A recent article in MarketingSherpa describes six tactics for marketing online videos. I’ve summarised the tactics below. The first deserves special emphasis though, so, tomorrow, I’ll explain WHY it’s so important for Internet marketers…

In the meantime, here are the six tactics MarketingSherpa recommends:

1. Use ‘edutainment’ videos for lead generation.

Viewers will not only be more likely to stick around and watch your video if it both informs and entertains, but a highly entertaining video is more likely to be passed around for a significant viral marketing effect.

2. Use streaming video to complement live events.

You can reach a wider audience by streaming video of live events to an online audience. A great example of this was the recent Le Web Internet conference. To be there in person you had to fly to Paris. But because the event promoters also streamed the event, you could also watch it from your home or office computer.

In any case, by streaming a live event you can reach more people and therefore generate more leads.

3. Test embedded video in email campaigns - i.e. videos that play in the email or in a browser. The technological aspects of this can be challenging, but if you get it right, don’t be surprised to see higher open rates and click-through rates.

4. Use videos to recruit employees. Videos can be used to explain your work environment and the kind of people you’re looking for.

5. Provide video tours of product/services. By offering a short online video that explains your product or service, you can often deliver more information, faster, than by using text based descriptions or instructions.

6. Assemble a video library on one or more content-sharing sites.

Once you’ve created a video, upload it to a video-sharing site such as YouTube. Not only can this be great for viral marketing, but having a collection of online videos on a popular video site can also deliver search engine optimization (SEO) benefits and generate ongoing traffic to your site.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “Video’s Role In Your Marketing: 6 Proven Tactics To Support Lead Gen, Search, Product Launches,” MarketingSherpa

MarketingSherpa recently evaluated a year’s worth of email newsletter subject lines to identify those that achieved the best open and click through rates.

Be sure to join MarketingSherpa to review the details of their findings. They point to four big take-aways from their study, but I gleaned eight (8) powerful tips:

1. Show value in the first two words. These first two words should ideally convey actionable value.

2. Use the right ‘trigger’ words. We’ve discussed trigger words before. These are the words that immediately attract the attention of your target audience. MarketingSherpa also points out that while having a punchy subject line is ideal… including the right (trigger) words in the subject line is MORE important.

3. Ideally, have a subject-line length of between 31 and 41 characters (including spaces). All things being equal, shorter subject lines work better than longer ones.

4. Avoid ‘hard sell’ subject lines or subject lines that are too self-promotional.

5. Use subject lines that convey value… but don’t ask readers to do anything.

6. Avoid subject lines that are vague or use ‘corporate speak’.

7. Mention ‘hot’ brands i.e. brands that are popular or controversial among your target audience. MarketingSherpa found that mentioning Facebook and Google, for example, ignited the interest of its readers.

8. Spend a few hours on getting the subject line right. A few hours? Yes, that’s what MarketingSherpa recommends. And it makes sense when you consider that using the right subject line could mean the difference between thousands, or even hundreds, of people reading your emails… or not.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “4 Takeaways from MarketingSherpa’s Newsletter Subject-Line Analysis”, MarketingSherpa, November 25, 2008

One of the burning questions on the lips of many email marketers is: when is the best time of day to send out emails?

Well, an interview between MarketingSherpa and Hunter Boyle, Managing Editor of MarketingExperiments reveals that it might just be dawn. Apparently:

1. Emails sent before 9 a.m. achieve higher click-through rates;
2. Early risers on the U.S. east coast tend to respond to email before their workday begins; and
3. Marketers with international lists should test list segments based on timezone.

You can hear the interview by visiting MarketingSherpa.

Despite these findings I would urge you to test different times for yourself. Dawn may or may not be best for YOUR market…

Source: MarketingSherpa, “Podcast: New Test Results for Email Send Times: 3 Major Takeaways”, MarketingSherpa

A recent MarketingSherpa case study is instructive for anyone selling a high-priced subscription or membership based product or service, and wishes to boost renewals.

MarketingSherpa profiled Corbis, a photo licensing agency, which was having difficulty handling the renewals of its content licenses.

The solution? To introduce a process for identifying licenses about to expire and allow sales representatives to target those account holders with about-to-expire licenses and persuade them to renew. Sounds simple… but Corbis had licenses covering 4 million online images with varying types of licenses as well as varying license periods. Around 7,000-10,000 image licenses were expiring each month. And at the time only about 2.5 percent of those licenses were being renewed.

Corbis developed a renewal program that used automated emails to remind clients that their licenses were about to expire, and gave a prioritized list of account holders to sales reps who could then contact the relevant members. While this is relatively easy to set up in most off-the-shelf membership scripts, it’s not so easy when you’re a large company and need to modify existing technological infrastructure.

Essentially, the steps which Corbis took - and which YOU can model, especially if you’re running an expensive membership program - are as follows:

1. Automate the sending of reminder emails to members whose membership is about to expire;
2. Automate the sending of emails to you (or your staff) about the members with accounts about to expire (e.g. by email). Ideally prioritize account holders based on renewal value or other relevant factors; and
3. Call those clients (in order of priority).

Corbis’ automated email efforts resulted in doubling its online renewal rates – from about 2.5 percent to 4-5 percent. The follow-up calls further boosted renewal rates to 10 percent in some locations.

What I find particularly compelling is the use of follow-up phone calls. So many Internet marketers seem averse to contacting their customers by phone… but if you have members paying, say, a few hundred dollars per month, isn’t it worth it?

Source: MarketingSherpa, “How To Double Renewals with Triggered Emails and Sales Reps: 6 Steps”, MarketingSherpa, November 6, 2008

If you’ve been involved in email marketing for any length of time, you’ll probably know that building a responsive subscriber base is a matter of attracting subscribers who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer, and sending them content that compels them to take the kind of action you want them to take.

Do both and you’ll experience relatively low unsubscribe rates, high open rates, high click-through rates and high conversion rates.

Sounds simple… but when it comes to providing the right content… what exactly IS the right content? Is it necessarily articles or sales promotions? Is it both? In what proportion? Should both articles and promotions appear in the same email (as in this newsletter) or should they be sent separately? Or should you send both kinds of emails? And, if so, when should you send each kind?

The answer is, of course, to test what works best with YOUR audience. But before you jump into testing… you need something to test. In general, I recommend modelling yourself on a business that is doing well. We have done that with Kikabink News and Success Accelerator which are both somewhat based on the newsletter + solo promotion model used by direct response marketing companies such as Agora, Inc. Then it’s a matter of surveying readers and testing things to elicit ever improving results.

So what kind of insights are you likely to get when you survey and test? Well, consider a recent MarketingSherpa case study about a pet supply company. The company split-tested sending an email with (a) a promotion (including image and copy) at the top of the email and a link to an article below the promotion, and (b) a link to the article at the top of the email with the promotion below. In both cases the article link was actually a hot-linked title (and an appealing title at that) which led to a page where people would see the (short) article, along with various promotions.

Interestingly, version (b) achieved 7 percent higher click-throughs and 6 percent higher sales conversions than version (a). In other words, not only did the article attract more click-throughs, but people who clicked-through to the article tended to buy more than those who simply responded to the ad.

Now this does NOT mean that all your emails should now contain a link to an article at the top, with a promotion below. There are still many, many variables – the target audience for one and the landing page for another – that impacted on the pet company’s results. But the results do support the idea that email subscribers value non-promotional content… and that if they believe you are giving them something of value by way of a helpful article, they will be more willing to buy from you.

Source: Case Study, “Test Content To Create Best Layout To Boost Email Revenue, Conversions, CTRs”, MarketingSherpa, November 5, 2008

In its recent case study profiling H&R Block, MarketingSherpa revealed a cool idea you might want to test to generate buzz (traffic and ultimately conversions) for your online business:invite people to submit YouTube videos in return for a prize.

In H&R Block’s case, the company invited people to submit 3 minute videos describing how they would use their tax refund.

The winner, as voted by viewers, would win $5,000 and have their video displayed on the home page of the H&R website. The initiative resulted in 130 people submitting entries and the YouTube videos getting more than 1.6 million views. Nice.

Source: Case Study, “H&R Block Gets Big Buzz Through Social Media For Digital Products: How To Test and Pick Channels”, MarketingSherpa, October 30, 2008

A heat map study by MarketingSherpa reveals that emails with images DO tend to get somewhat greater attention and time spent on the email… but not significantly. And not necessarily in terms of people actually READING the email…

In its study of email readers MarketingSherpa found that emails with images blocked resulted in more readers reading the entire headline instead of scanning and moving down the email. When images were visible, readers tended to skip past the headline to the image.

According to MarketingSherpa, when images are removed, people tend to spend more time reading. So while images may attract a reader’s attention, they may also be diverting it away from the content of the email.

Just another reminder to be careful with images…

Source: MarketingSherpa, “2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide Excerpt”, MarketingSherpa, October 8, 2008

Could it be that we don’t really need to get the first spot on the search engine results pages (SERPs) in order to attract our most qualified prospects i.e. the supposed 20 percent of prospects who generate 80 percent of sales?

Well, some research from MarketingSherpa indicates there might be some truth in this…

In a recent study, MarketingSherpa found that certain kinds of search engine users are prepared to wade through more SERPs than one might normally expect. It found that among industrial engineers:

• 14 percent just looked at the first few results on the first page of results;
• 39 percent looked at the first page of results;
• 10 percent stopped looking after the second page of results; and
• 37 percent looked through more than two pages of results.

MarketingSherpa reckons these findings would be typical of niche searchers. Presumably, anyone highly motivated to find uncommon (i.e. niche) information is more inclined to look through more pages of results than other kinds of searchers.

Given that search engine optimization (SEO) - like anything - comes at a cost, it *may* follow that at a certain point it may no longer be cost-effective to keep striving to become number in the SERPs, simply because niche prospects are prepared to look through more results anyway.

Maybe…

Source: MarketingSherpa, “New Chart: Optimize All Your Web Pages For Niche Searchers Seeking Relevant Results”, MarketingSherpa, October 14, 2008

Based on its survey of 1,400 consumers across the United States, MarketingSherpa has concluded that most people WANT to opt-in to a list.

In particular, at least 50 percent of people are at least ’somewhat more likely’ to subscribe if offered any of the following benefits:

• A guarantee that you won’t share their address with other companies: 43 percent much more likely, 23 percent somewhat more likely.
• Special pricing for email subscribers: 32 percent much more likely, 29 percent somewhat more likely.
• Ability to customize how frequently you receive emails: 27 percent much more likely, 30 percent somewhat more likely.
• Ability to customize the information you receive to meet your needs: 25 percent much more likely, 32 percent somewhat more likely.
• ‘First look’ at new products, services: 22 percent much more likely, 28 percent somewhat more likely.

Of course, don’t take MarketingSherpa’s - or even these 1,400 consumers’ - word for it. Your own test results will be much more conclusive.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide Excerpt”, MarketingSherpa, October 8, 2008

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has a lot going for it… but if you’re relying on it for traffic, here’s a reality check: when it comes to attracting clicks, the overwhelming majority of search engine users click on natural or organic listings rather than paid listings.

According to research by MarketingSherpa, natural or organic listings attract 94 to 97 percent of all search engine clicks, while paid links attract just 3-6 percent.

In terms of how the percentages differ between the three major search engines, here are the stats:

1. Google

• 94 percent of clicks are on natural listings
• 6 percent of clicks are on paid listings

2. Yahoo

• 94 percent of clicks are on natural listings
• 6 percent of clicks are on paid listings

3. MSN Live

• 97 percent of clicks are on natural listings
• 3 percent of clicks are on paid listings

And that’s why serious online businesses are wise to focus on search engine optimization at some stage in their development.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “New Research Reveals What’s Working In Search: Telseminar Transcript, Slideshow, PDF”, MarketingSherpa, October 2, 2008