A blog about smart marketing and conversion optimization.

This is a guest post by Adam Tuttle of ActiveCampaign, a leader in email marketing & marketing automation. As a member of the Clever Zebo community, you can claim a 10% lifetime discount on Activecampaign using discount code 1QVRDSBW2OD2WWS.

If you have ever used an email marketing service, undoubtedly you have sent mass email intended for a group of people from various demographics, interests, and many other data points which provide insight directly to each specific contact. Emails like these are typically very broad and lacking the focused marketing many consumers have come to expect in the dynamic world of digital. What if you could not only add personal elements such as first and last name which marketers do very often, but actually make the content of the email dynamic based on who is reading it? Enter, conditional content.

Conditional content 101

Conditional content can be confused for personalization tags, which allow you to add a unique pieces of data (such as the first name) to the email for each individual reader. This is a mistake. Although similar in some aspects, conditional content is anything but a personalization tag. Instead of changing a single word or data point dynamically per contact as a personalization tag does, conditional content actually changes entire portions of content based on data.

Example: I am preparing an email campaign to go out to 25,000 contacts with information about several new products in my online retail store. I have new products for both men and women and do not want to information to be sent about those products which are non-relevant to each reader. So, I take the first few images of my new mens items, and modify the surrounding text to be gender specific. I then make this conditional so only contacts whose gender is “male” can see this content section. Likewise, I repeat the process for a portion of my email which is totally designed for my female audience.

Although a generic example, the above is a simple explanation of how conditional content works. Now that we are all on the same page of what conditional content is, here are 3 quick tips for getting started with it.

1. Use conditional content as much as possible. It allows you to tailor your emails specifically for each individual contact. If your readers feel like you are speaking to them instead of a general audience, they are much more likely to engage with you.

2. Look for creative ways to use conditional content. Things like gender are great starting places, but any data point you have can be used. This gives you an incredible amount of possibilities for building emails which speak to your audience. I’ve literally seen a customer have over 40 conditional content sets within a single email. During the editing phase, the email campaign looked incredibly long, but when it actually sent, contacts were only getting a couple of pieces of key information based on the knowledge contained within his data base.

3. Try different combinations to see what works. Just like any other aspect of email marketing, testing and revision is going to be the key for success. You might find some parts of your email do not make a difference if they are conditional or not; while some content types (text or images) can increase opens, link clicks, etc. As you learn what works for your audience, spend more time crafting the elements which prove to make a difference.

Optimizing data for conditional content

You’ve probably hear the phrase “knowledge is power,” and in the world of digital marketing, this is especially true. No longer does the shotgun-style approach of creating a blast, sending it out, and hoping it works, prove to be the best style of email marketing. In the context of email marketing, I cringe when I hear the word “blast” used because it often has such a bad spammy connotation. Email marketing can be very precise, being sent at the right time with the right message for each customer by using tools like conditional content. If you can gather data to help you make stronger email messages do so. Here are a few questions to ask when trying to optimize your data.

1. Does your data add value? In business, there are value adding resources and there are non-value adding resources. For example: lets say you gather contacts physical mailing addresses, but never have the intention of using it; would you call that value adding or non-value adding? To many marketers strive to have “Big Data” mindsets with no idea as to how to obtain value from the data they have. As you try to optimize your data to increase the effectiveness of conditional content, ask if the data you will be using is value adding to the goals of your marketing process.

2. Does it enhance the message? Conditional content is great, but it is not always going to be applicable for every situation. Before you start making every aspect of your email conditional, ask yourself if it enhances the message. Remember, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Your customer will have no idea somebody else is seeing different pictures and text if you make aspects of the message conditional. With that being said, does it matter who sees what? If the answer is no, leave it be and focus on the things that do matter.

3. Is there more? Although you might already have strong data which is all currently being used, I encourage you to evaluate and ask if there is more information you can gather to enhance your current conditional content options. Conditional content like most tools of this nature are only as strong as you make them. The better you make your data sets (with conditional content in mind) the more powerful and effective you’ll be able to make your overall email marketing program.

Conditional content is a great tool for taking your email marketing program to the next level. It empowers to you have focused marketing efforts dynamic to each person reading the email and their specific demographic. Instead of sending a “blast” and hoping your audience engages with it, use conditional content to send emails targeted to each individual reader and ensure you capture their attention.

This is a guest post by Jonathan Niv of Dispop, a leading direct and retargeting display advertising for SMBs. Dispop offers $75 in ad credit and a free set of custom-designed banner ads for members of the Clever Zebo community. Claim this deal by reaching out to Dispop. Mention code “CLEVERZEBOPROMO.”

There was a time, not too long ago, when an abandoned cart or lost visitor more or less guaranteed that you have lost a sale. A person visited your website, made the effort to add some items to the online cart, browsed around to investigate your products, and yet for some reason didn’t complete the transaction. There could be any number of reasons behind this, but the bottom line is that you lost a potential customer. Well, this is no longer the case.

Today we have a marketing tool which enables you to easily reach these “lost” customers and bring them back to complete the transaction: retargeting.

Why does retargeting work?

Retargeting works by tracking the movements of visitors through your website. This enables you to target a selective group with your ads as opposed to targeting a broad audience. This means that marketers now focus on the customer as an individual rather than having to target a whole demographic.

Targeting individuals enables you to spend your marketing budget where it becomes most effective, targeting only users whom you know are interested in your products. This greatly increases the conversion rates associated with retargeting and provides much higher return on investment when compared with other forms of advertising.

To increase the performance of retargeting campaigns you can create even more specific campaigns by segmenting your visitors into different audiences.

Segmentation & increasing relevance

One of the ways to increase the performance of retargeting campaigns is to make the ad more relevant to the targeted user. To do this we must segment users into groups in order to determine which ad group we would like to serve.

Segmentation by sales cycle

In many cases, primarily for e-commerce, it is advisable to segment your visitors based on where they are in your sales funnel. For instance, you can decide to aggressively target any visitors who have placed an item in their shopping cart. Users who have not placed an item in their cart will be targeted less frequently and with a different message.

Segmentation by product type

If you have several different product types it is recommended that you segment visitors based on which type of product they were viewing. As an example, visitors who viewed men’s clothing items will be shown an ad relevant to the products they were browsing while visitors who viewed women’s shoes will receive a very different ad relevant to them.

5 tips and retargeting best practices for fantastic ROI

1. Segment your audience for best results

The more specific the ads are to your audience the better the performance and higher the conversion rate. Creating specific segments for particular products, product types, or types of account can drastically improve your return on investment and lead to an amazing campaign.

2. Ads should lead to a dedicated landing page

The landing page should be an extension of the banner ad. It should have the same look and feel as the ad which generates the interest, while providing a clear and concise message which will not overload the visitor with too much information.

3. Use the right ads and a clear CTA

The ad needs to call attention to itself and your product/service with attractive products, special offers and discounts, i.e. ‘Daily Deals,’ ’50% off,’ ‘Free Shipping,’ or ‘Free!’ This message should be short and to the point, and should be the first thing a user notices. The call to action is usually made of text or a button with phrases like ‘Buy Now,’ ‘Learn More,’ ‘Sign Up,’ or ‘Register Here.’ It should be a short and clear command, prompting viewers to click on it.

4. Sweeten the deal

It is often recommended that you provide a special offer to retargeted customers. These visitors have already viewed your website and products, and may require a cherry on top in order to guarantee that they purchase. Depending on your product this offer can be anything from a slight discount to free shipping.

5. Creative optimization

Avoid ad fatigue by injecting new creative designs into your campaigns frequently. The more often a user see’s your ad the less effective it becomes. Within several weeks a banner may lose its edge and the conversion rates may begin to drop. To combat this we recommend adding new creative designs to your display campaign every few weeks.

This is a guest post by Jacques van der Wilt, creator of DataFeedWatch, a web-based tool for merchants to optimize their data feed for Google Shopping and other comparison shopping channels. 

Most shop owners have read about the awesome sales results on Google Shopping, but many of them do not have a Product Listing Ads (PLAs) campaign.  Managing a PLA-campaign is quite different from a regular text ad campaign, but it’s not rocket surgery. Here’s a brief overview of how you maximize the performance of your PLA-campaign.

1. Get your feed right

The product data feed that you export from your store to your Google Merchant Center is the base on which your campaign is built. Google will decide which ads to show, based on the information (about your products) that they find in the feed. The feed has to be 100% right. Invest time to make sure that your pictures are great, all data is complete and your titles are appealing.

2. Set up your campaign: 1 target per product

You need to create product targets for (groups of) your products. We always set up a product target for each product. It enables you to see the performance of each product in your AdWords-account. You can see which products sell a lot (or not) and which get you a lot of traffic but no sales.

Managing 10,000 bids for 10,000 products is not very efficient. That is why we add a ‘management layer’ on top of the product targets: we create an ad group for each product type and group all product targets accordingly.  Now you have (e.g.) 50 ad groups for 50 different product types. That is manageable and you can set bids on ad group level. Based on the results per adgroup, you ‘drill down’ and review the individual product targets and start optimizing your campaign:

3. Basic optimization

a) Wait ……

The first rule of optimization of a new campaign is: do nothing. You need to get enough traffic and conversions before you can draw any conclusions. So, it’s ok to monitor your campaign from day one, but don’t start changing your bids based on 10 clicks and 1 conversion.

b) Negative keywords

Over time you will see that certain search queries are getting you clicks but no conversions. Make ‘cartridge’ a negative keyword if you find that ammo-buyers are clicking your ads and leave when they find out that you are selling ink.

c) Conversion path

Always check the path from click to conversion. Fix any errors you may find and always ask yourself: would YOU end up buying this product?

4. Identify winners & losers and increase your RoI

Winners

You’ll know a winner when you see one: a product that gets sold a lot and has a handsome margin, even after paying for the clicks. Most merchants will get 80% of their revenue from only 20% of their products – for others 90/10 is even more applicable.

So now that you know where you are making your money, what do you do?  You bid up and see what happens. If you increase your bid by 10% and you sell 20% more, you are winning. But if your sales don’t go up while your CPA does, it was a bad idea after all. You may consider lowering your bid and see if your sales volume stays the same.

You may also put your winners in (a) separate adgroup(s). That does not get you more sales, but it’s easier to manage if you only need to look in 1 basket to see all your top-eggs.

Potential winners

Some of your best selling items may have a very high CPA (cost per acquisition).  Maybe that does not show on adgroup level, but it does if you drill down to the individual product targets.

So do the math before you start celebrating: you may sell 100 pillows per week, but with a gross margin of $5 and a CPA of $4.72, you are only making $28. With a few returned products this can easily turn into a loss.

So now that you know that you are not making money there, what do you do?  You bid down and see what happens. Maybe you’ll see sales go down to 50 per week, but if the CPA goes down to $3.88, you have already doubled your gross margin. Play with it. A $56 margin may not excite you either, but it’s $225 per month, it adds to your bottom line and it’s easy money for just 1 product!

Potential losers

Identify the products that hardly get any sales but that do get a lot of traffic.  There’s always a bunch of those. People are interested in the product, they click your PLA but they leave without buying. You paid for every click but you never got anything back for it!

So now that you know where you are losing your money, what do you do?

You need to find out WHY people are not converting. Maybe there’s something wrong in the conversion path. Check out your product page: is something crucial missing? And what about the price? Is it too high?

You basically have 2 options:

– you know what’s wrong and you fix it (or at least you try and see what happens)

– you can’t figure it out and you delete the product from your feed. Saving a wasted advertising dollar may be the biggest contribution to your RoI.

Losers

It is not difficult to identify your losers. There is no demand for these products (low impressions) and yet they take up time (yours!) and money (clicks).  So now that you know that you are losing money, what do you do?

If you run a long tail strategy, you may accept a lot of non-performing products, but even then you need to make sure that all those clicks left and right don’t end up costing you too much. If you get 80% of your revenue from 20% of your products, then do consider stopping advertising for all products that sell once a month, have a low margin and still take up your money and time. If there is more money to be made in those 20% top-sellers then focus all resources there and maximize your RoI.