Snapchat invented its best products by being the anti-Facebook. Its disappearing chats made visual communication quick and casual compared to Facebook’s email-esque text messages. Stories ditched the likes and permanacy so you could share your raw moments in the now, instead of just the life highlights that define you forever on your Facebook Timeline. Read More
This week Amazon took the wraps off a new incarnation of its Alexa voice assistant, giving the AI an eye so it can see as well as speak and hear. The Echo Look also contains a depth sensor that’s being used, in the first instance, to create a bokeh effect for a hands-free style selfies feature that Amazon is hoping will sell the device to fashion lovers, by making their outfits pop… Read More
Jack Dorsey is at it again — after purchasing $7 million in Twitter stock back in February, the Twitter CEO bought another $9.5 million today. After making his purchase, Dorsey posted the news on Facebook Twitter, sparking a one percent gain in the company’s after share price in after-hours trading. According to an SEC filing, Dorsey purchased 574,002 shares of Twitter stock… Read More
Tinder users have many motives for uploading their likeness to the dating app. But contributing a facial biometric to a downloadable dataset for training convolutional neural networks probably wasn’t top of their list when they signed up to swipe. Read More
Here’s an interesting change: Tumblr’s iOS application just received an update which now lets you turn on or off adult-oriented, NSFW search results just by toggling a switch in iOS’s Settings. That’s right: you can now switch on or off the Tumblr porn with ease. Weirder still, Tumblr’s note about the change in the App Store update text says this was… Read More
Facebook is aggressively pursuing the international and developing world markets Snapchat hasn’t prioritized. Facebook Lite recently hit 200 million users, and Instagram just rolled out offline mode for Android. Now after launching Messenger Lite for Android in five countries in October, it’s expanding to 150 more, including Vietnam, Nigeria, Peru, Turkey, Germany, Japan and the… Read More
Facebook finally has a better solution to freebooting — the common practice of stealing video and uploading it to one’s Facebook Page to reap the engagement and audience growth. This way if an infringing video includes a new mid-roll ad break Facebook is testing, the revenue will be sent to the content’s owner instead of the uploader who stole it. Read More
Alphabet’s advertising business seems to be following the same pattern these days — but its operations beyond that look like they are beginning to grow into strong businesses in their own right. The company reported its first-quarter earnings today that outperformed what Wall Street expected, with its advertising business once again continuing to generate an enormous amount of… Read More
Snapchat will no longer show that annoying white border around old photos that you share from Memories. Previously, if you shared a photo from Memories that was more than 24 hours old it would have a white border around the image. While Snapchat’s goal was to remind viewers that this older content wasn’t truly ephemeral, the ugly border ended up annoying users who didn’t… Read More Facebook is aggressively pursuing the international and developing world markets Snapchat hasn’t prioritized. Facebook Lite recently hit 200 million users, and Instagram just rolled out offline mode for Android. Now after launching Messenger Lite for Android in five countries in October, it’s expanding to 150 more, including Vietnam, Nigeria, Peru, Turkey, Germany, Japan and the… Read More Facebook is aggressively pursuing the international and developing world markets Snapchat hasn’t prioritized. Facebook Lite recently hit 200 million users, and Instagram just rolled out offline mode for Android. Now after launching Messenger Lite for Android in 5 countries in October, it’s expanding to 150 more including Vietnam, Nigeria, Peru, Turkey, Germany, Japan, and the… Read More
Facebook today released its latest report on global government requests for the second half of 2016, noting there has been a 9 percent increase in requests for user account data compared with the earlier part of that year, but a 28 percent decrease in content restrictions for violating local law. However, that latter decrease doesn’t necessarily indicate that content… Read More
Today’s Stories Instagram’s growth speeds up as it hits 700 million users Twitter desperately needed a hit first-quarter and somehow managed to deliver Amazon’s new Echo Look has a built-in camera for style selfies Uber is making it easier to see your rider rating Investor Chris Sacca is retiring from venture capital Credits Written and Hosted by: Anthony Ha Filmed… Read More
The UK government has criticized Twitter for restricting police and intelligence agency access to data which it says could be used to identify terrorist plots, according to the Telegraph newspaper. Read MoreCreativity (cre·a·tiv·i·ty)
krēāˈtivədē
noun
Creativity may not immediately seem incredibly relevant to CRO. After all, CRO is often thought of as a study in best practices and procedural experimentation.
Today, I’d like to challenge you to look a little deeper.
Following best practices does matter of course. You should absolutely continue to optimize your pages with A/B testing, focusing on message-match and ensure your CTA’s are clear and concise.
But there are a number of interesting and entirely useful ways that you can “shake the trees” so to speak.
Let’s take a closer look at how you can flex your creative muscle to increase conversions.
One word. Oversaturation.
Users are increasingly “blind” to traditional forms of advertising. Just take a look at banner ads.
Users are essentially numb to them, and have been for a long time. In fact, studies show that users generally don’t even give site siderails a single consideration. I know I don’t, and I bet you don’t either.
This study showed that across all mediums and placements, CTR on banners lands somewhere around .05%. Yikes.
Same goes for spam emails, banners, popups… the list goes on.
I’m not saying these tactics don’t work, remarkably some of them still do. Banners are still valuable to expose new audiences to your brand identity even if they don’t garner clicks. Popups can still gather leads when implemented appropriately.
My point is, they’re no longer “fresh” enough to grab someone’s attention and create a memorable experience.
This is why leveraging creativity matters now more than ever. Without further ado, here are three wacky ways to do just that.
“Just be yourself.”
I know, I know. This sounds like the advice Mom gave you before you went to summer camp. How’d it work out for you then? Stolen lunch money? Teasing?
While there are some potential downsides to being unique, particularly when surrounded by kids or teenagers, the perks can be pretty fantastic as well.
I’d go so far as to say that in the business world, being memorable is worth its weight in gold.
Many customers make buying decisions based off emotional responses to brands. Whether it be to an ad, an email, or maybe a customer review they saw on YouTube.
The brands that tell compelling and memorable stories are the ones that land the most sales.
By being memorable and evoking a positive response from leads, you too can capitalize on this. A few ways to accomplish this…
Sticking out like a sore thumb is a good thing when it comes to converting leads. Making a lasting impression and being personable will endear your brand to leads.
Remember, you always want to view your digital funnel from the eyes of the visitor.
Discerning visitors have an inherent sense of authenticity. If you’re genuine with your approach to your product or service, that will come across loud and clear, and in turn builds trust.
The icing on the cake? The more a lead trusts you, the more likely they are to convert.
TLDR: Developing your brand’s unique voice and “personality” encourages consumer trust, which in turns produces sales.
We all know that email is massively effective when it comes to converting leads. It’s safe to assume each and everyone of you reading this tracks email signups as “goals” in your analytics platform of choice.
Hell, at RankPay we even have a tradition of lining up for high-fives when our MailChimp subscription level increases.
Here’s the problem with emailing nowadays: Email users, aka the vast majority of people, are increasingly savvy as to what constitutes something of value in their inbox. You can’t just send an email with any old subject header and expect a double-digit open rate.
It’s time again to bust out our creativity and buck the trend.
In short, we want to be the unforgettable brand that’s unique but not bizarre enough to be off-putting.
For instance, I recently landed an opportunity by breaking all of the rules. Even the ones deliberately laid out in the denial letter I first received.
With this in mind, start by taking a closer look at your own lead nurturing email campaigns. Are the subject lines innovative, quirky or unique? Do they have any personality?
Have some fun and try A/B testing novel subject lines where you let your personality shine through. Note that it’s OK if you hear your brain protesting…
“Play it safe! What are you doing? Best practices are established. You can’t go rogue like this!”
But do it. Click send. That quirky but endearing email subject line might be just what the doctor ordered.
When you have fun, your audience will recognize this intuitively. Smiles are infectious. Positive brand associations mean more conversions.
Every chance you have to put words in front of your leads, is a chance to sell them on your solution. But without appealing to a lead’s emotions, we’re wasting these opportunities.
It’s understandable that us marketers occasionally struggle with this part. We become intimately familiar with our products and services, and it can become difficult to see the forest for the trees. That is to say that we lose sight of what a customer journey looks like from the prospect’s point of view.
One negative outcome of this lack of perspective can be uninspired copywriting. No need to be hard on yourself, it happens to all of us! Present company included.
Just the other day I caught myself writing a headline for a lead-nurturing email as follows: “The Best SEO Service for Small Businesses”. That’s all well and good. It’s a fairly standard headline in that it clearly highlights our company’s service and our target audience. But it’s not memorable and I’m not sure it will truly “connect” with readers.
Luckily I realized it, and took a step back to brainstorm. In the end, I decided to go with “The easy, affordable way to earn higher rankings.” This version has a lot going for it.
And again, I’d point out that being memorable matters. Generic = forgettable. Unique = memorable.
Let’s take a look at a few places you can put this to work for your business.
Day in and day out I see brands without a good catch phrase.
Look at it this way: every single person is inundated with brand exposures from the moment they wake up. Some studies show individuals being exposed to literally thousands of ads each day.
Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today. – New York Times
The thing is, there’s only so much room in our brains to remember all of these brand impressions. It’s thus critical that we aim to be one of the few brands that leaves a truly lasting impression.
When I’m helping clients develop these “quick pitches”, my process looks like this:
It’s so simple it hurts. But at the end of the day, it works.
When it comes to being creative with your headlines, start by asking yourself a few key questions.
These questions should get your gears turning and the creative juices flowing.
Remember, we want to craft a memorable message that our leads will not forget. We also want to make sure that we evoke an emotional response and appeal to the potential customer’s needs or desires.
Check out this killer example…
It’s got everything going for it. It’s punchy and unique. The wording matches the imagery. The use of the word savor as a verb is particularly great because it elicits a clearly emotional response from the audience. Who wouldn’t want to eat whatever they’re serving at this place?
You’ve probably already spent a lot of time optimizing the button size, color and placement. If not, be sure to check this guide on how to improve the efficacy of your CTAs in general.
Regarding the wording however, it’s important to take the chance to put something personal in the actual text. Instead of using a button that says “Submit” try something like “Start My Trial” or “Boost My Rankings”.
Copyblogger clearly showed data that corroborates using “first-person” CTA text will increase conversions. Cool right?
Last but not least, remember to be unique. Don’t be afraid to let personality shine through. Here’s an example of both a CTA and a form that I immediately loved.
If you’ve watched Freaks and Geeks, you probably already believe this statement. If you’re more of the Biff type, there’s nothing wrong with you either. We love everyone here.
But I hope you’ll take the time to consider the advice above, as it can really work wonders on your conversion rate.
The key takeaways are to embrace personality, be genuine, and appeal to your customers emotions. The more a customer trusts your brand and remembers your message, the more likely they are to buy.
Write interesting copy, be weird with your subject lines, and be memorable! Let your freak flag fly!
About the Author: Sam Warren is the Manager of Marketing and Partnerships at RankPay.
Is Twitter the new TV? The social network hopes to become something resembling that, with plans revealed by CFO and COO Anthony Noto to eventually be airing live video content 24 hours a day, 7 days per week via both its website and app. Noto discussed the plans with BuzzFeed News, ahead of the company’s earnings report Wednesday morning. Twitter already plays host to a number of live… Read More
Instagram has doubled its user base to 700 million monthly actives in two years, fueled by Stories, web signup, and better onboarding on low-end Android phones. Instagram’s growth rate is actually speeding up. It took just four month to add the last 100 million users since hitting 600 million in December, while it took 6 months to go from 500 million to 600 million. Here’s a… Read More Instagram has doubled its user base to 700 million monthly actives in two years, fueled by Stories, web signup, and better onboarding on low-end Android phones. Instagram’s growth rate is actually speeding up. It took just four month to add the last 100 million users since hitting 600 million in December, while it took 6 months to go from 500 million to 600 million. Here’s a… Read More
Twitter delivered a surprising and much-needed positive quarterly earnings report this morning — and its finally seeing some positive moves in its stock price. That’s going to be important going forward, as the company needs to convince Wall Street it can stay independent and also attract talent. Twitter, as we’ve seen time and again, reports a huge stock-based… Read More
In an very un-Twitter move, the company completely beat out the increasing decline of its business that tech observers were expecting. This is a hugely positive sign for the company, which has seen continued bad news on the whole company operating front. Not only was it able to generate more money than expected, its user numbers also made a surprising spike. Twitter’s faced a ton of… Read More
Jessica Moreno and her co-founder Dan McComas couldn’t find the kind of inclusive online community they were looking for when they left Reddit in the summer of 2015 so they started Imzy, a community platform encouraging kinder interactions with like-minded individuals. Moreno and McComas spent six years prior to starting Imzy cultivating community and learning the ropes at the site… Read More
If only all algorithmic bias were as easy to spot as this: FaceApp, a photo-editing app that uses a neural network for editing selfies in a photorealistic way, has apologized for building a racist algorithm. Read More If only all algorithmic bias were as easy to spot as this: FaceApp, a photo editing app that uses a neural network for editing selfies in a photorealistic way has apologized for building a racist algorithm. Read MoreFind a box with a CD-ROM in it, buy it, then learn how to use it.
That’s how I bought software as a kid. So when I first started working, I assumed that if I wanted to start using work-related software, I would have to pay for it the same way: upfront — site unseen! — just like the software of my youth.
I worried that I would have to justify the cost with only the specs, reviews, and sales guy’s word to make my case. (And if I was wrong, it would be my butt on the line.)
So I’m not exaggerating when I say that discovering I could try software for free actually improved my job performance and reduced new-on-the-job anxiety by ~62%.
Using a tool BEFORE I had to recommend it to my colleagues and pull out the corporate credit card gave me a chance to see which tools actually did what we wanted them to do.
All of a sudden, the risk that we’d pay for something that didn’t have a key feature or turned out to be a user-unfriendly nightmare shrank to almost zero.
Your serious prospects approach their free trials of your software with a mindset similar to mine circa 2000-something: they want to reduce the likelihood of buying something that doesn’t work.
They’ve got a problem to solve, they’ve discovered that your app might solve it for them, but they’re not yet certain that your app will be quite right. The free trial is a chance for new users to see for themselves what it’s like to use your app.
But. It’s not up to your free trial users to figure out how your SaaS app actually works. It’s not your new users’ job to figure out how your app will turn them into a better version of themselves.
It’s yours.
If you run a SaaS app in pretty much any niche, you have an enormous opportunity to outmaneuver your competitors during the free trial process.
I sign up for free trials all the time to see how they onboard new users, and most don’t do a good job. Most onboarding emails don’t make it easy to understand what to do next. Most apps leave it up to me (the brand new user) to figure out how to get started.
Why is this a problem?
Because every time you make your new readers pause and try to figure out what to do next, you create an opportunity for them to give up and just do nothing instead.
What should you say to new free trial users?
Alas, there is no single hard and set rule. Every SaaS app is unique. What you say in your free trial, how you say it, and when you deliver your message will be specific to your app.
But if your biggest problem is that you’re sending triggered emails to new free trial users but they still aren’t signing back in after the first 10 minutes of using your app, there’s a strong chance that the copy in your emails is to blame.
To fix it, pull up your emails and see if they’re are suffering from one of these 3 engagement-killing mistakes.
When you offer more choices, you inspire less action.
The famous jam paper that explained the paradox of choice (and the TED talk that made it famous) showed us how we may be unintentionally taxing our prospects’ decision-making resources by offering too many choices.
But that’s not the whole story.
A 2015 meta-analysis of the research found that the total quantity of options is just one of many factors that can contribute to decision fatigue.
Another factor is the way that options are presented to us. When the presentation of options makes it hard to determine what choice is right for us, we’re likely to defer making a decision.
So if you’re sending your free trial users emails that look like this one, then there’s a strong chance you’re causing some serious decision-deferring choice overload.
This message tosses out 9 links (including one that’s hidden by my redaction) without a clear messaging hierarchy to help me figure out what order I should click on them.
This email provides login info, asks me to read help articles, watch help videos on 3 separate channels, ask for help via email, read interviews, or read a blog that might be helpful–all under the umbrella of “important information”.
But for your trial users, the real important information is the information that helps them decide what to do next.
The Fix: Write each email for the sole purpose of getting your users to complete a single action–and remove text and links that don’t support that action.
This particular message might be rewritten to focus on getting a single reader to respond to the important request hiding at the bottom of that email:
In the now-famous experiment, sending a welcome-why-are-you-here email helped Groove get response rates of 41% while also providing juicy voice of customer data to power future messaging development and laying the foundation for more personal relationships with new users.
Whether you’re following Groove’s lead or not, your free trial emails should all follow the Rule of One for best results: get one reader to take you up on one offer.
One email, one action. That’s it.
When you rewrite your emails so that they’re focused on a single action, make sure that action is a discrete, clearly defined task on the user’s path to activation.
Your reader should be able to complete the task you’ve asked them to complete–and they should be able to tell that they’ve completed it.
Unfortunately, lots of emails offer vague and nonspecific CTAs. Some of them even sound exciting — especially CTAs that use the word “explore”. Exploring is fun! It’s adventurous! Brave souls explore!
All true of actual exploring. But your SaaS app is not the Louisiana Purchase.
When you ask someone to “explore” something — anything, really — you put the onus on the reader to figure out what to do.
And because exploring doesn’t have a clearly defined end, it’s impossible for your reader to figure out exactly what to do next–and when they’ve actually completed the thing you’ve asked them to do.
The Fix: Reduce cognitive overwhelm with a CTA that calls for readers to complete a clearly defined single task.
Zapier does this well. This app helps you connect what feels like an infinite number of apps to do all sorts of cool things (including powering the technical logistics behind managing your lead nurturing messaging).
With so many options, it would be easy for free trial users to get overwhelmed. They could explore their options, but then decide not to do anything.
So instead of leaving it up to new users to decide what to do next, Zapier’s first email removes some of the cognitive drain of “Shoot, how will I choose?” and offers a CTA tightly bound around completing a single task.
You already know what steps a new free trial user needs to complete to get to the point where your app suddenly becomes a can’t-live-without-it tool. You might even know the different steps different populations take to get to the point of activation.
Use your knowledge to guide your free trial users along the steps of that path.
If you’ve rewritten your emails to get users to complete one and only specific and measurable action, that’s a great start.
Unfortunately, one of the most common grade-F CTAs I see in onboarding emails are the ones that don’t connect completing the action to solving a problem.
They make a call to action (the CTA “sign in” and its synonyms appear with devastating frequency), but they don’t make a call to value–so readers have no reason to expect that anything good will happen after they log back in.
Did logging into anything ever solve anyone’s problems? Of course not.
It’s what happens after you log back in that makes the difference.
The Fix: If your email’s CTA could easily appear in the free trial email sequence of another app outside of your category, change it.
If you’ve conducted your jobs-to-be-done research, you also know why your readers are using your app–and the outcome they hope to achieve.
Instead of “Log in to Your Account” or “Sign Back In Now”, your free trial email CTAs should make it clear that someone who clicks on this link will be moving closer to the goal they want to achieve with your app.
Buffer does a great job of sending an email that connects my click to what happens after the click.
After I signed up for a trial but didn’t finish setup, I got an email asking me to connect my accounts that also had some background info on what accounts, exactly, we’re talking about here. (In case I forgot what Buffer is.)
Buffer could have sent an email that said “log back in” or even “connect a profile”. But “login” = boring and “connect a profile” = kind of vague.
Instead, this email makes it abundantly clear what to do with this email (click on the link that says “click here”) and the meaningful reason why you should take that next step (because it’s what you need to do to connect your social profiles).
When I first learned about free trials for software, I was over the moon. “Look at all this stuff I get to try!” “Look at all these opinions I get to form!” “Look at how few people I have to talk to before I make my decision!”
But what are all these thoughts really about?
What are your new free trial users really thinking when they sign up for your app?
My hypothesis is this: free trial users are really thinking some version of: “Look how little risk there is to trying this software. Let’s see if it works.”
The free trial reduces the risk of having to buy before you try. Your free trial messaging is what helps your prospect understand for themselves if your software will solve a problem.
What can you do to help free trial users understand that yes, your product can change their life?
Make it easier for free trial users to evaluate your app with focused, specific, and meaningful lifecycle emails.
About the Author: Alli Blum helps SaaS apps build messages that get customers. Click to get her copywriting checklist for high-converting SaaS onboarding emails.
MikMak, the New York-based startup that is trying to make short and catchy infomercials (aptly named minimercials) the future of commerce, is launching a new feature to help retailers monetize their stories on Instagram and Snapchat. The new product is called Attach, and serves as a middleman between a retailer’s daily story on a platform like Instagram and the actual product available… Read More
Facebook wants you to think about whether a headline is true and see other perspectives on the topic before you even read the article. In its next step against fake news, Facebook today begins testing a different version of its Related Articles widget that normally appears when you return to the News Feed after opening a link. Now Facebook will also show Related Articles including third-party… Read More