Neura converts mobile-location data into time and consumer attention

The company announced its app for Salesforce Marketing Cloud and fully automated marketing using real-world behavioral insights.

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Help us chart Amazon’s growth as an advertising platform

Please fill out our survey to help us understand how marketers are prioritizing Amazon and other digital commerce advertising platforms.

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Brands on Facebook Messenger get three new features to better connect with customers

Businesses will be able to add “icebreakers” – commonly asked questions – to their profile via the API to help jump start conversations with users.

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Soapbox: Consumers want personalization and data privacy so we need to solve the puzzle

Everyone in the martech ecosystem has a responsibility to practice ethical data governance as the pretext for personalization.

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Brainfluence Podcast Interview – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

Brainfluence Podcast Interview – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

John Jantsch appears on Roger Dooley’s Brainfluence podcast to discuss his latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

This book is a departure from Jantsch’s five previous works; while those books were focused on marketing strategy and tactics, this book is a series of 366 daily meditations aimed at helping entrepreneurs to find their path and stay true to themselves.

In this episode of Brainfluence, Jantsch shares with Dooley about the book, why it’s important to push through early struggles in entrepreneurship, and how to remain unhindered by the past in order to reach a brighter future.

Check it out – John Jantsch interviewed by Roger Dooley on the Brainfluence Podcast

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Writing Advice: Trick or Treat?

Happy Halloween! I have two tricks — or two treats — for you, depending on how you look at it:...

Continue Reading

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Soapbox: Are we falling in love with technology or building what SMBs need?

Alleviating the burden with dozens of point solutions, a SaaS solution could deliver a one-stop-shop to help small businesses.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Trick or Treat: The Spellbinding Marketing Sweets the TopRank Team Can’t Resist

Admit it. On Halloween night, the fierce competitor within you sprinted from home to home to claim as much sugary bounty as your pillowcase could carry. But the loyalist and purist in you was on the hunt for a specific candy treat. A treat that put all the rest to shame; a treat that always hit the sweet spot. via GIPHY For me, that coveted treat was: the Almond Joy. Sweetened coconut. Crunchy almonds. Smooth milk chocolate. Devilishly delicious, but ghoulishly elusive amongst a sea of KitKat- and Snickers-purchasing households. (Here’s to you, organic reach on Facebook.) As marketers, we all have our favorites. From tactical techniques that sweeten our marketing mix to the integration of marketing elements to tantalize our audience’s taste buds, the TopRank Marketing team weighs in on both fun- and king-size marketing treats they can’t resist.

Our Favorite Marketing Sweet Treats

Josh Nite

Senior Content Marketing Manager My favorite candy is black licorice. Black licorice doesn't appeal to everyone. That's a quality I like in candy—and in marketing, too. It's easy to make something bland and sweet that everyone tolerates—like, say, Necco Wafers—but that's not how you get raving fans. I've never met anyone passionate about Necco Wafers. Conversely, I've never met anyone who "kind of liked" black licorice. You love it or you hate it. Good marketing takes a bold stand, with personality and purpose. It draws in a target audience and excludes the rest. Love or hate black licorice, it's a perfect reminder that great marketing doesn't aspire to blandness.

Elizabeth Williams

Senior Account Manager Baby Ruth: My favorite part about Baby Ruth bars is they've got a little bit of everything—nuts, nougat, caramel, all with a chocolate coating. And, flavors all work so well together! To work well, good marketing must parallel Baby Ruths: A diverse yet integrated mix so that we can reach our audiences whenever and wherever they are and with a consistent message that resonates with their needs.

Nick Nelson

Senior Content Strategist Skittles. These bite-sized bursts of fruity flavor remind me of social media marketing. The bright colors reflect the vibrant imagery that stands out on feeds, and the many different flavors and colors represent the diversity of voices and viewpoints you can find across various networks.

Annie Leuman

Content Strategist Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Two incredible ingredients in their own right, come together to make an irresistible combo—kind of like SEO and content. Content is the peanut buttery center, and it’s wrapped in the perfect amount of chocolate to delight it’s consumers’ senses (and leave us all asking for more).

Ashley Zeckman

Senior Director of Digital Strategy I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for Starbursts. There are so many different delicious flavor varieties—from tropical to classic to my all-time personal favorite: All Reds. Much like the industry experts and influencers we partner with, the different flavor profiles add punch and pizzazz to the content palette. 

Tiffani Allen

Associate Director of Search & Analytics Twix. To borrow from Saturday Night Live’s Stefon: This candy has everything. Chocolate. Caramel. Cookies. A clever marketing strategy. Everything, people.  The combination of three complementary, yet distinctly different flavors reminds me of a well-integrated digital marketing mix of search, content, and influence. While each discipline on its own is delicious, it’s the mix of all three that produces a truly crave-worthy treat. 

Lane Ellis

Social Media and Content Marketing Manager From the 1850s until the 1920s my great-great-uncle Henry H. Ellis, and later his son, ran a confectionery and bakery making homemade candies. The business started first in Janesville, WI and then from 1867 on, moved to Cheyenne, WY, so I suppose my fondness for sweets runs in my family. I love marzipan and adore chocolate, so as a child over Halloween, when a particularly generous and creative woman placed a wrapped chocolate-covered marzipan candy in my sugary goodie bag, I was overjoyed. Decades later, the two mingling flavors are still a favorite, and remind me of a type of marketing nirvana in which two already excellent practices meld together to form something truly rare and beautiful, akin to when a favorite professional comedian takes over the social media channels of a company you're a longtime fan of.

Witch Way to the Candy?

Sorry. Bad pun. Moving on … Regardless of where your loyalties lie in the marketing sweets realm, perhaps the nuggets above will encourage you to reach into the candy bowl for a new variety. What marketing sweet is at the top of your trick or treating list? Tell us in the comments section below.

The post Trick or Treat: The Spellbinding Marketing Sweets the TopRank Team Can’t Resist appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

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Monstrous Mistakes Marketers Make

Market Street used to have a glorious office building, but now it stands abandoned, and so the story goes…

It was a dark and stormy fiscal quarter. The CMO was asked to make drastic changes on a horrifically tight turn-around. While the marketing team marketed as much as they could, beasts took over their office, causing missteps, mayhem, and mistakes. With each error,  a new beast was born! These are the misguided miscreations that ravaged the office:

The Department Divider:

This monster, content on destruction, divided the Market Street sales and marketing teams—causing them to butt heads. They argued while choosing key accounts and couldn’t compromise on campaign goals, thus leaving grotesque gaps in the sales funnel. The horror!

 

The Optimal Vampire:

This monstrosity rally sucked. The Market Street marketing team’s programs ran short of expectations, and the marketers didn’t analyze what went wrong., reassess A/B test creative, or reallocate spend. Without optimizing, their campaign ran dry. Oh, the humanity! 

 

The Competitive Clown:

This villain made the marketers pay too much attention to their competitor’s messaging, and it showed up in the work. Instead of focusing on differentiation, they became second-rate, copycat versions of their competition. Egads!

 

The Proofreading Poltergeist:

This menace killed Market Street’s work faster than any other marketing monster with a single, villainous move: a typo. Instead of reading copy backwards, forwards, and upside-down, the team rushed through the proofing process, and their audience rushed away from them. My eyes!

 

The Dirty Data Stinker:

This beast created a wasteland of horrors with outdated, incomplete, and duplicative data. The marketers, not normalizing, fixing, and removing data, burned through a lot of dollars. Alas, their hard work ended up in the trash. Jeepers!

 

This tales does not end well, for now the once glorious building on Market Street is left to decay. Legend has it, these monsters still stalk from office to office, finding new marketers to terrorize. Don’t allow one of these monstrous mistakes step foot into your campaign!

See how Oracle Marketing Cloud keeps monsters at bay:

Click here for more treats à

                                                                       

Download the infographic pdf à

 

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5 Thank You Pages That Take Post-Conversion to the Next Level

If you’re like me, you say “please” and “thank you” automatically. 

You’ve been saying these magic words since you were a kid. Because you were strongly motivated. Forget your manners, and you’d be humiliated in front of your family or strangers. Refuse altogether, and you’d be denied the obscure object of desire. 

“What do we say?” “Pweese.” Boom—the chunky monkey is yours! 

For today’s marketers, the problem with habitual politeness is that the delivery of a thank you message should never be a reflex. If a “thank you” rings hollow, the response from your customers will be equally rote.

“Thank You.” “You’re Welcome.” End of conversation.

See the problem here?

A thank you page is not the end of the transaction. It’s the next step in keeping people engaged with your brand or product, generating continued goodwill, further qualifying your leads—or even increasing order values or making more sales.

When it comes to your digital campaigns, how you say thank you should be an essential cornerstone of your post-conversion strategy. So let’s talk about a few ways you can approach creating better thank you pages. Along the way, we’ll explore some very effective thank you page examples created by Unbounce customers.

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5 Tips from 5 Thank You Pages

1. Invite ‘Em for a Specific, Strategic Call	4. Win Them Over First, Then Make A Second Ask
2. Reveal the Next Steps	5. Keep ‘Em Engaged With Your Site
3. Reinforce Your Brand Personality

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Thank You Tip #1: Invite ‘Em for a Specific, Strategic Call

The example below from Australia’s Axis Social applies every best practice out there (and then some) to maximize its post-conversion potential:

Image courtesy of Axis Social. Click it to see the whole thing.

This isn’t a landing page, though it might look a lot like one at first glance. It’s a thank you page (as opposed to a confirmation box or popup). And that’s why it’s so powerful. It does a lot of what a traditional lead-gen page might do, but it does it after the initial conversion goal has been met.

At this point in the interaction, the team at Axis has already captured the visitor’s email address in exchange for a downloadable Buyer’s Guide. Instead of letting the interaction end there, Axis goes the extra mile to communicate their value as an agency.  According to Managing Director Matthew Asimus, this page helped them bridge the gap between a marketing qualified (MQL) and sales qualified (SQL) lead:

We hypothesized that a number of users who engaged with, and converted on, our first MQL landing page would develop an additional level of trust and thus a propensity to ascend from an MQL into an SQL. In essence, we were hoping to move users through a ‘yes cascade’ or ‘yes ladder’ to improve conversion rates.

Our initial results from this MQL ascension approach are incredibly exciting.  Despite the campaigns using cold paid traffic from social and requesting 7 form fields, our landing page conversion rates are nearly 30%. What’s more, our lead qualification rates align with our other sales qualified lead generation approaches.

Note just how much persuasive material they’ve included here:

• Social proof in the form of both brand logos (visible above the fold, naturally) and extensive testimonials from individual clients.
• A walkthrough of the social strategy call that highlights compelling benefits (“explosive lead growth for your business” sounds good to me) and gives the call a definitive structure and purpose. 
• The enticing promise of another resource, a custom Facebook Ads Blueprint, that’ll prove equally valuable to Axis Social’s targeted customers.

The beauty of this approach is that it also scales to suit visitors without adding more pressure to the experience. If a visitor hits this page but doesn’t want to connect with Axis Social at the moment, there’s nothing here preventing them from clicking away. 

But when visitors arrive with questions—or, say, balanced on the fine line between consideration and conversion—this thank you page gives them the extra nudge they need.

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Thank You Tip 2: Reveal Next Steps

Speaking of next steps, if you’ve ever taken an action online—like submitting a form or making a purchase—without receiving any response, you know the existential dread that follows: 

Did it… work? What happens next? Should I do it again?

What… am… I… supposed… to… do… now!? 

Maybe I’m exaggerating a touch, but it’s always important to let the visitor know about the next steps—especially if clicking your call-to-action isn’t the end of things. Doing so will reduce friction, frustration, and uncertainty. Even if the next step will be yours to take, let people know what you’re doing and when they can expect to hear from you. 

For example, notice how Zendrive does it here with a couple of lines:

Image courtesy of Zendrive.

It’s all clearly communicated. In the headline, they let their B2B prospects know that they’ve successfully completed the “first step.” Then the page sets expectations about what comes next (and when): “You will receive a message shortly with your invite to an executive briefing.” 

Finally, it’s also worth taking note of how Zendrive suggests further reading from the site by linking to a piece of content from their blog. Providing a link to a single, valuable piece of content (as opposed to their blog as a whole) helps build trust before the briefing ever begins.

Bonus Tip: Offer Downloadable Downloadables on Your Thank You Pages

OK, full disclosure: I’m slipping this lil’ bonus tip in here just because it’s a pet peeve of mine. 

Have you ever signed up for an ebook, report, or white paper that never seems to find its way to the inbox? It sucks. When this happens, you leave visitors feeling frustrated or even a little ripped off, since they’ve just exchanged your email address for nothing at all. 

(I can’t click “unsubscribe” fast enough when this happens.)

What makes it so painful, though, is that there’s a dead-simple way of getting around this issue on your thank you pages:

Unless you’ve got a very special reason you need to deliver a file only via email, provide a download link on the thank you page itself. That way, visitors who’re anxious to start reading (like me) are satisfied. You can still start a drip campaign, of course. But you also eliminate the possibility that your downloadable never makes it to them.

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Thank You Tip 3: Reinforce Brand Personality

This post features a few thank you pages that will feel a little “aspirational” for small marketing teams (or teams of one) who are short on time and resources. So it’s worth looking at how much gets done in this straightforward example from the fine people at Launchpeer:

Image courtesy of Launchpeer.

It’s personable, playful, and a little quirky. Most importantly, though, it’s thoughtful. As in, it demonstrates thought.

Even if you’ve seen this meme a million times before, this page lets you know that Launchpeer is a brand who, y’know, gets it. (And gets you.) Plus, when you click away, you leave with a pleasant association with the brand.

Tom Hanks is a good choice here too: he’s so darned affable and unlikely to be outed as a serial killer any time soon. I’m speculating, but this quick “t.hanks” from Launchpeer probably didn’t take a heck of a lot of time to create.

You can create your own fun images and animations, but the takeaway here should be that even a small effort leaves a much stronger impression than a generic thank you message. It shows how a humorous gif, playful animation, or unexpected message can generate tons of delight and goodwill.

(Of course, they also promote their podcast in this thank you page. And, again, offer that next step now that their visitor is on a roll engaging with their brand. So a little goes a long way…)

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Thank You Tip 4: Win Them Over First, Then Make A Second Ask

Usually, when a visitor takes a small action, they become more likely to take another, bigger one. That’s why the most effective thank you pages often follow-up with a bigger ask, and why multi-staged forms are usually recommended by CRO specialists and agencies. 

Sometimes it helps if the initial action is immediately appealing to your prospects. Take, for example, this contest created for Veeam by Gameplan Marketing:  

Image courtesy of Veeam and Gameplan Marketing. Click it to see the whole thing.

Leads are captured by offering prizes to IT professionals (like a fitness tracker, a hotel gift card, or Apple AirPods) in exchange for taking a short survey about their current data centers and cloud storage solutions. Like the example from Zendrive above, the thank you page then reminds visitors what they can expect next.

But afterward, this thank you page also makes a second ask. Visitors who’re are (gently) encouraged to sign up to access a free, gated content hub. Since they’ve already provided their info to enter the contest, they’re now more predisposed to do so. Gameplan also includes a sweet explainer video (it appears on the contest page and the thank you page) that briefly outlines the benefits of their cloud-based data-management product.

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Thank You Tip 5: Keep ‘Em Engaged With Your Site

One thing that most of these examples have in common is that they lead visitors back to the website or prompt another piece of content. You can take this even further, though.

For the launch of Unbounce’s Ultimate Ecommerce Landing Page Lookbook, for instance, the team created a landing page where visitors can grab it.

Here’s what the landing page for this guide looks like:

Click the image to visit the complete page. (Opens in a new tab.)

Eye-catching, right? And if it helps convince visitors that this lookbook is worth the download, then call it a success. It’s an awesome resource for any marketer looking for inspiration, so it’s not a tough sell.

However, we’ve also got plenty more content and resources to offer our ecomm visitors, including material further down the funnel. And we’d love to keep visitors coming back for it.

That’s why the thank you page is so crucial here. We want to keep the conversation going, so we use a thank you page to ask visitors another quick question on the way out. Depending on what visitors choose, they’ll be directed to additional resources.

I’ve included a screenshot of this choose-your-own-adventure flow below:

Click it to see the whole thing.

The answer that readers provide to this general question (i.e., “What’s the biggest challenge you face as a marketer?”) does three things:

1. The answer allows us to offer up additional, curated content and resources at the moment of conversion. This is the material we think visitors will find particularly useful. We include content from across the funnel, including editorial, educational, and promotional sources.
2. It lets us get to know our audience and their concerns a little better. The optional follow-up question on the thank you page helps us further qualify interest from visitors via progressive profiling and learn more about customers and non-customers alike. 
3. It provides insight into our audience’s information needs. From a content planning and strategy perspective, this is invaluable as we fill content gaps, decide on what pieces need to be updated, and prioritize the creation of new resources.

So a single thank you page can become a source of marketing insight, an engagement driver, and a lead qualifier. All this happens by asking a single additional question at the right moment.

Curious about the Unbounce ecommerce lookbook? Take a look at the whole flow here. (Yes, we’ll need your email. Tell ‘em Colin sent ya.) While you’re at it, download it for your landing page swipe file.

Thanks for Reading (About Thank You Pages)

I find a real-world analogy enlightening here: imagine if brick-and-mortar retailers were to escort you to the exit and lock the door each time you make a purchase.

That’d be crazy, right? 

So why do it on your landing pages?

Unfortunately, smart uses of thank you pages like these ones from our customers are the exception, not the rule. Frankly, a lot of examples out there look more like this bland form confirmation box, typo and all:

Pages like this one just don’t put as much care into saying thank you as they do their “pleases.” (That’s not great, Bob.)

A thank you page shouldn’t be a hard stop, and if that’s the habit you’ve gotten into, consider breaking it.

Thank you pages are super versatile. You can use them with subscriptions, downloads, webinar registrations, shopping carts, quote requests, demo signups, and contact forms. They can be used for upselling (or cross-selling), for offering discounts, for encouraging referrals, for soliciting feedback and testimonials, or for generating social shares. Holy moly.

Whether you’re selling something or generating leads, saying “thank you” in an unexpected and meaningful way is an opportunity to make a lasting impression. And, when incorporated into a thoughtful post-conversion strategy, it can boost your revenue too.

To close, here are three big points worth remembering if you’re trying to make a case for spending more time on your thank you pages:

• A healthy open rate for emails in your nurture campaign is between 15-25%. How many of those new leads will see your thank you page? Close to 100%, I’d wager. Start nurturing right away!
• According to research done by Bain & Company, “loyal online customers, just like offline ones, spend more, refer more people, and are more willing to expand their purchasing into new categories.” Well-considered thank you pages represent an incredible opportunity to create loyalty and build brand affinity.
• If you get enough traffic and have a clear secondary conversion goal, remember that thank you pages can be A/B tested and optimized just like your landing pages. Post-conversion remains an important touchpoint for your conversion rate optimization planning.

So if you’re already designing landing pages, make saying “thank you” as much a part of the process as your headline, form, and call to action.

And, hey, thanks for reading.

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Forrester predictions for CMO role are dire, but there is hope for current CMOs

Chief marketing officers who claim ownership and establish control across their organizations will create better customer experiences, drive customer loyalty.

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TapClicks acquires client reporting platform Megalytic

Megalytic’s reporting solutions will have access to hundreds of data connectors in the TapClicks Marketplace.

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