The Conversion Scientist™

Science by Email

What is a Conversion Scientist? (Video)

November 30, 2009 on 12:38 pm | In Content that Converts | No Comments

“Conversion is a science and an art. If you get the science right, you get to have fun with the art.”

Jonas Lamis at Tech Ranch invited me to sit down with him and talk about my favorite topic: conversion.

For some unknown reason, I was succinct and somewhat articulate. Go figger.

Watch the video to find out why you might need a Conversion Scientist in your business. I also give my best advice to any entrepreneur who wants to make the Web a key strategy in their business.

Register for BYOContent: The Extreme Conversion Makeover and see for yourself how to turn content into leads and sales.

Science by Email

Build a Marketing “Battery” that Stores Purchase Power

November 27, 2009 on 12:02 pm | In Email Marketing | No Comments

How to build a marketing database that keeps prospects engaged

It sounded like the perfect market:

• A large and growing marketplace
• A need so critical that it strikes at the very foundations of the family
• Increasing competition for scarce supply
• A marketplace actively using the Internet to solve the problem

Add to these the fact that existing solutions were failing miserably, and you’ve got a market ready for an effective online solution.

I’m describing the unemployed job seeker marketplace. Few marketplaces have the natural alignment of trends that this marketplace does. JobCannon (formerly CardboardResume)sought to create an online job search solution that actually worked, and build a business in the bargain.

First, let me disclose that JobCannon is a client of Conversion Sciences.

You might have thought that this would be an easy sell. We knew it wouldn’t be. We needed to keep skeptical, frugal job seekers engaged and informed. Here’s how we did it.

Before you read any further…

If you’re on Twitter, please visit this JobCannon coupon page and play along.

Building the Battery with Informational Marketing

Since no tag line was going to help JobCannon rise above the noise, and since new job seekers needed advice as much as the software, we lead with an informational approach.

JobCannon commissioned an eBook to help break job seekers of their job board habit. It turns out that spending hours a day on Monster and CareerBuilder was the least effective way to find work, especially in a crowded job market.

I wrote the eBook for them. My primary qualification was my fundamental inability to hold a job. Get your copy of The Market for Me.

A book blog was setup to catch job seekers searching the Internet. I began speaking at job clubs on to help seed the marketplace promoting the book heavily.

Charging the Battery

To receive the book, prospects provided a name and email address, and asked the prospect why they wanted to read the book. About 10% of the attendees to a live presentation requested a free copy.

Of the people who visited the book request page 30% completed the form. This is a relatively high conversion rate.

The presentation model was not easy to scale, as I could only speak so many times. But the pipeline proved that we could engage and educate an audience with informational marketing.

The book/blog strategy was proven when one of my presentations was featured on applicant.com, an influential blog. It was subsequently picked up by Slideshare as a featured presentation. Over the space of three weeks, almost 30,000 people viewed the presentation. A link to the free eBook in the description drew viewers to our educational content.

This one presentation doubled the size of our email database. It charged our battery.

This is proof that high conversion rates amplify all of your online marketing efforts.

Tapping the Battery’s Energy

Informational posts generated for the blog became email newsletters that were sent to the book database.

This was an efficient battery. When we sent educational emails to the list, open rates were astronomical, between 77% and 98%. I’m usually ecstatic at 30% open rates. Click-through rates were as high as 22% and unsubscribe rates were near zero.

Because this market was bombarded by solutions to help them find work, we were dealing with a skeptical group. We found out it took as many as seven relevant contacts to generate a JobCannon trial: One reference from a friend, one presentation, one free eBook, and four informational emails.

Without our marketing battery, we would never have been able to generate the number of “touches” necessary to make prospects feel comfortable trying the software.

Like batteries marketing databases “lose charge” over time

As a rule of thumb, we assume that 25% of the contacts become invalid over the course of a year.

• Prospects become customers
• Email addresses change
• Prospects choose to stop receiving email (opt-out)
• Prospects choose alternative solutions
• Prospects just stop paying attention to your emails

Many marketers drain their battery by sending promotional content. Discounts, feature-oriented posts and irrelevant information drain the battery very quickly.

In our case, many of our prospects find work, even though they’re not using JobCannon. Hopefully, they’ll continue to network and search for new opportunities even though they have found work.

Build your own battery with informational content

You may not have an eBook available, but your business generates informational content every month. Press releases, product descriptions, old blog posts, and sales presentations all can be transformed to charge your marketing batteries.

I’m going to show you how.

Join us on December 10 in Austin for BYOContent: The Extreme Conversion Makeover Workshop.

We’re going to transform a blog, a white paper, some video and an email newsletter into lead-generating and sales-generating tools.

Register early and your content could be transformed by our panel of experts.

Brian Massey, The Conversion Scientist

P. S. Get more conversion tips by subscribing to The Conversion Scientist.

Science by Email

One Million Things I Learned at PubCon Las Vegas

November 24, 2009 on 7:00 am | In Events | 2 Comments

Notes from PubCon 2009 Las Vegas

Click on any image to enlarge. Brad Geddes, bgTheory.com Tim Ash, SiteTuners.com Christine Schachinger, SitesWithoutWalls.com Heather Lloyd-Martin, SEOCopywriting.com Alison Driscoll, AlisonDriscoll.com Michael McDonald, iEntry.com Mark Robertson, ReelSEO.com Gregory Markel, InfuseCreative.com Gillian Muessig, SEOmoz Books to Read

When I first started doing conversion science back in 2006, I ruined several laptop screens. You see, it is very important that I be able to markup pages for my clients. I started with crayons. However, it became more and more difficult to get the colors off of my laptop screen. Plus, the markup didn’t travel with the image. Eventually, the crayons left ghosted images on the screen, like a burned plasma display. Then, I found the pen computer. Now, I can create, markup and take notes analog style, with instant conversion to digitial. A Snapshot of Pubcon One benefit of the modern pen computer is the ease with which analog input can be shared. So, I thought I would share some of my notes with you. I chose these based on the following criteria: 1. I took notes Many presenters don’t realize this, but you have to be “note-worthy.” You have to tee us up to take notes. You’re presentation has to be somewhat logically organized. You can’t throw too much at us too quickly, because we’ll just give up. 2. I was able to take notes on my computer Props to PubCon for providing extension cords and power strips for us. 3. My notes are somewhat legible. You be the judge. Some People Prefer This Some people prefer this mix of visual cue and text. You may find it helpful. Click on any of the images to see a full-resolution version. Some People Prefer Summaries Here are some of the things I gleaned from notes that didn’t pass the three-point test: Tools to Check Out Organic Keyword Search SEO “Quake” Plugin SEO for Firefox Yahoo Site Explorer Adwords Preview Tool Google Insights ExcellentAnalytics.com (Excel) Tatvic SEM Rush (Mark Jackson) Google Trends MSN Commercial Intention Tool validator.w3.org Bing Webmaster Tools Landing Pages RingLead.com Lead Management Social Evaluation Quarkbase Woopra Trackur (Andy Beale) Brandseye Twitter Twitalyzer WeFollow Tracking Twitter Twellow Twilert Facebook Apps Sprout Publisher AppBank Involver Facebook Notes Site Design MeasureIt Firefox Plugin Aardvark Firefox Plugin Colorzilla Firefox Plugin Firebug Firefox Plugin Headspace2 Wordpress Plugin Wordpress Themes Thesis ($) Flexibility 2 Corrington Affiliate Theme eArtisteer (random theme generator) Video OneTrueMedia Video Editing and hosting TrafficGeyser (use with care) TubeMogul 12Seconds.tv YouTube Insight Google TV YouTube Wonder Wheel Handbrake Video Compressor

BYOContent Workshop

Don’t forget about the BYOContent: Extreme Conversion Makeover Workshop happening in Austin, Texas on December 10. Turn ordinary information into content that generates leads and sales for your business.