Here are the must-read stats about what’s happening with Internet adoption, smartphones, ads, ecommerce, entertainment, gaming, enterprise healthcare, China, India, and startups. We’ve picked the most important slides from legendary Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker’s massive 355-page 2017 Internet Trends report, deciphered the complex data, and explained why… Read More
This is the best way to get up to speed on everything going on in tech. Kleiner Perkins venture partner Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report is essentially the state of the union for the technology industry. The widely anticipated slide deck compiles the most informative research on what’s getting funded, how Internet adoption is progressing, which interfaces are resonating,… Read More
If you want to see the best SEO tools in one place, then you’ll LOVE this guide.
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Move over duckface. Shove off rainbow spew. There’s a new selfie game in town and it wants to turn your 2D visage into uncannily accurate 3D — then splice that axiomatic piece of you into animated cartoon suits that rock out, strut their disco stuff, skateboard, look coy, relaxed or laugh manically. Read MoreWhen sending out automated emails to your list, how personalized are they?
I’m not talking about things like $firstname, or order by $date for free shipping – but actual personalization based on their behavior.
According to MarketingSherpa, 39% of marketers found that sending emails automatically based on user behavior was their most effective email marketing strategy. At the same time, DMA reports that emails triggered by behavior were responsible for 30% of revenues in 2014, up from 17% in 2013, and that 77% of ROI comes from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns.
Let those numbers sink in a minute.
The potential for making the most of behavioral email marketing is wide open, and yet, according to eConsultancy, only 20% of marketers are using behavioral targeting.
Why is that? Let’s take a closer look at the core issues and learn how to get started with behavioral email marketing.
Oftentimes, marketers want to start behavioral targeting, but they have no idea how or where to start. The first step, if you haven’t done so already, is to monitor how people are interacting with your brand.
Kissmetrics can deliver this kind of invaluable behavioral analytics data. Like the brain of your behavioral marketing outreach, it seeks out and stores details about your visitors, including:
Because of this powerful people-based analytics platform, you can tailor your behavioral email triggers to suit precisely what your audience is looking for.
Now, not all of these points will be email “action-worthy”, so it’s up to you to figure out what actions the user takes (or doesn’t take) that are worth sending an email. You may have even seen this kind of behavioral targeting at work when you sign up for a service, but don’t complete your profile or don’t verify your email address. If the company is smart, they’ll send you an automated email reminding you to do so.
But re-targeting the user in this way isn’t the only way to leverage behaviorally targeted emails. You can also send out targeted messages, for example, when a customer:
Remember, with behavioral email marketing, it’s the customer at the wheel — not you. They’re making choices while interacting with your content. Behavioral marketing is designed to act on those choices with the kind of engagement that increases conversion rates, grows profits and vastly improves customer retention.
Once you start collecting and analyzing the information that you gather on your customers, new opportunities for behaviorally targeted emails will percolate to the surface. You’ll start getting all kinds of great ideas on how to guide users back into your service. To help get you started, however, here are some of my favorites:
Also known as an “onboarding” email, this message is usually sent after you create an account or register for a service. It’s designed to get you clicking and interacting with the service as quickly and fluidly as possible. Here’s an awesome example from Stocksy, a stock photography site:
Notice how they’ve carefully curated images on a specific theme – then encourage you to click through and check them out for more design inspiration. Here’s another example from Airbnb:
If you’ve been browsing trips to wine country, this targeted email can help make your tour much more palatable through the offer if discounts, local guides, special attractions and more.
The notification email is generally just a canned response from your account or user management software that tells people their username and password, and maybe has a link to some documentation to get started. That’s where most of the getting started process ends — which results in a lot of confused or frustrated users.
Instead, encourage them to take the first step toward trying out your product by offering more of a guided, hands-on tour. If you have a SaaS, walk them through using it by helping them to create their very first _____ — such as a website, playlist or campaign. This sort of guided, pop-up tour will help them feel more at ease, and can also give you even more valuable data for your behavioral targeting goals.
These are the unexpected but highly welcomed emails that encourage better customer retention. Here’s a great example from Shopify that lets users extend their free trial of the service:
Another example comes from TurboTax, which is designed to pique the user’s curiosity about how much their tax refund could be, before they ever see a check in the mail:
It also promotes the benefits of using the TurboTax service, but without being overly “sales-y” or pushy. Rather it shifts the focus onto the customer and their end goals – which revolve around getting the biggest refund possible at tax time.
Everyone loves getting an unexpected reward — even if it’s a digital “good job!” Here’s an example of an email from Withings, which is a Fitbit-style product that helps inspire healthy habits by tracking your activity. Here, you can see a user has won a badge for taking 8,000 steps in a day, and unlocked the Marathon reward. They can also share their progress on Twitter or Facebook.
Oftentimes, great customer service from a company is enough to get you to recommend them. But what if the brand sweetened the deal? Bombas, which sells socks online, provides free socks, with no limit, to people who tell their friends about them. Those friends get a discount on socks, and the referrer gets more socks. And we all know you can never have enough socks.
Did you know that transactional emails (receipts, shipping notifications, etc.) are opened up at 8x the rate of regular emails? With this in mind, it’s worth going through the ones your company sends and doing away with those dusty old “order confirmed” messages, to make every note you send one that not only thanks the customer for their order, but does so in a way that’s more akin to having a conversation than making a statement.
Until now, behavioral email targeting was difficult to set up because so many pieces of technology had to communicate with each other. With the new Kissmetrics Campaigns, behavioral targeting via email (and other channels) is built right in, so you can customize precisely when automated emails are sent to your customers, based on their behaviors. It’s better targeting, discovery, engagement and retention all rolled into one.
Be sure to check out the detailed article link above to learn how to use this new feature to the fullest, and be sure to share your behavioral targeting email success stories with us in the comments below!
About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!
Reddit is continuing its march towards becoming a social network after it added location tagging to its mobile app. The service is famously known as “the front page of the internet,” but this year it has rolled out features that make it much more like Twitter or Facebook. Back in March, Reddit introduced user profile pages and the option to follow others, so location tagging… Read More
Through Lyft and Uber, the sharing economy has taken a charge at cabs. Airbnb is making hotels palpitate in their pants. If TRVL has its way, it’s the travel agencies’ turn to tremble. Armed with 2.7 million freshly minted dollars from a conglomerate of angel investors, the company is hoping to augment services like Booking.com, Hotels.com and Tripadvisor by adding a soupçon of… Read More
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage at Code Conference on Tuesday and talked about why he took a large position in Twitter. “There’s a real opportunity to make that a valuable economic asset,” said Ballmer, defending his decision to invest in what has been a volatile ride for the social media company. He believes in its potential because it “gives people… Read More
Twitter is testing a new interface for its mobile applications on iOS and Android, which involves rounded profile images, buttons and other features. It’s unclear what advantage going “round” would bring. Read More
Twitter will now allow you to review Direct Messages received from people who you don’t follow before responding to them in a consolidated inbox, adopting a feature that Facebook has long used for its own messaging feature and app. The new DM review inbox function works for anyone who’s turned on the setting that allows receipt of messages from people they don’t follow, and… Read More
A U.K. minister has suggested the party is open to bringing in financial penalties or otherwise changing the law in order to encourage social media firms to improve their content-moderation processes. Read More Twitter will now allow you to review Direct Messages received from people who you don’t follow before responding to them, adopting a feature that Facebook has long used for its own messaging feature and app. The new DM function works for anyone who’s turned on the setting that allows receipt of messages from people they don’t follow, and will let you choose to either… Read MoreFear works.
Except for when it doesn’t.
There’s no better way to force prospects to pay attention than by striking the fear of God into them. It interrupts patterns and interests the unaware.
But.
That doesn’t mean it always works.
In fact, in many cases using fear or negative messaging can actually backfire.
Here’s why, and how to do it correctly.
We used to be cavemen. Cavewomen too.
At least, that’s what science says.
In these primitive times, there was no cold brew. No netflix. No alco… well, there was probably something fermented of some sort.
But there were harsh conditions. The environment was unstable. And they were constantly surrounded by scary beasts.
So life was probably pretty straight-forward. Here’s the GTD ‘next action’ list of a caveperson millions of years ago:
Today we’re not much different. Except monsters and cliffs have been replaced by bosses and email respectively.
Pain and pleasure are the primary motivators of human behavior. Humans gravitate towards pleasure while avoiding that which causes pain.
Fear is a stressor; a reaction to anything that’s threatening, dangerous, or likely to cause pain. Which explains why fear-based messaging has long been used in marketing and advertising: People don’t want pain. Triggering their fear for pain incites them to action.
A reported 25% of Americans have “high stress levels,” with another 50% reporting “moderate stress.”
Stress signals can chemically alter your brain. Your emotional processor (the amygdala) sends bright, flashing WARNING signs to your critical command center (the hypothalamus), which instantly decides whether you should run like hell or suit up like a gladiator.
But response to fear is highly personal, the same way not all fear are created equal. What George will run away from John may tackle with gusto. Different people react to the same stressful situation differently (or ‘fight’ vs. ‘flight’).
And here’s the kicker.
The Harvard Health Publications says that “chronic activation of [the ‘fight or flight’] survival mechanism” is bad for the health. You don’t want to be that company people associate with negativity. Therefore, incessant badgering of your target audience with fear-based marketing can be catastrophic for your company’s overall brand health.
Even though it almost always works in the short-term.
Yes. Fear-based marketing works.
(Wow that was easy. On to the next section…)
Just kidding, but seriously. It does.
Turns out Gordon Gekko was onto something: Greed, and its inverse, fear, does matter.
(What — you think the stock market goes up and down based on math alone? Don’t make me laugh.)
Inciting fear has been proven to be the absolute best way to grab attention. And in a world where millions of blog posts go out and trillions of emails are sent daily, grabbing attention is freaking critical!
Exhibit A comes courtesy of ConversionXL which comes courtesy of QuickSprout (there’s a meta joke in here somewhere):
The first subject line resulted in a 65% conversion lift. You see this so often that it’s not even surprising anymore.
Here’s Victoria’s Secret emphasizing how long this deal is going to last — three times on the same page:
(Yes, this is just a bad excuse to conduct “research” on Victoria’s Secret’s website.)
So yes. Fear works.
There’s no going around that. So might as well give credit where credit is due. However, while it does work… you can only push it to a point. Go beyond that point and it’s sure to backfire.
Messaging based on fear isn’t empowering. It’s not always delightful. It’s fo sho clickbait-y. It manufactures urgency to re-create a ‘fight or flight’ response.
And sometimes can be perceived as dishonest.
Fear works… until it doesn’t.
Until it backfires and works against you.
Several experiments from MarketingExperiments.com (again, searching for a meta joke) have proven this time and time again.
First up, two tweets.
One with a “positive, empowering message” and another that focused on the pain of potential loss. Turns out, the first fun loving one won. (Say that ten times fast.)
Next up, a CTA. The first was negative and fear based. The second focused on “peace of mind.”
Once again, the positive message was victorious.
Ok one last example. Norton antivirus compared two campaigns: one that incited fear vs. another that tried to “empower” customers.
And the winner?
Incredibly, the soft, touchy, feely one won. And check out that difference!
So… WTF. What’s going on? One minute fear works. And the next it doesn’t. What’s going on?
MarketingExperiments.com posits:
“The most effective marketing campaigns focus on the impact of action, rather than the result of inaction. Our goal is to create positive (non negative) momentum in the psychology of our customer’s mind.”
Turns out that while fear works wonderfully in order to first get attention, it starts to backfire when it comes to a transaction.
When you optimize for sales from customers (and not just emails or blog post headlines) the nuance appears. That context can make all the difference.
Fear can also backfire during certain times of the year. For example, the holidays. During this blissful time, positive emotions tend to fare better.
A Fractl study in the Harvard Business Review, visually illustrates this. The most shared content related most to anticipation, surprise, trust, and joy (so happiness overall). While fear-based ones were a ghost town.
Focusing on what people are going to get during this time pays off. (As opposed to what they might miss out on or the ‘cost of inaction’).
People don’t need your thing.
So there’s only one reason they buy: to solve a pain point. One that kinda bothers them but isn’t life or death.
What they don’t want, is to be disappointed. They don’t want to take a chance on your thing and be sorry they purchased it. They want to know it’s going to work like it should. It (and you) will be there when it (and you) should.
Fear mongering sometimes crosses that line. Exhibit B comes courtesy of a Gallup poll that showed car salesmen are trusted more than your local politicians (and at this rate, the White House most likely, too).
That’s why 81% of people look to peers for decision making (as opposed to branded messages).
So there’s a line. Somewhere. Under all of those fear-based headlines.
Fear works wonderfully at capturing attention. There’s almost nothing better. But… too much, too often can be harmful.
Negative messaging might pique the interest of those ‘cold’ prospects who lack need awareness (for your product or widget). Fear makes them sit up and take notice. It makes them realize — for the very first time — that they might have a problem that needs to be solved.
Outbrain ran a study on 65,000 paid links in order to find out which worked best: positive or negative messages (in syndicated ads).
The results weren’t even close. Negative ones crushed it (by 60%).
Sometimes, people need that shot of adrenaline in order to stop and pay attention.
But ‘warmer’ ones who already ‘get it’ don’t need the same heavy-handed approach.
Another study compared a few different headlines. They were:
Unsurprisingly by now, the second and third (positive and negative) ones dominated the first generic one.
But… the positive message outperformed the negative one.
The positive one focused on what people were going to get (as opposed to what they were going to lose out on).
That’s where you back off a bit. Switch the value proposition to what your widget will bring them (as opposed to what NOT having it will do to them). Otherwise it becomes overkill. And it backfires.
Fear-based messaging works. In many cases.
It plays upon our evolutionary biology; stimulating our fight or flight response in order to get us to take notice.
However… it also requires the right context. Many studies have shown that negative message works wonders when you’re targeting people who might be unaware of what your widget does. Unaware that they even have a problem or need for what you do in the first place.
But. When it comes to ‘warmer’ traffic who does understand, fear can backfire.
These people see through the fear mongering. They’re looking for reassurances instead. They want the truth. They want to know what they’re going to get out of it. The value or end result.
About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.
