Contagion Media is addressing one of the biggest challenges of creating viral games: the expense. The U.K. based company is offering a menu of Flash based games that anyone can rent and customize for their campaigns.

Using Contagion Media’s solution, Internet marketers can upload their own artwork and manage add-ons such as prize pyramids, tournaments and multi- player games.

Sounds good… as long as everyone in the same niche doesn’t start re-skinning the SAME games.

Source: Helen Leggatt, “Viral games for hire from Contagion Media,” BizReport, December 1, 2008

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

I remember hearing an interview with copywriting great John Carlton talking about how he and the legendary, late Gary Halbert used to focus all their marketing and copywriting efforts on sucking money out of their customers. John called this “Operation Money Suck”.

It sounds crude, but my understanding of Operation Money Suck is that, as a marketer or copywriter, you should really focus the bulk of your time, energy and resources on activities aimed at making money. Not spending your time on activities that avoid or PREVENT you from making money. Like rearranging your desk. Sitting in time-wasting meetings. Or engaging in useless admin tasks.

In other words, it’s about time and resource management for marketers. But “Operation Money Suck” is much more provocative and engaging, don’t you think?

This also means focusing your money making activities on those that make the MOST money. For a marketer, this may mean prioritizing your marketing budget; for a copywriter it may mean cutting out any copy that detracts from your sales message. (You can see how “granular” Operation Money Suck can be!)

Frankly, everyone involved in marketing should see themselves as involved in Operation Money Suck. Perhaps you’d rather not use such in-your-face terminology - and I’m also assuming, of course, that what you sell offers HUGE value to your customers - but the principle of optimizing your time by concentrating on your biggest money makers is certainly sound.

Source: John Carlton’s Big Damn Blog

Tech Crunch reports that a Digg-like interface - where users vote on search results - may be on the cards at Google.

Apparently, Google has previously experimented with allowing users to vote on search results and/or recommend other results. Its approach has been to “bucket” such tests by allowing a small, randomly chosen group of Google users to see and test proposed features.

Adrian Pike, the CTO of startup Tatango, is a member of the bucket testing the Digg-like Google interface. Tech Crunch reports that Mr Pike has tested an interface which enables users may vote and post comments on search results.

Sounds promising to me… but boy, will it change the search engine optimization game!

Source: Michael Arrington, “Google Bucket Testing New Digg-Like Search Interface”, Tech Crunch, July 14, 2008

Now more than ever, email marketers need to send their subscribers content they regard as relevant and in response to their needs.

A study conducted by Epsilon International and Return Path in the Asia-Pacific region has found that while nearly one in three respondents (32 percent) say they “always” respond to targeted,
promotional e-mails… over a quarter also regard emails that no longer meet their needs as spam.

Sounds about right. Once you start deviating from sending subscribers what they want and expect… they’ll start ignoring your emails, unsubscribing and, in some cases, complaining.

Sources: Epsilon, “Email Marketing Increasingly Important In Reaching Consumers In Asia Pacific”, Press Release, June 18, 2008, eMarketer, “E-Mail Relevance a Worldwide Concern”, eMarketer, July 14, 2008