A blog about smart marketing and conversion optimization.

This is a guest post by Rakesh Soni, CEO and co-founder of LoginRadius – the fastest growing social platform offering social sign-on, social sharing, user data and social analytics.

Know your consumer base. The most basic of business rules we all live or die by.

And what do we need in order to know who our online users are?

Consumer data, consumer data and more consumer data, of course.

Marketing teams spend enormous amounts of time and money trying to understand their user base, what they want, how to reach them and how to keep them coming back.

The most common way marketers have collected online user data has been, until now, via sign-up forms. Yet we know that around 80%* of users dislike traditional registration forms and most of them will enter incorrect or false information.

As a result, marketers are well aware that asking users to fill out more than five data fields is really pushing their luck. So the question remains – how can I get more, reliable consumer data?

Social networks have finally found a solution for us, and it is simple: offer social sign-on – also known as social login – on your website.

Social login allows users to register on websites using their existing social network IDs – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. – giving them a hassle-free online experience by removing the need to complete another sign-up form or remember yet another set of passwords.

Offering social login on your sites gives you access to more than 200 data points, including verified email addresses, gender, age, relationship status and personal interests.

With verified information at your fingertips, businesses can truly revolutionize their marketing strategies. Let’s look at five ways how.

1. Understand who your users are

Consumer data is absolutely key to knowing exactly who your users are and being able to strategize and plan around that information.

But until recently, website owners had been faced with an uphill challenge when it came to collecting accurate and detailed data.

Even if you managed to persuade someone to fill out a registration form in the first place, there’s an 88% chance they’ll enter incomplete or falsified information.

But the arrival of Facebook Connect in 2008 completely changed the login and data game. With users able to carry their personal data with them around the web, website owners can now tap into far more useful and accurate data on a scale never thought possible before.

Social login gives you access to hundreds of data points straight from the user’s profile, including verified email address, personal interests, name, gender, age, location and language.

With access to quality, first-party data, marketing teams can develop better strategies and targeted campaigns.

2. Segment your user base

In a world with more niche markets, intense competition and more demanding consumers, market segmentation is both essential and increasingly complex.

With a wealth of social data, marketers are now able to constantly analyze their user base. They can segment them in multiple groups and conduct targeted strategies and campaigns.

For example, you can target even more defined groups – such as selecting female only users aged between 20 and 25 who live in a particular region and are interested in beauty products – giving you a competitive advantage.

This will in turn translate into a high return on investment (ROI) on your marketing campaigns and higher satisfaction among your users because the get relevant content.

User segmentation also empowers management to build business strategies.

3.  Personalize the user experience

Social data gives you a direct connection with your user – instead of just selling to consumers you can now build a relationship with another human being whom you are growing to understand.

In today’s marketing landscape, there’s been a shift from old-fashioned B2C (business to consumer) selling models to H2H (human to human) relationships.

Businesses that personalize users’ web experiences around their interests and demographics record a 19 per cent increase in sales.

Social login allows you to map a user’s visits to your site, enabling you to better predict his or her online behaviours and intentions, and then build a personalized experience for that particular user.

4. Target email marketing campaigns 

Forward-thinking brands are already delivering targeted emails based on the superior data received through social login.

Once you have segmented your user base and mapped their past activities on your site, you are now in a position to send out targeted email offers to drive up engagement and revenue.

Clearly it makes sense to not only follow up on a sale, but to also offer the user related items they may be interested in.

If you have sold someone a top of the range cell phone, why aren’t you recommending cases, headphones and other accessories by email?

People are quick to hit the unsubscribe button if you send them irrelevant emails too often, running informed and targeted email campaigns is essential if you are to retain your users.

5. Gather leads (prospect information) on landing pages 

So at this stage, you’re pulling in stacks of data. You can segment your user base and personalize the user experience. Now, I want talk about how you can use social login to capture leads on a marketing landing page.

We all make beautiful landing pages with very effective messaging to attract prospects, but there’s one problem we all face: prospects don’t fill out the form or, even if they do, they enter incorrect information.

So we know nothing about the prospect, limiting our sales team’s ability to gather warm leads, nevermind close deals. That’s a significant impact on sales, isn’t it?

Well, social login can help you fix that by asking your prospects to connect with their social accounts before downloading content, participated in a webinar or taking part in any other ‘call to action’ you have on your landing page.

So now, instead of filling out a registration form, your prospects just connect to their social account in a couple of seconds.

Offering social login on landing pages will eliminate fake users and gather a wealth of correct  data about your prospects.

Your sales team would love that, wouldn’t they?

To learn more about how social login can improve the user experience on your landing pages, check out this post.

If you weren’t addicted to users’ social data before, you should be now.

Yes, the agency business is cyclical, but last year we noticed something strange. It seemed increasingly harder and harder to bring on new clients.

A few brave friends risked offending our online marketing pride by pointing out our website might need a refresh. At first we bristled, but then the logic became clear. We had outgrown the minimum viable product website that we used to launch Clever Zebo.

We took our time, spent days breaking down our strengths and key value proposition. Rather than let our accomplishments stay hidden or be communicated half-heartedly, we invested in developing great case studies and recording passionate testimonials. We started with paragraphs, trimmed them to bullet points where possible, iterated wireframes and went through a vigorous design and redesign process.

We knew the new site looked and communicated better, but would it really make a difference?

The results have been incredibly clear. Not only has our conversion rate skyrocketed, but the companies who connect with us tend to be remarkably aligned on values and mission.

From the beginning of Clever Zebo, we wanted to be more than just advice-givers but fearless hands-on marketers who practice what we preach.

If you think you may be due for a website redesign, here are a few pointers for setting yourself up for success:

1. A redesign is more than new fonts and colors. That’s just a/b testing the look. A redesign requires getting in touch with your customers and what they’re looking for. It requires clarifying your value proposition, how you organize information and what are the key actions do you want your customer to take.

2. Involve the key stakeholders. A website redesign isn’t just a marketing exercise; it’s an organizational one. Get feedback and input across your organization. Not only does it make people feel involved, but you’ll be amazed what you learn about your customer and value proposition.

3. Don’t rush the stages. I highly recommend splitting your process into three stages (wireframes with copy, design and coding), each of which should be complete before moving on to the next.

4. LOVE the design before you start coding. It’s relatively easy to change a design, but once you start writing code it’s a lot harder to make changes. Get the design 100% right first.

5. Be patient. Change isn’t easy and may take some time.

I recently contributed to a great eBook on PPC landing pages, and it strikes me that some of the questions addressed therein are useful to our blog audience. Contest strategist Dan Levy of Unbounce.com asked me these six incisive questions, and in this post I’m publishing a few thoughts in response.

Also, be sure to download The Ultimate Guide to PPC Landing Pages from Unbounce.

1.  Why do you think PPC advertising is still relevant now that inbound marketing, content marketing and native advertising are all the rage?

If you go to the hardware store looking for wood screws, you’re damn likely to leave with some wood screws. Sure, you might scope out the scroll saw demo they’re doing in aisle seven. Maybe you’ll think about building a birdhouse — maybe you’ll even buy the materials for one today. But you came searching for a specific item, and that remains a very powerful indicator that you’ll buy that item.

Search is the same way. While inbound marketing & content marketing are incredible sources of leads for many businesses, few things are more powerful than a (wo)man on a mission, searching for a specific thing.

2. What have you learned from PPC advertising that you’ve applied to the rest of your marketing mix?

The importance of serving up a relevant experience and following that thread all the way through to the end of the customer experience (and into re-engagement) in a smart, consistent way.

Because PPC can be so cutthroat these days, we’ve learned in a sink-or-swim environment that conversion rates must be optimized by creating a fantastic, highly-relevant experience for the user that inspires confidence until and beyond the credit card makes its much-awaited appearance.

3. What’s the most surprising thing you learned about your customer during a PPC campaign?

 In our wee toddler days of being an agency, we thought a well-organized PPC campaign targeting searchers who typed in terms like “seo company” or “sem experts” would naturally drive good leads. We were wrong.

This marketing channel — while we continue to recommend similar approaches for countless clients, and they often work wonders — did not produce quality leads for Clever Zebo.

Instead, we’ve found a diverse blend of partnership marketing, content distribution, social media, referrals and retargeting to bring us better leads that more often become Clever Zebo clients. It’s a more cerebral sales cycle than the impulsive world of paid search offers, and while that’s a small part of the marketing mix, we were surprised to learn it did not drive the right kind of prospect to CleverZebo.com.

4. How have you used a PPC campaign to validate or reject a marketing idea?

Our client who is an international real estate firm, we hypothesized, would benefit from a more quantitative, data-centric marketing message. We figured serious prospective investors would be compelled by growth statistics about the real estate market being advertised.

Adding hard numbers describing 18% sector growth in 2012 proved to increase clickthrough rate in PPC, and when the same idea was applied to PPC landing pages, conversion rate and lead quality increased.

5. What’s the biggest conversion lift you’ve seen from optimizing a PPC landing page?

We enjoyed a 25% increase in conversion rate a after slimming the key signup form for a subscription-based online tool. We went from a 6-field signup form with password creation down to 2 fields and an auto-generated password sent by email.

While Clever Zebo has seen much bigger percentages of conversion improvement for a landing page, this is the biggest lift in terms of the sheer number of new customers converted in one fell swoop — the company was spending millions per month on PPC.

Want to learn more? I highly recommend you take a look at what these 9 conversion experts have to say about how PPC landing pages play into their marketing mix.