it all up here. Step #3: Focus efforts on your target market: From here, you can start to narrow down some general information about the consumers you plan to target:
Narrow your focus based on your brand's audience. If your company sells dresses and skirts customized for college sorority girls, you shouldn't be including men over the age of 65 in this advertisement. Be specific. Facebook allows you to include more filters such as:
It gives you a chance to narrow down your audience so that it's directly related to your brand. Step #4: Come up with a budget and schedule: Your budget will determine how often your story gets run as an advertisement. You can let it run continuously or select certain days to start and stop. Make sure you compare these figures to your company's marketing budget before you lock in a rate. You get charged per impression or by post engagement, depending on what you select. Step #5: Create your ad: Select Ad from the bottom left corner of your navigation menu to access this screen. From here, you can choose the format of your story. For this example, I've selected a single video. Single videos account for 25% of Instagram ads. That's it. Those of you who have some money to spare in your marketing budget can take advantage of sponsored stories on Instagram. While it's not completely necessary for all businesses, it's an option. ConclusionIf you're not using Instagram to promote your business, that needs to change right away. But make sure you're taking advantage of everything this platform has to offer. Instagram stories are a great way to promote your brand and generate leads. There are over 700 million peopleactive on this platform each month. This number continues to rise each year. Use your Instagram story to offer exclusive discounts or promotions to your followers. To increase brand awareness, see if another company will let you take over their account and post. You can generate celebrity social proof by letting someone with a large following to take over your account as well. Go live. It's one of the best ways to increase user engagement through Instagram story. Give your followers a behind the scenes look at your organization. This will generate a more personal connection with your brand. If you want to promote a feature on your website, e.g., a blog, give a preview of that content in your story. You can also use Instagram story to promote user-generated content or launch a new product. If you're willing to spend some money, try running a sponsored story as well. Do you think you'll use more photos or videos to promote your brand through Instagram Story? Your company needs to be active on Instagram. Establishing a social media presenceis essential for businesses to thrive in today's day and age. But posting pictures isn't enough. You need to take your Instagram strategy one step further and take advantage of posting stories to your profile. What's an Instagram story? If you are unfamiliar, they aren't complicated to figure out. Users have the opportunity to upload videos and photos that expire after 24 hours. Some people think Instagram copied Snapchat with this concept, which to an extent is true. But regardlesss, I think it's an efficient and professional way to market your business. Here are some statistics on what can help you increase engagement: What can you take away from this? Use these tips when you're adding something to your Instagram story.
Keep this information in mind as we continue to go through different ways to promote your business with Instagram stories. How to post a story on InstagramFor those of you who haven't done this before, I'll give you a step-by-step guideto adding stories to your profile. Step #1: Click on the photo icon in the top left corner: From your homepage, you'll see this small camera. Tap it to proceed. Step #2: Take a picture, or select one from your camera roll: From this screen, you'll have some options.
After you tap on the icon from the previous step, Instagram will access your phone's camera. To take a picture, tap on the circle located on the bottom of the screen. If you want to take a video, hold the button down to record. You can add a video up to 15 seconds in length. Furthermore, you can upload previously recorded videos or pictures from your phone's camera roll by tapping on the small square in the bottom left corner of this screen. Step #3: Select a format: You've got some options here as well.
Normal is self-explanatory. Boomerang creates an image similar to a GIF.Hold down the button for a few seconds, and the clip will play forward and backward continuously. Rewind plays your video in reverse. The hands-free option gives you a chance to put your phone down to record a video. That's a great option if you're doing a demonstration requiring both hands. Step #4: Add a location: Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to access these features. You can tag a location or add other cool effects like the time, temperature, or other stickers. Step #5: Include some text: If you want to write on your picture or video, simply tap anywhere on the screen to access the keyboard. From here, you can change the color of your text as well as the size, angle, and location of it on the screen. Step #6: Choose a filter, and add it to your story The filter is optional. If you want to add certain effects to your photo, swipe left or right on the screen. Once you're happy with the way everything looks, simply tap the Your Story button at the bottom left corner. You can continue adding multiple pictures and videos to your story by repeating the process. Each part of the story will play in the order it's uploaded. See how easy that was? Now, I'll give you some tips for what to include in your story. Offer discounts and other promotionsConsumers love to get something at a good price. Give the people what they want. It may be the reason why they are following your profile in the first place. Since stories are posted only for 24 hours, it's a great opportunity for you to run a flash sale for your followers. Here's a great example from Paleo Passion Foods: This sale can be exclusive to your Instagram followers. Or you can use Instagram as just another channel to advertise an existing promotion. Try both methods to see what kind of response you'll get. You can try using different promo codes to see where your customers are coming from. Looking at the above example, this company could use a code LD20 for their email subscribers. Then, they can compare the metrics from this promotion with those of their Instagram story to see which campaign was more successful. Take over another accountReach out to other Instagram accounts related to your brand. See if they will let you take over their profile for a few hours. It will give you a chance to reach a wider audience than just your existing followers. But why would someone let you do this? You might have to give them an incentive. If they usually let companies take over their account to promote their personal profile, you can explain why your business is the perfect candidate for their next one. However, if that's not something they normally do, you may need to return the favor. Let them take over your account as well so they can get the same benefit. Just make sure everything is screened and appropriate before you post it. You can use other platformsto promote an Instagram takeover as well. Buffer Social promoted this Instagram takeover on their Twitter page. It's a great opportunity for you to get followers from other channels to start interacting with you on Instagram. Celebrity social proofLet's take the profile takeover strategy one step further. Instead of just posting on another brand's account or letting them advertise on your profile, you can get a celebrity to take over your account. If they promote the takeover on their personal account, you can get their followers to check out your profile as well when they view the story. Plus, this strategy generates social proof. Here's an example of how Shopifydid this on their story: Amber Mac is a Canadian television personality. She has nearly 25,000 followers on Instagram. By getting her to take over their story, Shopify potentially increased brand awareness with 25,000 new prospective customers. It's a great idea. People will take advice from people they know. Even though they may not know Amber Mac personally, if she stands behind something, it must be good, right? That's the power of celebrity social proof. Create mini versions of your website contentYou can use an Instagram story to promote other pieces of content on your website. Let's say you have a blog and you're trying to get more readers. Put snippets of the content in your story. Here's an example of how Real Simpleapproached this strategy: This story shows a sample of what their followers will see if they read the blog. It teases the viewers and piques their interest. But they don't give it all away in the story. It's a great technique for increasing click rates and conversions. Go liveInstagram lets you stream a live video story as well. Consumers respond well to live content. It gives you a chance to have a more authentic interactionwith your followers. When you're live, the viewers have a chance to comment in real time. Respond directly to those comments, and call out users by name. It's a great way for you to increase user engagement. Do a Q&A segment to encourage lots of comments on your live video. Once you finish, Instagram gives you the option to keep your video posted as a story for the next 24 hours. Take them behind the scenesShow your followers what your business is up to on a daily basis. Taking people behind the scenes will make them feel as if they have access to exclusive content. Look at how Happy Socksincorporated this method into their Instagram story: Viewers got a chance to meet some of the employees. It shows you're human. Nobody wants to support some nameless and faceless brand. Adding a human element to your marketing campaigns can help customers feel more connected to your brand. Earlier, I talked about how faces can impact how people feel about an image. Happy Socks definitely achieves this by showcasing real people in the office. Encourage user-generated contentUGC can grow your businesswithout you having to put in too much work. It's one of my favorite forms of social media marketing. The key is to get your customers to promote your business for you. But how do you accomplish that? Use your story to run a contest. Create a hashtag, and encourage users to post photos to win a prize. Look at how Starbucksdoes this in their Instagram story: This post will get users to share a photo that has the Starbucks logo on it. When these posts pop up on the newsfeeds of their followers, they could give someone the urge to buy a coffee from one of Starbucks' locations. Overall, it's a great way to promote brand awareness. It gets your name and image out there without costing you any money. Use your story to promote UGC. Launch a new productUse Instagram story to reveal a new product to your customers. You should obviously promote the release on other channels as well, but don't forget about Instagram. It will encourage your followers to stay connected and engaged with your brand. They'll know that if they continue to follow your profile, they will get instant access to new products. Look at how Instagram has surpassed Twitterfor marketing: Marketing experts have recognized how powerful Instagram's platform is. They are using it to generate profits. Make sure you're using all the features to your advantage, and don't forget to mention new products in your story. Run a sponsored storyIf you're willing to spend some money on social media advertising, you can create a sponsored story. The story will appear in your target audience's feeds. In 2012, Facebook bought Instagramfor $1 billion dollars. If you want to advertise on Instagram, you go through Facebook's platform. Here's a quick step-by-step guide to running a sponsored story. Step #1: Select a primary marketing objective: What's the goal of your marketing campaign? I think some of the best options are:
Consider those choices if you're having trouble coming up with an objective. Step #2: Create an advertising account: Before you can proceed, you'll need to provide some more information. Your personal profile may not be the same as your advertising account, so you'll set it all up here. Step #3: Focus efforts on your target market: From here, you can start to narrow down some general information about the consumers you plan to target:
Narrow your focus based on your brand's audience. If your company sells dresses and skirts customized for college sorority girls, you shouldn't be including men over the age of 65 in this advertisement. Be specific. Facebook allows you to include more filters such as:
It gives you a chance to narrow down your audience so that it's directly related to your brand. Step #4: Come up with a budget and schedule: Your budget will determine how often your story gets run as an advertisement. You can let it run continuously or select certain days to start and stop. Make sure you compare these figures to your company's marketing budget before you lock in a rate. You get charged per impression or by post engagement, depending on what you select. Step #5: Create your ad: Select Ad from the bottom left corner of your navigation menu to access this screen. From here, you can choose the format of your story. For this example, I've selected a single video. Single videos account for 25% of Instagram ads. That's it. Those of you who have some money to spare in your marketing budget can take advantage of sponsored stories on Instagram. While it's not completely necessary for all businesses, it's an option. ConclusionIf you're not using Instagram to promote your business, that needs to change right away. But make sure you're taking advantage of everything this platform has to offer. Instagram stories are a great way to promote your brand and generate leads. There are over 700 million peopleactive on this platform each month. This number continues to rise each year. Use your Instagram story to offer exclusive discounts or promotions to your followers. To increase brand awareness, see if another company will let you take over their account and post. You can generate celebrity social proof by letting someone with a large following to take over your account as well. Go live. It's one of the best ways to increase user engagement through Instagram story. Give your followers a behind the scenes look at your organization. This will generate a more personal connection with your brand. If you want to promote a feature on your website, e.g., a blog, give a preview of that content in your story. You can also use Instagram story to promote user-generated content or launch a new product. If you're willing to spend some money, try running a sponsored story as well. Do you think you'll use more photos or videos to promote your brand through Instagram Story? Email marketing is an essential component of every business. But it's even more important for your ecommerce website. Why? It's one of the best ways to communicate with your customers. As an ecommerce business, you don't have the luxury of seeing your customers face to face like you would if you were a brick-and-mortar company. Sure, there are other ways you can communicate with your customers. They can call your customer service department or reach out to you on social media. But marketing expertsagree that email is the most effective digital marketing tactic. With that said, your strategy is only as effective as your message. If your previous campaigns aren't getting much of a response, you might need some help writing your emails. Luckily for you, I can coach you through that. No more bad emails. I'll show you how to write an ecommerce email that won't leave your readers shaking their heads. Start with a goalBefore you do anything, you need to establish a clear objective for your message. What do you want your reader to do once they receive the email? If you can't figure that out ahead of time, there's no way the recipient will take the action you want them to take. Here are some examples of goals you may want to consider:
The list goes on and on, but this is a good place to start. Make sure each message focuses on one goal. Don't overwhelm the reader. If you give them too many options, they may get confused and end up doing nothing. The message should have a clear call to action. Here's an example from Fab: This message has a clear and concise goal. Fab is trying to get their subscribers to download their mobile application. That's it. They aren't offering a discount.There's no special event. The reader won't be confused by this message. Obviously, Fab wants to start promoting sales on their app. That may be an undertone of the company's overall marketing campaign. However, the email doesn't need to get into all that. It's short, sweet, and actionable. A 2017 report on mobile usage found that90% of mobile mediatime is spent on apps, which means Fab's campaign is smart. Ultimately, I'm sure they believe this will help increase conversions and revenue. But for the time being, the message is strictly to drive downloads. Start with a goal, and make sure your message represents that objective. Your message needs to deliver value to the readerDon't just send an email because it's been a week since your last message and you think it's time to send another. While sending a message once a week may be a viable strategy, each email needs to offer value to the subscriber. If you're not offering any value, the reader may consider your message as spam. Here's an example from Huckberry: This message encourages the subscribers to invite their friends to the Huckberry community. Why would anyone do this? Because their campaign adds value. Huckberry is going to give away prizes to people who share this message with friends and family. If the message just said invite your friends without offering an incentive, the subscriber wouldn't see any value. The email would be useless. Can you promote your product while providing value? The answer is: it depends. For example, DODOcase was able to hype their product before launching it by promoting it to potential customers. As a result, itsold $7 million worth of products within 90 days of their first product launch. What else offers value to your customers? Look again at our first example of Fab. Even though they were promoting their mobile app, the message still provided value. It offered:
We know that 87% of Americanssay price is the most influential factor in their purchasing decisions. And 80% are influenced by the cost of shipping and delivery speed. Discounts influence 71% of American shoppers. What do these three statistics have in common? Value. That's what your customers want, so that's what you need to give them. Make sure your ecommerce email focuses on the value you're offering. Your subject line is importantWhat's the first thing your subscribers see when they get an email from you? The subject line. Your subject line is one of the top reasonswhy people would open your message: You have to put just as much thought into your subject line as you put into the rest of the message. If your subject line can't hook the recipient, they will never see the content of your email. Here are some guidelines for writing a subject line that will increase your open rates:
Those of you who struggle with catchy, creative, or actionable subject lines can refer to these points for inspiration. Look at how Eddie Bauercreates a sense of urgency with this email: It's the last day to get 50% off your fleece purchase. If the customer doesn't act now, they will miss out on the deal. Use this technique for your subject line.
You can use these phrases when creating a subject. I also highly recommend using storytelling in your email subject line: Here's how I did XYZ Say something to that effect. Stories engage the reader. Creating engaging contentis a top priority for marketers in 2017. Content marketing experts recognize the importance of stimulating the customer's curiousity. Accomplishing this in your subject line puts you on the right track to converting the reader with the rest of your message. Focus on your call to action (CTA)Earlier, I talked about the importance of establishing a clear goal for your campaign. The CTA needs to mirror that objective. Use words like:
Don't overwhelm your customers with the CTA. Pick one and go for it. Use a button instead of a hyperlink. Buttons can increase conversion rates by28%compared to a hyperlink. Check out this CTA button from De Beers Jewelers: It's clear, unique, and creative. It doesn't just say something boring like, Click here. You can use bright colors to draw attention to your CTA like Pizza Hutdoes: Green has nothing to do with the Pizza Hut logo or brand, but it makes for a perfect CTA button. This message also adds value, addressing the topic disccused above. Pizza Hut sends a coupon code with an expiration date to create a sense of urgency. The campaign encourages their subscribers to order food online. Utilize drip campaignsDrip campaigns make sense for ecommerce companies. They are also known as marketing automation, lifecycle emails, or autoresponders. Focusing on automation can make your life a lot easier. What's a drip campaign? A drip campaign is a series of emails that get delivered in a predetermined order to your subscribers. This is a perfect opportunity for you to contact your customers. Here's an example. Let's say someone makes a purchase on your ecommerce platform. The first message of your drip campaign can say something like, Your order is confirmed. Try something similar to this template from Fitbit: The message assures the customer that their order has been placed. You should always send a confirmation email to your customers. People are cautious when they enter credit card information on the Internet. Over the past 5 years, 46% of peoplein the United States have experienced credit card fraud. If they don't get a reassurance that their order went through safely, they could feel uneasy about your website. Not everyone who orders from your site is an email subscriber. But you should still ask for their email address to send them this information. For those people, you can include a CTA button that encourages them to subscribe to your emails. Join our email list to receive 20% off your next purchase. The second and third phase of your drip campaign will be:
Again, both of these emails make sense to the recipient. What will make your readers want to scratch their eyes out? If they don't know why they received a message. Nobody will question this drip sequence. Finally, you can send a fourth email in the drip campaign to follow up with the buyer. Include a customer surveyin the message to see if they are happy with their purchase. Surveys help create loyal customers, increase retention rates, and grow profits. Using the drip campaign method allows you to email a customer four times for just one purchase. All these messages will be informative and valuable to the recipient. Don't forget to send shopping cart abandonment emailsSimilar to the last point, shopping cart abandonmentmessages make sense to the reader. They won't be asking, Why did I get this message? The customer was shopping and was just a click or two away from finalizing the purchase until something stopped them. A number of things could have caused this:
These are just a few common responses. But you still need to send the email to remind your customers to check out. Sending this message will improve your conversion rate. You need to include this strategy into your email marketing arsenal. It's essential for ecommerce websites. The message has a clear goal: to finalize the sale. If you want to add valuefor the customer, send a promotional code to discount the order. Embed a video in your messageIf you're worried your readers might be scratching their eyes out because of your current email campaign strategy, I've got a solution: mix things up. Turn your readers into viewers. Don't make them read anything.Instead, send a video message. Your customers want to watch videos. Don't believe me? Well, the numbers don't lie. In fact, 43% of peoplewant to see more videos from marketers. If you're launching a new product for your ecommerce site, send your subscribers an informative video message. SproutVideoimproved their click-through rate by 60% when they added videos to their email marketing campaign. Your ecommerce site can do the same thing. It's a great opportunity for you to do a product demonstration or a tutorial. ConclusionIt's great you're utilizing email marketing campaigns for your ecommerce site. This can't change, but the content of your messages may need some improvement. You don't want your readers wondering why they received a message. If you're not adding value to the customer, they might unsubscribe, block you, or mark your message as spam. How can you write a killer ecommerce email? Start with your goal. What's the purpose of the message? Once you define an objective, keep the message short and focused on that goal. Emphasize your call to action. Your CTA button should be big, bold, bright, and not boring. Give the customer a reason to click. Your subject line matters. Customers won't bother opening the message if the subject line is weak and doesn't grab their attention. If you're unsure when to email your customers, set up a drip campaign that automatically sends updates after an order is placed. Send out shopping cart abandonment emails to help improve your conversion rates. Videos are a great way to turn readers into viewers. Try to include videos and other interactive emailsinto your campaign. Following these tips will help you keep your audience engaged instead of frustrated. How will you alter the subject line of your next email to increase open rates? I've previously written about how to use Kissmetrics to find which backlinks drive signups. I wrote that article because we all know backlinks are great for SEO, which is great for traffic, but what really matters is the quality of traffic you're getting. So, what that post explained was how you can use a Funnel Report to see who came to your site, and how many of them signed up. We then segmented that traffic by the first ever link that sent them to our site. It's a nice, handy way to use Kissmetrics to help provide some insights and potentially future campaigns. But what about the step after the first visit or a signup? What about retention? How do you find which sites are sending you the visitors that keep coming back? The idea for this post came to me from my own experience. I've been using DuckDuckGo (DDG) lately, and one day I simply entered weather just to see what would return. I saw that DDG uses a site called DarkSky, which is one that I've never heard of, even though they have the #1 paid weather app in the App Store. I liked the layout of the site, it's ad-free content, and the forecasts have been pretty accurate. Now I use it as my primary weather site. So this had me wondering if I was working at DarkSky, how would I know where people are coming from? And of all the traffic channels (direct, organic search, DDG, etc.) that are sending us traffic, how could I track that to see which sources brought the highest retention? In this case, we'll refer to retention as simply coming back to the site after their first visit. So, here's how to find that out using Kissmetrics. The Cohort ReportKissmetrics is full of reports that each serves a different purpose. Some can be used for analyzing customer acquisition campaigns; others can be used for retention analysis. And some can be used for both. The Cohort Report is primarily used to track retention (some even use it for conversion rates). It groups people together based on similar attributes and tracks their behavior overtime. In our case, we'll be grouping the people that have visited our site, and we'll group them by the domains they were first referred by. The set up is pretty easy. We'll set our conditions for those that have Visited Site and Visited Site. We'll then segment by the first referrer: KM Referrer is simply the referring URL that brought traffic to your site. If a visitor came to your site via a Google search, the KM Referrer would be www.google.com. If they came from the Kissmetrics Blog homepage, the KM Referrer would record as blog.kissmetrics.com. It's also important to note that we're tracking people on a week-to-week basis. This means that each week is a bucket. All visitors that came from Google in the last 6 months are put in the www.google.com bucket, then tracked each week. If they visit in the second week after their first week, they'll be placed in that bucket. If they don't return in the third week but do in the fourth week, they'll appear in the bucket for the fourth week as well. Now that we got that cleared up, let's run the report and get our data: So it looks like organic search from Google is sending us the most traffic. However, we see our highest retention is the 52 people that came from nytimes.com. To me, this data signals that we should spend more time trying to press coverage. SEO is always great, and it has good retention, but nothing beats the traffic coming from nytimes.com. So What Does All This Mean?Traffic is the first step. The second step is retaining that traffic by getting those people to come back. Find what percentage of new users come back (using the cohort report) and then see where you're getting your above-average retention (with a significant amount of traffic). That's where the Cohort Report shines showing you where you're underperforming and outperforming against your baseline retention. ConclusionTraffic is great. Signups are even better. But the most important part is retaining those new users. That's the only way to build quality traffic and an audience. So how do you measure your progress on retaining users? This is where cohort reports come in. Specifically, the Kissmetrics Cohort Report (which was the example we used here). It's segmentation flexibility (you can group people by whatever you track), along with our person-tracking analytics means that you get not just numbers, but also who you are retaining and where they came from. This post really started out to answer a question how would DarkSky (or any other site) know if the traffic they get from DuckDuckGo (or any referrer) is being retained? And, perhaps at a higher level, how would they know if they're even getting traffic from DuckDuckGo? I wrote that post to answer this question. To recap, in two steps:
Any questions? Let me know in the comments. About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is the Blog Manager for Kissmetrics. Email marketing is an essential component of every business. But it's even more important for your ecommerce website. Why? It's one of the best ways to communicate with your customers. As an ecommerce business, you don't have the luxury of seeing your customers face to face like you would if you were a brick-and-mortar company. Sure, there are other ways you can communicate with your customers. They can call your customer service department or reach out to you on social media. But marketing expertsagree that email is the most effective digital marketing tactic. With that said, your strategy is only as effective as your message. If your previous campaigns aren't getting much of a response, you might need some help writing your emails. Luckily for you, I can coach you through that. No more bad emails. I'll show you how to write an ecommerce email that won't leave your readers shaking their heads. Start with a goalBefore you do anything, you need to establish a clear objective for your message. What do you want your reader to do once they receive the email? If you can't figure that out ahead of time, there's no way the recipient will take the action you want them to take. Here are some examples of goals you may want to consider:
The list goes on and on, but this is a good place to start. Make sure each message focuses on one goal. Don't overwhelm the reader. If you give them too many options, they may get confused and end up doing nothing. The message should have a clear call to action. Here's an example from Fab: This message has a clear and concise goal. Fab is trying to get their subscribers to download their mobile application. That's it. They aren't offering a discount.There's no special event. The reader won't be confused by this message. Obviously, Fab wants to start promoting sales on their app. That may be an undertone of the company's overall marketing campaign. However, the email doesn't need to get into all that. It's short, sweet, and actionable. A 2017 report on mobile usage found that90% of mobile mediatime is spent on apps, which means Fab's campaign is smart. Ultimately, I'm sure they believe this will help increase conversions and revenue. But for the time being, the message is strictly to drive downloads. Start with a goal, and make sure your message represents that objective. Your message needs to deliver value to the readerDon't just send an email because it's been a week since your last message and you think it's time to send another. While sending a message once a week may be a viable strategy, each email needs to offer value to the subscriber. If you're not offering any value, the reader may consider your message as spam. Here's an example from Huckberry: This message encourages the subscribers to invite their friends to the Huckberry community. Why would anyone do this? Because their campaign adds value. Huckberry is going to give away prizes to people who share this message with friends and family. If the message just said invite your friends without offering an incentive, the subscriber wouldn't see any value. The email would be useless. Can you promote your product while providing value? The answer is: it depends. For example, DODOcase was able to hype their product before launching it by promoting it to potential customers. As a result, itsold $7 million worth of products within 90 days of their first product launch. What else offers value to your customers? Look again at our first example of Fab. Even though they were promoting their mobile app, the message still provided value. It offered:
We know that 87% of Americanssay price is the most influential factor in their purchasing decisions. And 80% are influenced by the cost of shipping and delivery speed. Discounts influence 71% of American shoppers. What do these three statistics have in common? Value. That's what your customers want, so that's what you need to give them. Make sure your ecommerce email focuses on the value you're offering. Your subject line is importantWhat's the first thing your subscribers see when they get an email from you? The subject line. Your subject line is one of the top reasonswhy people would open your message: You have to put just as much thought into your subject line as you put into the rest of the message. If your subject line can't hook the recipient, they will never see the content of your email. Here are some guidelines for writing a subject line that will increase your open rates:
Those of you who struggle with catchy, creative, or actionable subject lines can refer to these points for inspiration. Look at how Eddie Bauercreates a sense of urgency with this email: It's the last day to get 50% off your fleece purchase. If the customer doesn't act now, they will miss out on the deal. Use this technique for your subject line.
You can use these phrases when creating a subject. I also highly recommend using storytelling in your email subject line: Here's how I did XYZ Say something to that effect. Stories engage the reader. Creating engaging contentis a top priority for marketers in 2017. Content marketing experts recognize the importance of stimulating the customer's curiousity. Accomplishing this in your subject line puts you on the right track to converting the reader with the rest of your message. Focus on your call to action (CTA)Earlier, I talked about the importance of establishing a clear goal for your campaign. The CTA needs to mirror that objective. Use words like:
Don't overwhelm your customers with the CTA. Pick one and go for it. Use a button instead of a hyperlink. Buttons can increase conversion rates by28%compared to a hyperlink. Check out this CTA button from De Beers Jewelers: It's clear, unique, and creative. It doesn't just say something boring like, Click here. You can use bright colors to draw attention to your CTA like Pizza Hutdoes: Green has nothing to do with the Pizza Hut logo or brand, but it makes for a perfect CTA button. This message also adds value, addressing the topic disccused above. Pizza Hut sends a coupon code with an expiration date to create a sense of urgency. The campaign encourages their subscribers to order food online. Utilize drip campaignsDrip campaigns make sense for ecommerce companies. They are also known as marketing automation, lifecycle emails, or autoresponders. Focusing on automation can make your life a lot easier. What's a drip campaign? A drip campaign is a series of emails that get delivered in a predetermined order to your subscribers. This is a perfect opportunity for you to contact your customers. Here's an example. Let's say someone makes a purchase on your ecommerce platform. The first message of your drip campaign can say something like, Your order is confirmed. Try something similar to this template from Fitbit: The message assures the customer that their order has been placed. You should always send a confirmation email to your customers. People are cautious when they enter credit card information on the Internet. Over the past 5 years, 46% of peoplein the United States have experienced credit card fraud. If they don't get a reassurance that their order went through safely, they could feel uneasy about your website. Not everyone who orders from your site is an email subscriber. But you should still ask for their email address to send them this information. For those people, you can include a CTA button that encourages them to subscribe to your emails. Join our email list to receive 20% off your next purchase. The second and third phase of your drip campaign will be:
Again, both of these emails make sense to the recipient. What will make your readers want to scratch their eyes out? If they don't know why they received a message. Nobody will question this drip sequence. Finally, you can send a fourth email in the drip campaign to follow up with the buyer. Include a customer surveyin the message to see if they are happy with their purchase. Surveys help create loyal customers, increase retention rates, and grow profits. Using the drip campaign method allows you to email a customer four times for just one purchase. All these messages will be informative and valuable to the recipient. Don't forget to send shopping cart abandonment emailsSimilar to the last point, shopping cart abandonmentmessages make sense to the reader. They won't be asking, Why did I get this message? The customer was shopping and was just a click or two away from finalizing the purchase until something stopped them. A number of things could have caused this:
These are just a few common responses. But you still need to send the email to remind your customers to check out. Sending this message will improve your conversion rate. You need to include this strategy into your email marketing arsenal. It's essential for ecommerce websites. The message has a clear goal: to finalize the sale. If you want to add valuefor the customer, send a promotional code to discount the order. Embed a video in your messageIf you're worried your readers might be scratching their eyes out because of your current email campaign strategy, I've got a solution: mix things up. Turn your readers into viewers. Don't make them read anything.Instead, send a video message. Your customers want to watch videos. Don't believe me? Well, the numbers don't lie. In fact, 43% of peoplewant to see more videos from marketers. If you're launching a new product for your ecommerce site, send your subscribers an informative video message. SproutVideoimproved their click-through rate by 60% when they added videos to their email marketing campaign. Your ecommerce site can do the same thing. It's a great opportunity for you to do a product demonstration or a tutorial. ConclusionIt's great you're utilizing email marketing campaigns for your ecommerce site. This can't change, but the content of your messages may need some improvement. You don't want your readers wondering why they received a message. If you're not adding value to the customer, they might unsubscribe, block you, or mark your message as spam. How can you write a killer ecommerce email? Start with your goal. What's the purpose of the message? Once you define an objective, keep the message short and focused on that goal. Emphasize your call to action. Your CTA button should be big, bold, bright, and not boring. Give the customer a reason to click. Your subject line matters. Customers won't bother opening the message if the subject line is weak and doesn't grab their attention. If you're unsure when to email your customers, set up a drip campaign that automatically sends updates after an order is placed. Send out shopping cart abandonment emails to help improve your conversion rates. Videos are a great way to turn readers into viewers. Try to include videos and other interactive emailsinto your campaign. Following these tips will help you keep your audience engaged instead of frustrated. How will you alter the subject line of your next email to increase open rates? Get ready to see less #ad and #spon on Instagram https://t.co/un5dtLCGZV via @mashable #SMM11/2/2017
If you were Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, how would you structure your testing and experimentation process to drive growth? Let's look at what Bezos says about experimenting (emphasis mine):
As CEO of Amazon.com, if not the world's first, than certainly the largest, and the most successful e-commerce business (which by now is involved in industries far beyond retail), Bezos convincingly puts forward the case for adopting a test culture in any e-commerce environment. In this post, we'll look at how you can structure your in-house e-commerce CRO program and create a testing plan that grows with your organization. You might not be Amazon but why not swing for the fences? Plan to Fail (and Learn From it)The process of conversion rate optimization, or CRO, aims to make e-commerce companies more profitable by increasing the proportion of purchasers to total visitors. A structured process - encompassing research and hypothesis creation, testing itself, and the prioritization and documentation of those tests - is crucial to creating a testing culture that produces sustainable long-term results. In most of these steps, the need for a plan is obvious. But most people don't plan for the testing phase. In fact, testing is frequently regarded as an end in itself. However, testing is just the culmination of the entire process that stands behind it. Its real end goal is to increase revenue. In the same way that it's not possible to formulate and create tests without prior research, it's also not possible to run tests without planning. And moving from conducting individual tests or a sequence of tests to full-scale, constantly active testing is what separates a one-off CRO sprint from a thought-out, deliberate CRO program. Guess which approach is better for establishing a testing culture that enables companies to grow while absorbing their mistakes? Making mistakes and failures as an integral part of growth means embracing the main components of any learning process. Each experiment, no matter how successful or unsuccessful, is a learning opportunity for you and your organization. Implementing and integrating the knowledge that results from your tests is one of the primary tasks of a viable CRO testing program. Just a few reasons you should structure and document your testing program
All of this makes conversion optimization testing a pivotal consideration for any business with ambitions of growth. One of the most efficient ways to set yourself up for e-commerce CRO success is to establish an ongoing process within your organization, with a specific, dedicated team. This requires you to consider CRO not as an a la carte service provided by an agency, but as an opportunity to institutionalize and embrace the CRO process. And it requires that you learn to conduct tests yourself. Why is a Testing Program a Necessity?Note: If you want to test one hypothesis at time, you can go ahead and skip this section. Why? If you're running one test at a time, your testing plan and program will be the same as the hypothesis prioritization list (which we'll talk about below). There's just one small issue that may bother you - the time required to put all your hypotheses to the test. If you choose to go the one-test-at-a-time route, be prepared to spend some time on the journey. The best-case scenario, if you have 25 hypotheses to test, is that you're looking at two years of testing. Why would it take two years? The recommended practice is to run each experiment for at least a month (or until the test reaches significance and/or covers a few buying cycles) to ensure valid test results. Significance is a statistical concept that allows you to conclude that the result of an experiment was actually caused by the changes made to the variation, and not by a random influence. It's key to ensuring that tests are actually valid and that their results are sustainable and repeatable. Alex Birkett, Content Editor for Conversion XL, explains the concept of significance a bit more in-depth:
The 1-month rule above holds true for most websites. Those with exceptionally high traffic (ranging into millions of unique visits) will undoubtedly be able to achieve significant results within shorter periods. Still, to eliminate every outside influence, it is best to let tests run for at least a full week or two. Say you have 37 different hypotheses to test. Your ideal aim is probably to create all 37 tests and conduct them all at once, as an alternative to going through the process of testing one by one. Sadly, this isn't possible either, for a different reason. Sometimes the experiments themselves will conflict with one another, limiting their usefulness or even invalidating each other's results. Since none of us want to be old men when our conversion optimization efforts reach fruition, we need an alternative. That's where the concept of testing velocity comes in. Testing velocity is an indicator of how many tests you conduct at a given time frame, such as a month. It is one of the metrics of testing program efficiency and higher the velocity you achieve, the quicker your program will bring increased revenue. Provided, of course, you do everything right. The Building Blocks of Your Testing ProgramThe main elements that will determine the dynamics of your testing program are:
Let's quickly go through what each of these elements means. Traffic VolumeTraffic volume is an obvious obstacle, since your website traffic will influence not only what types of tests you can run, but also how many concurrent tests, and which pages will draw enough traffic to support tests. Traffic volume is the reason to prioritize tests that have the greatest projected effect. Tests with higher expected lift have much lower requirements in terms of the sample size/traffic volume needed to reach statistical significance. In practice, this means that if we expect a test to result in an increase in conversions of, for example, higher than 25%, we will need fewer observations to confirm this expectation than if we were expecting a 10% increase. This is the consequence of using a T-test as the statistical engine for running experiments: the smaller the effect of a change, the larger the sample needs to be in order to eliminate all outliers and reach statistical significance and confidence. Interdependency of TestsThe ability to run experiments concurrently is the function of each experiment's dependency on the others. What does this mean? The basic principle is that we want to test a new page treatment on the maximum available number of visitors. If you happen to set up an experiment that will filter people out of the next experiment, then you will not be abiding by this basic principle. If your visitors are split 50% on an initial page, meaning that half do not get to see the next page that's also being experimented on, you will not have a valid test result. For example, you may want to improve your funnel. So you create experimental treatments (variations) that will run on two different steps of the funnel. This may mean that the visitors that are shown one page do not get to see the other - because the experiment's outcome has influenced how many people get to see the other experiment you are running. Your sample will automatically be 50% smaller, meaning the test will have to run twice as long as it otherwise would have needed to achieve significance. To prevent this issue, estimate the interdependency risk prior to creating an experiment, and run interdependent experiments separately. You can sometimes solve this issue by using multivariate tests (MVTs), but sometimes your traffic volume will preclude this. Additionally, too many variants in MVTs can invalidate the experiment results. Did you know? With the Kissmetrics A/B Test Report, you can see how a test impacts any part of your funnel. Running a test on your homepage and want to see how it affects lead quality at the bottom of the funnel? Find out in 10 seconds with the A/B Test Report. Operational Ability - How Many Tests Can You Design and Actively Run?In an ideal world, we would all be testing all the hypotheses we've created just as soon as the research is complete! However, creating and running an experiment is hard work. It requires efforts from multiple people to create a viable and functional test. Once the research results are in and you have framed your hypothesis, the experiment won't just spring into existence. Making an experiment requires preparation. At minimum, you need to:
All this requires time and effort by a team of people, and some of the steps cannot even begin before the previous ones are complete. This is your operational limitation. You can overcome operational limitations by either hiring more people or limiting the number of tests you run. Adjust Testing for Outside InfluencesWhile it would be great if every experiment happened in a vacuum, this just isn't the case. Website experiments performed for the purposes of conversion optimization will never enjoy the controlled environment of scientific experiments - where the experimenter can maintain control on all other influences outside of the one being intentionally changed. However, we can at least account for obvious or expected test influences, such as holidays that affect the shopping habits of our customers or other predictable events that may change buyer behavior. By taking these factors into account when framing your plan, you can adjust for this and run the experiments at a time when the risk of outside influence is smaller. Even More Benefits of Creating a Testing PlanHaving a testing plan not only makes your CRO process faster and more effective - it has a number of important additional benefits. Let's start with the benefit that's most important in the long run. A test plan structures and standardizes your approach, making it repeatable and predictable. An active, structured testing process with no expiry date essentially creates a positive feedback loop, so that even when your testing plan reaches its conclusion, you'll feel encouraged to seek new challenges and run more tests. In the long run, this leads to the establishment of a bona fide testing culture within your organization. A structured process also allows for better feedback on the results. At each phase's conclusion, you can review the results, update your expectations for the next phase, or adjust experiments that failed in the previous phase. In effect, you're learning as you go. Finally, a testing plan just plain-and-simple allows for better reporting and makes a more persuasive case for conversion optimization as an organizational must. If you are able to report progress in monthly increments, with results clearly attributed to experiments (which were built on hypotheses, which were derived from research), you're much more likely to gain organizational support for your CRO program. A testing plan creates clear milestones and enables the research team to accurately track progress, plan future activities, and remove potential bottlenecks in deploying and implementing experiments. That way, the chance that the testing process may spiral out of control is completely sidestepped, and each team member's role is clear. How to Structure Your Testing PlanWe've just explored why you need to make a testing plan prior to actual testing - let's call that step zero, if you will. Now let's talk about the nuts and bolts of creating that plan. First, figure out what type of test(s) (A/B test, MVT, or bandit) you'll run. Test type determines how much traffic you need, as well as the development effort necessary to deploy experiments. Next, you need to carefully estimate the interdependency of your tests and make adjustments to your priority list if any tests clash with each other. Finally, to determine the number of experiments you can run, estimate how many you can effectively support with available staff. Take into account that you need to have researchers framing hypotheses, designers and front-end developers to create variations and setup the experiment itself. Since each of these groups will have a number of tasks to attend to, you need to make sure you run only so many tests that your staff can support. To ensure this, start by going through your list of hypotheses. If you prioritize tests accurately according to the effort necessary to deploy them, you'll already have many of the inputs for your test plan. Ultimately, your testing plan should take the form of Gantt charts, which are very helpful in indicating the time frame for each test phase. A test phase contains all the tests that can be run simultaneously. For example, if you discover you can run four tests simultaneously, and you have 22 tests to run based on your hypotheses, you'll have 5 test phases. Your test plan should also list every proposed test and provide the following concise information for each:
If you structure your testing plan this way, you will maximize your test velocity and allow for maximum efficiency of your optimization program. How to Prioritize and Assign Testing TasksOnce you create and structure a plan, the only remaining ingredient necessary for success is to actually run through the process. Obviously, both to secure the greatest possible revenue and to create initial confidence, the first tests you run should be those you expect to have the greatest effect. Select the hypotheses that have high importance (for example, issues that affect your users' movement through the funnel); that you are most confident will work; and that require the least effort to implement. You can choose a prioritization model to apply to hypotheses during the research process. Apply the model properly and if your estimates are correct, you will almost certainly get the results you're looking for. For each experiment to succeed, you need to translate hypothetical solutions into practical web page designs as accurately as you can. When you have a mental image of the variation you want to test, translate that into a visual image using a wireframe or mockup. Hand that off to your designers, who can turn it into an actual web page. While the visual design is being prepared, your front-end developers need to check if any additional coding will be necessary to implement the variation. The most important part of implementing an experiment is to ensure that it's set up free of any technical issues. Do this by making quality-assurance protocols and checks part of your testing program. Once a given step in the experiment development cycle is complete, staff involved with that step can immediately start working on the following experiment. Having a plan enables them to advance further without any delay, and adds to the efficiency of your conversion optimization effort. Establishing a Culture of ExperimentationBuilding a testing culture is the main objective of a structured CRO process. A testing culture requires the company to make a switch from a risk-averse and slow-decision-making mindset to a faster, risk-taking approach. This is possible because testing enables you to make decisions based on measurable, known quantities - in effect reducing your risk. Extensive research is a necessary prerequisite of successful A/B testing (which is something that hopefully, a majority of people involved in testing already understand)! Suffice it to say that the role of research is well publicized, and there are a number of articles about it. We will also assume that by now, you know how to frame a hypothesis from this research. The hypothesis creation process is just as important to the ultimate success of your CRO effort as running the tests themselves. Only properly framed, strong hypotheses will result in conclusive A/B tests. In a structured CRO effort, no element should be left to chance. Extend the same careful treatment to actual testing as you afford to research and hypothesis creation. Once you've properly prioritized your hypotheses by the effort each will take, their importance, and their expected effect, you need to prepare your tests with the same forethought. How you approach setting up your testing program will greatly impact your end results. The aim of every good testing program is to attain the maximum test velocity and see meaningful test results in the shortest possible time. About the Author: Edin abanovi is a senior CRO consultant working for Objeqt. He helps e-commerce stores improve their conversion rates through analytics, scientific research, and A/B testing. Edin is passionate about analytics and conversion rate optimization, but for fun, he likes reading history books. He can help you grow your e-commerce business using Objeqt's tailored, data-driven CRO methodology. Get in touch if you want someone to take care of your CRO efforts. |
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