Archive for January, 2008
We would like to share some of our first and oldest findings about online advertising. Althought we still use many different type of banners with our clients there is one type we find very effective: Advance links ads. These are the ads you can engage with by starting a selection process right within the ad.
Advanced Links ads can be considered the ancestors of the ever more popular and richer widgets. Even if their functionalies are usually very limited (using 2 or 3 pull downs with a choice of answers), they provide strong engagement.
We have tested advanced links with many advertisers in different industries over many years and they brought every time a huge click-through (CTR) lift over tradional banner. An added benefit is also a lift in landing page conversions (CR).
The data below is statistically significant (+99%) and represent averages for a large spectrum of advertisers. Quick note: these results are in the same order of magnitude at the individual advertiser level.
Lift 1: Clickthrough (CTR%)
Who doesn’t want a 103% CTR lift?
Obviously many advertisers. Why does not more advertiser test advanced links ads and compare them to their banner? We often hear it’s a question of being able to have the ad’s selection of choices integrated or linked to the relevant landing page but this is not something that hard to do. A developper will only require a couple of hours to provide a potentially huge impact on your bottom line.
Some may say having such a lift may also bring a lower conversion rate. Our findings show it’s not the case…
Lift 2: Conversions (CR%)
Who doesn’t want a 2% conversion lift? Similar question, similar answer.
Getting people more engaged right at the beginning of their experience is clearly a great advantage as it also bring an increase in conversions.
This can be explained in 2 ways:
- Engagement: Having people more engaged early on make them more engaged later on too.
- Less steps: Using advanced links in ads let people start their discovery process earlier and saves steps later on. Whether it’s a sale or a lead form, letting people choose early what they want save them steps later on. Less steps = higher conversions.
Lets take the example of someone looking for a specific financial service product. If that person is looking to receive information about a financial service you can present them an advance link ad with a first pull down with a choice of different financial services, a 2nd pull down for the stage they are in their buying process and a 3rd one for, lets say, their family income.
The combination of answers gives you many actionable information to decided which landing page is better for them: the product, buying stage and family income choices let you present them automatically the most relevant landing page. The same objective is persued when you tie your landing pages to different PPC campaigns’ ads: you don’t send all you PPC clicks to the same page. Using advanced links ads provide you do the same advantage with banners and buttons.
Total lift 107%. Advanced links can be applied to almost any advertisers, products or services. Simply think about the choices a visitor needs to make on your site in order to complete your form or its purchase. Is there ways you can simplify your advertised visitors life (and yours) by engaging visitors early on with advance links ads? Almost anyone should be able to do this.
You may ask why we’re showing higher than average click-through and conversions % in the results above. This is accomplished with segmention and targeting. Presenting the right ad to the right person can go a long way. More on this in an upcoming post.
You may wonder if there are also ways to see an even bigger conversions lift from advance links (or also any other ads). There is; carry your ads’ scent to your landing pages. This will also be the subject of another post in the coming weeks.
There is a case to be made to use advance links ads in a CPM or CPA advertising model. You’re already paying for the impressions so getting highers CTR directly improve your ROI. But using these ads on advertising networks with in PPC model can be tricky if you did not improve your landing pages; you’ll see a CTR lift, higher cost but not necessarely a lift in conversions. If you are in the later case we advise you to proceed carefully.
We thought we would share with you our top 5 6 favourite online marketing and optimization blogs of 2007. They will surely remain in our top for 2008 but if you have your own favourite feel free to share them with us. These are, in our humble opinion, the best of the best, the kind of posts and articles making you go hmmm.
- Web analytics: Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik needs to be read if you’re interested in website analytics. Avinash is also the author of Web Analytics and Hour a Day and he’s actually a consultant and Analytics Evangelist at Google. There are goldmines of useful information in your web analytics (you have one installed don’t you?) and Avinash shows you the ins and outs.
- Site Optimization: Jonathan Mendez’ blog and OTTO Digital’s blogs talk about landing page optimization, site optimization, in other words everything you can dream about online optimization. As Reflexity is heavily involved in that space it’s always interesting to read their findings and learn from their experiences. More than a must.
- Online media and marketing insights: Charlene Li’s blog talks about her experiences and findings about how social media, social marketing & networking are influencing the way business use these technologies online. Charlene is VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research and covers their social computing and web 2.0 research. Insightful.
- Viral Marketing, user experience and online advertising: Andrew Chen’s Futuristic Play will provide you with comments, tips, and ideas about users/customers acquisition and how to keep them. His blog is much more than that but these subjects alone will really be worth your time. We can’t wait to see what will be his next business!
- Persuasion, conversions & marketing: GrokDotCom’s blog posts are about online persuasion; from persuasive architecture to content persuasion/copywriting and everything in between. The goal is to make easier for people to convert into a sale, a registration or a lead. Tons of very valuable information.
- Online banking: Colin Henderson’s The Bank Watch brings a bowl of fresh air with the latest trends, news and experiences with online banking. Colin is a firm believer in embracing new technologies and ideas to reach consumers and enhance their experience. So are we. Kudos Colin!
Ok, so we had more a top 6 instead of a top 5. We couldn’t leave one out. Lets be original and call it our top 6.
What are your best blogs? We’re curious to know…
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A new year, a new company name, same organization and same people.
So you may ask, why change name?
After a few years we drifted away from our original starting point as a company (read we followed our clients’ needs and the money) plus we didn’t have anything to do with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) anymore.
Although we still deal with customers everyday, our focal point and passion moved to new horizons (and new buzzwords); marketing, optimization, targeting, social networks, intent, scent, social marketing, crowd sourcing, behaviour, etc.
In a nutshell, we are now more than ever finding new ways to build new relationships with consumers for their benefit and the companies serving them. In a few more words, we are providing campaign management and lead generation, customers acquisition, marketing and revenue optimization services to large and mid size companies in the United States with a strong core in financial services.
We are a data driven company with a busy right brain.
This may sound very nice but why choose the name Reflexity?
We define reflexity [ree-flek-si-tee] as the result of something being reflexive (self-learning):
- In Mathematics, reflexity refers to self-related elements. In today’s world people have more than ever relationships and these relationships are more than ever important. Translated into marketing we bring together apparently different and unrelated consumers who share related intent and purpose.
- In Computing, reflexity relates to actions of a program to self modify its structure. Our company, services, solutions and people learn to adept to an ever evolving environment for everyone’s benefits.
- In Logic, reflexity relates to adding two actions in order to get a true value. Our services find the right set of actions and solutions to create successful (true) results.
This may sound complicated, maybe a bit. Who said everything was easy; success comes from thinking things through and hard work. Don’t worry, we’re not taking ourselves too seriously and we have the numbers to prove our successes.
Welcome to our world, welcome to Reflexity.
And Happy New Year from all of us!
