Whether a visitor has arrived there by navigating through faceted search, via a search engine, a referring website, or an email marketing campaign – the product page presents the opportunity to place your product in front of a potential customer.

A product page equates to the “Evaluation” and “Purchase decision” phases of the PIEPP purchase decision model

Equating to the “Evaluation” and “Purchase decision” phases of the PIEPP purchase decision model – the product page presents one convenient location from which you can:

• Detail information on the product you are selling
• Present reasons why the visitor should buy it
• Present reasons why they should buy it from you
• Showcase any other related products with which to enhance their purchase and clarify their purchase decision

Generally, when considering the design of an ideal product page, there are a number of factors to take into account:

• Understanding customer needs, the product, and why it is the best solution
• Minimise uncertainty by providing all the information that a visitor could possibly need
• Clarity of visual imagery
• Maximise the trust factor
• Single clear, obvious purchase call-to-action
• easy selection of options (size/colour/quantity)
• Related products to enhance or upgrade the product, or clarify the purchase

Key Components

The following components would be present on the ideal ecommerce product page, in order to maximise the conversion rate and help boost sales..:

Page Heading

The page heading should lend context to the page rather than be chosen solely for search engine benefit

This should provide a clear and immediate indication of the product on the page. A visitor should be able to tell, just by looking at the page heading, what that product the page is offering. The page heading should consist of relevant descriptive keywords – lending context to the page rather than chosen solely for search engine benefit.

Keywords might include:

• Brand/manufacturer (eg. “Audi”)
• Model/product name (eg. “S3″)
• Specification/properties (eg. “2.0 Turbo FSi, Manual”)
• Generic Type (eg. “Hatchback”)
• Colour/material/style (eg. “Metallic silver”)
• Colloquialisms (eg. “Hot hatch”)
• Key features/elements (eg. “Sunroof”)

An informative product page heading might read something like this (notice how each keyword type is concatenated):

“Sony Bravia KDL37W5500U 37-inch Widescreen Full HD 1080p LCD TV with Freeview”

Imagery

“A picture is worth a thousand words” – never was this truer than on a product page, where the visitor is physically distanced from the product, and every means which can deliver extra information to a visitor without them having to hunt for it provides a mechanism to increase conversions. Images are powerful because they are “absorbed” passively - the visitor has not had to read anything to experience what the product is - they just see it!

Imagery might be used in the following ways:

• Multiple images displaying every aspect of the product, or 360° viewer
• Close up/detail/zoom functions
• Show product versions, colours, sizes, materials, etc
• Demonstrating the product usage in context
• Detailing the product box inventory

Clarity of imagery is vital to provide the most accurate representation of the product - to enable confident evaluation and maximise conversions

Clarity of imagery is vital to provide the most accurate representation of the product - to maximise definition and display the product in the most comprehensive manner possible, while maintaining the best balance between imagery and page load speeds.

Thumbnails provide a convenient compromise for imagery; large enough to determine the basic facts without affecting page-load speed – but do not necessarily provide the scale and definition required to enable a potential customer to confidently evaluate it.

Therefore a mechanism must be implemented to deliver the visitor a large-scale version of each product image in the highest resolution possible - to enable confident consumer evaluation by providing the best representation of product detail.

This might include:

• Pop-up windows containing large-scale hi-res versions
• A “div” layer that appears on page, containing a large-scale hi-res version
• Scrollable “magnifier” enlargement functionality

…or similar devices.

Video

Video can bring products to life in a way that is impossible through static images and text, and it has been proven that product sites with video convert better than those without.

Video is a powerful motivator - content can include product detail videos and demonstrations, document the product range and variants, introduce cross- or up-sell opportunities, and deliver your product message in a much more engaging manner than simple textual content alone.

• Video offers better engagement
• Delivers a message more effectively (audio +visual)
• Delivers a message quicker (no reading - listen and watch)
• Provides a richer brand experience (touch the senses more)
• Can explain and demonstrate more complex/awkward key features and USP
• Show the product “in-action”

Links embedded within video can be used to direct visitors to refine their search - providing viewers with access to further functionality, alternate products, up-sell opportunities, etc.

This scope for interactivity can be used to create a more comprehensive user experience, increase consumer confidence and conversion rates, lower the number of abandoned shopping carts and reduce return rates.

Textual Description

A product’s textual description is one of the most important elements of the page, as it:

• Confirms what the visitor has seen in the product images
• Reinforces the brand
• Contains factual information and data about the product
• Details contextual information about the product
• Explains why and how it should be used
• Motivates the visitor to buy the product

Creating your own content allows you to deliver unique insight and differentiate yourself from your competitors

The textual content provides not only the communication channel to highlight the product’s key benefits to potential customers, but also the ability to differentiate yourself and your products from your competitors.

Ignoring the standard manufacturer descriptions, which many competitors will be using, and writing original descriptions for the product pages presents the opportunity to:

• Deliver unique content and insight to differentiate yourself from your competitors
• Increase the ability of the page to rank for long-tail keywords in the search engines
• Provide a more compelling user experience.

Having identified the reason the visitor wishes to buy the product:

• Highlight the key benefits of the products
• Highlight the USPs and the benefits they bring
• Indicate the price point plus any extras (handling/shipping fees)
• Incorporate a clear purchase call-to-action

It is extremely important to ensure that all information pertaining to the product is documented comprehensively – providing any specifications, detail and benefit statements in a clear but concise manner. Tabs or toggle div layers can help show and hide more in-depth data should the visitor want to see more information such as product specification or sizing charts.

When most people visit a website they:

• Do not read long portions of text
• Do scan pages
• Look for visual clues to highlight important bits of data or nuggets of information.

Therefore, copy should:

• Present the important data in a “bite-sized” format
• Use bullet point lists or similar devices
• Aid identification and digestion of the salient points.

Copywriting requires careful setting of tone and style, establishing a tone for all of the copy throughout your site requires identification of the target audience and the understanding of how to appeal to them - sometimes a familiar, colloquial style might be more appropriate for an audience than a straight, informational style. The language you use must combine your audience’s needs with your own brand DNA.

“Filler” or flowery wording makes copy long-winded, loses punch and runs the risk of annoying visitors to your page. Copy should be short and to-the-point – although not to the extent of losing vital detail or sales messages.

Trust Factor

Trust is the most important element of successful ecommerce, and can lead to important long-term relationships

It has been shown that trust is the most important element of successful ecommerce (Cheskin & Sapient, 1999; Corritore Kracher Wiedenbeck, 2001), and can lead to important long-term relationships (Ganesan, 1994).

Trust is a primal gut feeling - often formed instinctively on first impressions from a combination of historical experience and perceived integrity, versus risk assessment (as risk increases trust decreases).

Website design plays a large role in forming these first impressions:

• Does the website look credible?
• Has it been designed by a professional designer?
• Does it provide the functionality expected of it?

In order to maximise the trust factor, it is important to exhibit honesty and ethical behaviour, address visitors concerns, and manage risk. Therefore, important trust signals might include:

• Careful attention to product copy
• A clear privacy policy
• A clear returns policy
• Implementation of comprehensive security mechanisms (eg. secure servers)

The implementation of services (and display of logos) such as Verisign, and McAfee Secure (HackerSafe) or Trust Guard can have a beneficial effect on perceived trust factor and increase conversion rates - as consumer confidence in the payment gateway increases, the barriers to conversion are removed.

Media reviews and customer feedback can also improve the conversion rate - the supporting 3rd party reviews increasing perceived trust in the product.

The Call-to-Action

Once a visitor has reviewed all the necessary information about the product, they need to know what to do next. A call-to-action indicates the objective it wants the visitor to complete whether it is adding an item to a shopping trolley, completing a contact form, or signing-up for a newsletter.

A successful call-to-action will often make use of:

• A single, focussed call-to-action – no alternative buttons competing for attention
• Convention (use of a button or similar device)
• Proactive language – must include a verb e.g. “add” or “buy”
• Proximity to the product image - signals “association” to the product (Gestalt principles of design)
• Visual hierarchy: Prominent location
• Visual hierarchy: Contrasting colours
• Visual hierarchy: Large Size
• Visual hierarchy: White space to make it stand out

Seth Godin’s litmus test is to find the call-to-action in less than 3 seconds - after which time you can assume your visitors have left

According to Seth Godin the litmus test is to be able to find the call-to-action in less than 3 seconds - that is the amount of time you have until you can consider that your visitors have given up and left.

In this day and age, with ever more competition and increasingly web-savvy visitors, reduce that figure to a single second only; if you cannot find the call-to-action the instant you look at the page, then the design and implementation should be re-appraised.

As Seth Godin says,
“Force yourself to design each and every page with one and only one primary objective… Make it big. Make it blue (or red). Make it obvious!”

Peer/User Reviews

Media reviews and customer feedback about the product help boost conversions. Indeed, as an expected component of a product page, the absence of user reviews may actually impact negatively on the conversion rate.

Customer feedback can not only document extra functionality and experiences using the product, but positive feedback and reviews can improve the conversion rate, due to an increase in perceived trust.

Bottom line - consumers trust other consumers more than they trust you.

Additionally users who do write a positive review on your website are much more likely to make repeat purchases with you because in doing so (writing the review) they have “bought into” your website and brand.

Related Products

Related products offer opportunities to increase basket size, and enable visitors to clarify their purchase decision

A proven technique to increase revenue on ecommerce sites is the practise of cross-selling – offering the visitor secondary products related to the product they are viewing.

This is because not only do these related products offer opportunities to increase basket size, but displaying a number of related items actually enables visitors to clarify their purchase decision by providing the opportunity for comparison and justification.

Cross-selling can be implemented in a number of different ways, at different points in the purchase cycle - however, techniques appropriate for the product page include:

• Alternative “similar products”, of the same type as the current product
• Related products (ranges, sets, collections, compendiums, omnibuses)
• Related products (accessories, spare parts, components)
• Related products (”also bought” by customers who bought the current product)
• Related products (top sellers, special offers - retailer-compiled lists)
• Lists created by visitors, which include the current product
• Tag cloud relating to the current product (to instigate further searches)
• Similar items by category (to instigate further searches)

Conclusion

Think of the user, and what they need to pass through the purchase cycle.

All the ecommerce product page components listed above address a user’s need at a given point during the purchase cycle - the more effectively each component meets the user’s demands, the more likely that user will convert.

If you make their life easy for them in their first purchase with you, consumers will also reward you with their repeat business.

Studies have shown that:

• customers who purchase from a store through multiple channels spend 14 percent more annually on average than their single-channel counterparts (JupiterResearch)
• in some sectors these multi-channel customers are 25 to 50 percent more profitable than their single-channel equivalents (McKinsey & Company).

It therefore should be a priority to ensure that all your channels work together, mutually supporting each other with your brand and offering messages, and that these channels provide a seamless path for your users through to an acquisition.

Integrating Channels

Successfully integrating organic and paid search with offline campaigns and other channels requires understanding how a business works across a multi-channel environment – and considering channels as an integrated network, rather than individual delivery mediums.

The User Journey

It is vital to maintain an integrated approach across the entire journey – in order to reach consumers at all levels and various stages of the journey or purchase cycle.

An example of a typical user journey might be:

• A consumer sees a TV advert for a time-limited healthcare insurance discount
• Reminded again later by reading a magazine advert describing the same offer
• Uses a search engine to locate the website and researches the offer
• Researches healthcare competitors in the same market space
• Returns to the original website and locates the contact information
• Rings the healthcare company, discusses his medical requirements and applies for the discounted offer.

Search is the vital connection between offline and online marketing, providing the touch points which allow a seamless transition between the offline and online steps of the user journey.

Without the search element - or if a website has no search visibility - a consumer cannot find the information or online resources they seek. This means that the touch points are lost, and this breaks the user journey. Obviously this makes it difficult (if not impossible) for a consumer to complete their task, having a detrimental effect overall on the numbers of successful conversions and therefore the performance of your multi-channel campaign as a whole.

The uplift often seen after a successful search marketing drive is often merely the improvement from sub-optimal performance to optimal performance - as the barriers to task completion present in the user journey are removed.

This means that for many, sub-optimal performance is the accepted norm..!

The creation of a successful search strategy designed to remove barriers and provide a seamless user journey, requires analysis of the steps required to complete a given task and identification of the points where the different channels intersect. Examples might include:

• a direct mail shot with a unique promotional code delivering extra introductory benefits if presented on registration via the website
• an automated SMS text message sent to a mobile number after initial registration, reminding recipients of current special offers or website downloads.

Both these tasks might prompt searches, but using very different keywords to locate different sections of the same website. eg.

“campaign name registration”
“company name special offers”

Thus, it is very important to understand the users requirements at each touch point, in order to identify likely keywords and create a strategy to maximise search visibility for them.

Target Audience and User Behaviour

Analysis of user behaviour and demographics will help identify and understand the steps within the user journey, and the factors involved at each step. A campaign should identify the role of each channel within that journey, and address the needs of the user at that step.

When considering the mix of media and the messages delivered through each, decisions should be based on the behaviour of your target audience.

For example, in a typical household today, the media consumption of each member may differ:

• a working parent may listen to more radio going to and from work in a car
• a housekeeping parent may read more magazines or watch more daytime TV
• children may watch more TV or use the internet more. They may also use mobile devices extensively.

It is therefore important to match channels to your target personas to maximise resonance with the target audience.

Search - Connection between Online and Offline

Search is the pivotal entry-point on the net, often being the first step in an online journey. Even when a visitor has been given a dedicated URL, they will often still search for a brand or domain. This means that search is the vital connection between your online and offline channels.

Thorough keyword research is vital to ensuring search meets the demands of the user journey – both in capturing search engine queries, but also as a means of understanding evolving user behaviour patterns and vocabulary.

While keyword research tools can provide data from user searches, monitoring social media can provide not only real-time insight but also open dialogue channels with the very audience that your marketing efforts are directed at, and in this respect provide a dimension of communication simply unavailable through any other resource.

Vertical Search Engines

While traditional blended search engines (such as Google universal search) play the major role in search visibility, vertical search engines focussing on niche topics or single media type are an important element within your search visibility strategy. For example, the second largest search engine in the world is YouTube - a video vertical.

YouTube presents opportunities to tie TV advertising campaigns in with an online presence and reach certain persona types where they’re more likely to consume media.

Studies show that online video ads designed specifically for the web achieve greater results than their TV counterparts - possibly due to the ability to use edgier creatives free of the constraints imposed on TV advertising, so consider different but supporting campaigns and messages for online video channels.

YouTube has expanded the number of advertising formats they offer to include a variety of opportunities including overlaying the video clip itself. Initial research would suggest that these new formats deliver higher click-through rates (CTRs) than the older more traditional standard formats as is often seen with new advertising formats and techniques.

Analysing the business marketing strategy from a multi-channel perspective may indicate that vertical search engines can provide a targeted channel through which to operate complementary campaigns.

Amazon and eBay are the two major shopping verticals, and providing an experience that consumers trust. The ability to create a presence by setting up a merchant store provides opportunities to sell to targeted customers.

Some consider Amazon as the buyers default shopping search engine, first search engine they will use when they know they’re in the purchase funnel. So consider a merchant account as a opportune additional sales channel.

Paid Search and the Halo Effect

Complementing organic positions with paid search listings can have a powerful effect on click-through-rates (CTR), by positioning a single brand across multiple placements on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

This produces an phenomenon called the “halo effect”, by which the uplift seen across the board is larger than simply the combined total of the individual click volumes.

If a company also has affiliates bidding on the same keyword, the result can be especially powerful, with branding across 5 or 6 placements on a page, resulting in domination of the SERPs by the brand.

Paid search is ideal for tie-ins with other channels as the message and trigger keywords can be controlled quickly and easily. So if you want people to find a micro-site or campaign page easily paid search will meet this need.

Paid search can be used as an effective means of connecting with fast-moving current events or responding to rapid changes in campaigns, due to the speed with which campaigns can be created and keywords and advertising creative added in response to an event.

Paid search can also be a very useful tool for split A/B or Multi-Variant Testing (MVT) using the the tools the search engines provide to optimise ad creative and website design. With the amount of traffic using the search engines, tests can be organised and run very quickly, with statistically meaningful data produced in a very short time frame. So you can test creative messaging not just for paid search, but utilise this channel as a market-research test bed!

The information gained from this testing can be used to influence the message delivered across other channels.

Multi-Channel Analysis

It is important to remember that in the same way that offline adverts and marketing drives visitors to your website, online marketing will often drive offline conversions - as a proportion of visitors may follow up the search step with offline actions such visiting their local store branch or calling to speak to a representative.

It is therefore vital to gain as much insight from the analytics as possible, monitoring touch points and analysing user journeys and transactions across all channels to track how effectively the campaign is running.

Thorough analysis will show which channels are producing high ROI and which require optimisation, pinpoint any bottlenecks or disconnects, and highlight any steps which require further optimisation or improvement.

Applying the insights gained from this analysis across all channels will maximise the efficiency of the network as a whole, providing an uplift larger than proportional improvements to a single channel might bring, and delivering substantially better results than seen using channels in a disparate manner.

In this way, removing the barriers to task completion present in the user journey will not only improve performance from sub-standard to optimal, but maximise user task-completion figures and actually deliver the true uplift in ROI that should be your goal.

Conclusion

With natural search, paid search, social media, display, online PR, viral and email marketing available to you online and outdoor, direct marketing, press, TV, radio, PR, sales promotion, ambient/guerilla, experiental and cinema available to you offline you need to ensure these channel are working with each other. They need to support each others messaging - marketing communications needs coordination and no channel should operate exclusively if you want to get the most out of your budget.

The user journey requires every touch point to support the message, and their journey will most likely require search as the linchpin for task completion. So no matter how effective your marketing communications and campaign messages are, you need to be mindful of search visibility.

What is it?

This online marketing technique optimises websites to adhere to the relevancy algorithm criteria of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN). The aim is to get your web pages to appear in the top positions on the search engine results pages (SERPs) for search queries. This mechanism is designed to drive targeted and qualified traffic to your website using relevant content that is attractive and useful to the consumer.

Advantages

Targeted Audience

Self-selecting targeted audience that is actively looking for something you have on your website. Well structured website information architecture, content and inbound linking allow you to refine the targeting process.

Traffic Volumes

Natural search will generally provide large volumes of traffic at low cost (no direct cost-per-click with natural search) and a natural longer-tail (increase keyword visibility).

Optimised natural search provides very high levels of low cost traffic - it should be your main traffic source in a balanced online marketing strategy

Low Cost

Natural search uses your website’s own structure, its content and its inbound linking (links that point to your website) to determine its position in the results set of any search query. There are no costs other than the time involved in optimising the website, creating its content and acquiring relevant links - making this one of the cheapest forms of marketing/advertising there is.

That is not to say that link development or content provision are cheap, but they are activities that should be in place already, and the SEO benefits should be a free by-product of running your customer focused online business and marketing efforts.

Always On

Natural search is free; so if the website is relevant for a search it will be returned in the results 100% 24/7.

There are no budget restrictions limiting the number of times your listing is displayed (impression) so you get better visibility with SEO for the keyword positions your website holds.

Scalable

Because the volume of traffic has no relationship to cost/budget it is easy to roll out new products and offerings without having to increase costs - you merely publish enticing and engaging content on your website.

Far Reaching (Long Tail)

More obscure keyword phrases can be returned in the search result without too much effort - therefore keyword combinations available from your content create a ‘long-tail’ of low volume entry points, ensuring a far reaching marketing solution and excellent search visibility.

Long Term

The basic principles of search engine optimisation have not changed since the pre-Google era - information retrieval remains focused on well structured, content rich, useful websites with good linking and regularly-updated content. So you can expect SEO to provide your website with traffic for many years ahead without significant changes being made.

Disadvantages

It Takes Time

It is difficult to take-on established websites straight away; link building takes time as does great content and regular contributions - also, circumventing things like Google’s ’sandbox’ quarantine period for new domain names could slow your SEO solution down (unless you inject a large dose of high link velocity activity as provided by the likes of online PR).

Commitment

Requires resource to establish content and link reputation. However, any decent web strategy should make user experience and information supply a key aim - so this should dove-tail nicely with SEO requirements.

Paid Search Marketing - Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

What is it?

This online marketing channel allows advertisers to pay for listings adverts that appear on the search engine result pages (SERPs) and across the search engines’ content network. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is an advertising model in which advertisers pay a fee only when their advert is clicked. There are varying methods of determining the fee payable, but most search models have moved towards modifying the bid price with a “quality” quotient to determine the final cost-per-click (CPC).

Advantages

Immediacy

PPC campaigns can be setup very quickly and your adverts will appear as part of the paid search results as long as there is budget and they are relevant.

Control

Paid search allows you to control you marketing campaign with ease. Whether using management tools or a web interface, controlling the keywords, bid price, advert copy, landing page URL, operational geography (geo-location), day parting (scheduling) and flight dates for your campaign is straightforward and responsive.

PPC confers the ability to adjust budgets, bid strategies or ad groups, and respond to commercial imperatives in minutes

Flexibility

Control of bid prices, keyword matching (both positive and negative), advert copy variation and dynamic keyword insertion all provide a great degree of flexibility. The ability to adjust budgets, bid strategies, to pause or resume campaigns/ad groups and respond to commercial imperatives in minutes further bolster the litheness and responsiveness of PPC.

Reporting

The search networks provide full reporting packages that allow you to closely monitor all marketing activity through their channel. Additional tracking programmes allow you to tie revenue/goal tracking directly into these campaigns in a seamless fashion.

Measurability

With revenue and goal tracking tied into the reporting package, paid search performance becomes very transparent. Calculating ROI and the cost per acquisition is therefore a simple measurement. Other KPIs are also easily tracked and the campaign can be optimised on-the-fly to meet any objectives where priorities change.

Market Research

The data offered from a paid search advertising campaign will often offer significant insight into a market and its characteristics - this data is both immediate and free, and an asset that should not be overlooked when planning the entire online marketing strategy and mix.

Disadvantages

Dynamic Competition

Bid prices compete to determine positioning - so constant monitoring is required.

Big Budgets Prevail

Big purses tend to prevail as they can out-bid the minnows.

Quality Score algorithm

Google’s Quality Score algorithm calculates the relevancy of the landing assets to the ad group and trigger keywords, then factors this into the final cost-per-click (CPC). This means to get the full benefit and lowest costs in your campaigns relevant landing assets with matching keywords are needed score highly on the “quality” index - negating some of the immediacy/responsiveness of PPC.

On-going cost

To match traffic month-by-month, what you spend this month you must also spend next month.

Therefore, to maximise your return it is highly desirable to implement a programme of landing page optimisation and sales funnel optimisation (or any transactional architecture) to increase conversion rates and get more out of your paid search budget.

Display Advertising

What is it?

Display advertising uses banners, leader boards, skyscrapers and MPU display panels to deliver a creative message to the audience by appearing on targeted websites. The display units can deliver multimedia and streaming content, and interact with the user.

Advantages

Cost Effective

Well-targeted campaigns can be very cost effective in sales and lead generation.

The flexibility of the creative and interactive capability offer great branding power to the advertiser

Awareness

The volumes of eyeballs and flexibility of the creative in the visual display offer great branding power to the advertiser. This is the main function of display advertising - to raise brand awareness and feed more users into consideration mode.

Market Research

Display also offers excellent reporting and feedback that can be used to hone the marketing message; post-click and post-impression data can be used in conjunction with other channels to assess exposure to conversion and user responsiveness to creative and offerings.

Guaranteed Sales Price

The advent of cost-per-acquisition (CPA) deals present advertisers with a fantastic sales and marketing opportunity to acquire sales/leads at a known fixed cost. Generally these type of arrangements are based on previous CPC or CPM campaign metrics so predictable sales projections can be calculated by the network or publisher.

Interactivity

A significant advantage of certain display units is the interactivity, allowing you to interact with the consumer directly, allowing data capture and sales opportunities that other channels cannot match.

Disadvantages

Campaign Management

Coordinating the creative process, media buying and network analytics for best outcomes is complex. Quite often these three elements are handled by different bodies, meaning a high degree of account management and liaison is required to achieve the right outcome. We suggest engaging a single party that takes a unified approach, so you get joined-up thinking for the campaign’s lifecycle.

Banner Blindness

Although display is a great mechanism for branding, advertisers should be aware of “banner blindness”; so just because 1 million eyeballs have seen your creative does not mean it has reached them all.

Email Marketing (Emarketing)

What is it?

This is the broadcast of a marketing message to an audience on a list in an email format. This can be to a known customer base that have opted-in, or to a purchased or rented list of people willing to receive info from third parties. As the former are targeted and more responsive to your message the idea is to actively build-up your opt-in list through broadcasts and other marketing and sales activity.

Advantages

Universality

Email is almost universally used by all Internet users and cited by 98% as a reason to go online.

Low Cost

Email marketing also represents a fraction of the cost of traditional DM mailers.

Well-executed email marketing to an opt-in audience can produce some of the highest response rates seen in any online channel

High Conversions

Well-executed email marketing is shown to give a significant boost to sales and marketing activity, with response rates of the opt-in audience being one of the highest seen in any online channel.

Message Segmentation

Electronic Customer Relationship Management (eCRM) tools can improve conversion rates by helping segment email lists to target recipients; personalising emails with elements relevant to known behaviour and buying patterns.

Conversion Tracking

Broadcast delivery, user response, sales and marketing activity occurring over the reporting window can all be measured, and campaigns fine tuned and optimised to improve user interaction and conversions.

Regular Contact (Outreaching)

Email provides a cheap and versatile channel for maintaining contact with customers; a ubiquitous format for regular communication and dialogue. Email marketing’s characteristics make it the perfect mechanism for providing touchpoints throughout the purchase decision cycle and Customer Relationship Management process.

Template Reuse

With great creative and well-designed templates, email broadcasts can be produced quickly and efficiently, making it a very agile and flexible communication channel.

Disadvantages

Requires List of “Opt-In” Recipients

Requires a list of opt-in users to be most effective, so list building and data harvesting are required to acquire opt-in users - this can mean buying and renting lists regularly to help build up your list data, and running targeted data acquisition/lead generation campaigns.

History of Spam Use

Given a long history of spam email, broadcasting can be a thorny area. Firstly your email templates need to reach the audience - so you need to known how to circumvent spam filters and display issues with web-mail and email-client applications, and secondly you should always use a third party for broadcast who know all the spam laws and best practice - to ensure you protect your domain and brand and don’t get blacklisted with the ISPs or other authorities.

Social Marketing (Web 2.0 Marketing)

What is it?

Applying online marketing activity to a host of different channels that fall under the banner of social media - these can be social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, community sites within the market sector, forums, blogs and user-generated-content (UGC), news, media and PR channels, and bookmarking websites. The idea is to seed debate, discussion, interest, and activity and raise product and brand awareness and talk to customers and potential customers directly. These channels can be integrated into your website making your activities and messaging appear both within your site and across the web where your potential customers actually are.

Advantages

Social marketing can substantially increase brand-recognition by capitalising on word-of-mouth marketing

Builds Brand and Product Awareness

When implemented correctly, social marketing can provide a very powerful method of building brand-awareness, using consumer resources to help build links and increase brand-recognition by capitalising on the potency of word-of-mouth marketing.

Low Cost

The very nature of this type of marketing often requires very little in the way of investment, apart from time and effort. The “snowball effect” seen in successful social marketing initiatives mean that once started, much of the work in communicating and proliferating the message is done by the audience themselves.

Highly Targeted

The factional nature of communities in social networks means that it is possible to ensure that you reach highly targeted audiences and market strata.

Real-Time Research

By monitoring and interacting with communities within social networks, it is possible engage in a dialogue with consumers and identify trends as they happen, enabling companies to react to current events or changing consumer requirements in real-time - with no lag caused by having to collate or analyse market research data.

Loyalty

The groups and communities in social networks often serve to increase brand advocacy and loyalty within their audience in a self-reinforcing cycle, occasionally leading to a point where they have an impact on brand direction, such as the “Bring back Wispa” campaign which prompted Cadburys to re-release the Wispa chocolate bar.

Disadvantages

Requires Finesse

It requires a deft touch - you don’t want to appear to be working on behalf of “The Man” or “Astroturfing” (fake grassroots behaviour) as it will shatter your credibility - so genuine friendships, acquaintances and networking are best routes to market.

Loss of Control

Once you enter this arena you no longer have control of the message - so you must try and shape the message within the context of dynamic human interaction - i.e. this is a political activity firstly - if you get the politics right the commercial benefits will take care of themselves.

Viral Marketing

What is it?

Any form of marketing that models the spread of a pathogen using a word-of-mouth social distribution model that is self-perpetuating. The message must be easy to distribute and pass on to your peers, and will need an incentive to trigger distribution - whether that is an offer, humorous content, or a call-to-arms. The trick of good viral is identifying a decent distribution trigger that falls within the brand message and objectives of the campaign.

Advantages

Viral marketing can deliver a big bang for your buck, and have huge impact on sales and brand awareness

Huge ROI

Viral marketing has the potential to deliver you a big bang for your buck if successful. Well executed offer-led campaigns such as Odd Bin’s famous “Special Offer” voucher that was “accidentally” able to be copied and distributed to anyone can have huge impact on sales and brand awareness.

Disadvantages

Difficult to “Manufacture” a Viral Success

Coming up with a decent distribution trigger is that is not beyond-the-pale is difficult and requires talent and fine judgment in the creative process. Everybodys idea of a viral email, product or video is different; and many attempts to manufacture viral creatives have failed, from the near-misses to the downright cringe-worthy…

Slipping Off-Brand

The ability to go too far or off brand is all too easy in the pursuit of humour, controversy or offer benefits. An example of this is the infamous VW Polo terrorist viral which, while unconnected to Volkswagon, prompted a categorically statement from them to the effect that it was an unrelated production - so as to avoid any potentially negative reaction.

What do you want people to do?

This is the key question to ask before starting as this will determine the limitations imposed upon the scope of the design.

Mailer Design Considerations

Visual communication

information design

• Does the image tell the story without any copy?
• Is the copy clear and pithy?
• Is there an obvious call to action?
• Are there easily spotted benefit statements?

visual hierarchy

• Create a visual hierarchy to signal importance of elements to the user
• Structure the visual hierarchy to direct the eye to the call-to-action

typography

• Does the copy use headings and subheadings to facilitate scan reading?
• Are the USP and benefit statements summarised in bullet points for immediate recognition?
• Does text use bold, colour and italics to visually highlight important content for scan readers?

Call to action

wording

Short, punchy and proactive (do something!)

colour, position, size

• Use of contrasting (but complementary) colours to highlight Call-to-Action
• Position above the fold
• Proximity to the visual hook
• Size elements with regards to visual hierarchy

Use of devices

Familiar devices serve to highlight the action required, e.g. buttons are clickable, etc

Awareness of “the fold”

Most important elements at the top of the page above the fold (email client “preview” fold, not browser fold):

• Is it positioned to grab the viewers attention and pique curiosity in the first few vital seconds?
• Does it communicate the content of the rest of the mailer?

Use of space

• Is the design too cluttered?
• Does it allow users to see elements clearly?
• Does it use space to defined “containers” for text, product images, etc?

Common conventions

Common conventions (eg. left aligned text, underlined hypertext links etc) facilitate user understanding and rapid extraction of information e.g. they allow users to scan read and draw the eye to salient points.

• Does your design use counter-intuitive design quirks?
• Does the mailer’s elements aid comprehension, or diminish it?

Viewing device constraints

• How will the design look if read on a Blackberry or i-Phone screen?
• Does the message still work if viewed without images?

Mailer Content Considerations

Image-text balance

Ensure best use of layout real-estate, with regards to clarity of message vs digestibility

Clarity & consistency

• Does the email subject line match the copy heading?
• Does the copy message match the imagery?

Balance between message and brand

Remember the commercial objective - is the brand getting in the way of the message?

Compelling content

Content must be short and punchy – but must still be compelling so as to entice the click-through

Implications of target audience

• Does the tone of voice resonate with the intended audience?
• Is the product or offer relevant to them?

Reviewing The Mailer

Check the Commercial Objective

Upon finishing – review the design and ask:

• Is the commercial objective clear?
• What does this mailer want me to do?

If it’s not obvious within seconds of viewing – revisit and rework the design until it is…