Breaking news! Facebook is popular, with 1.86 billion monthly active users, and 1.23 billion daily active users.

Admittedly, not the scoop of the year. How about this?

This just in! Facebook ads accounted for 97% of its revenue in 2016, and the social media platform makes more from advertising than traditional sources like Disney, Comcast, and CBS.

You may have already known that, but the stats are impressive nonetheless:

• 4 million businesses advertise on the platform according to COO Sheryl Sandberg.
• The average click-through rate (CTR) for a Facebook ad is 0.98% in the U.S., and 1% globally.
• Facebook desktop ads have a CTR that is 8x times higher than web ads, and Facebook mobile ads are 9x higher.

So it’s a no-brainer, right? Easy-peasy. Get started today, and watch the dollars and cents come knocking at your door by tomorrow. It’s got the numbers, and it seems like everyone is doing it.

Not so fast. There’s an art to this.

An Important Service Reminder

The thing to remember about Facebook is that it’s cold traffic. Nearly two billion people are using it, but it’s not the same as, say, Google Adwords. There, someone navigates to the search engine, types in “cheap smartphones phoenix”, and is served up an appropriate ad with the organic results. That’s warm traffic.

We know their intention (in this case, they’re looking for an affordable smartphone in Phoenix, Arizona). AdWords and Facebook Ads are fundamentally different in this way.

On the social media behemoth, we don’t know why they’re on the platform. They might be updating their status, looking at photos from friends and family, checking the news (66% of American adults get their news on Facebook), or simply killing time.

What they’re probably not doing is looking for new shoes, or a cloud accounting service, or designer sunglasses. That’s cold traffic.

The good news? You can turn cold Facebook traffic into red hot leads if you use ads the right way.

There are plenty of Facebook Ad tips and secrets posts out there for you to devour (design tips, testing secrets, and so forth). And you should. Instead, let’s focus on warming that cold traffic to the point of boiling, shall we?

Let’s do this.

Step 1 – Start with Your Warmest Cold Traffic

Sounds a bit paradoxical, but hear me out.

There are 1.23 billion active users on Facebook, but most of them are simply not interested in whatever it is you’re offering. That’s the harsh reality.

But Facebook is a marketers dream, with unparalleled targeting abilities. Think about it: everyone who signs up voluntarily provides data about themselves, their interests, their demographics, their likes, the businesses and groups they follow, and more.

Begin by identifying your ideal customers. Create very detailed buyer personas so you understand everything about them.

Next, zero in on them in your Facebook ad. You can target by location, age, gender, language, interests, behavior, and demographics. Be specific.

A protein supplement for young men? Find them. Will every male between the age of 20-40 be responsive? Nope. But they’ll be much warmer than a 53-year old woman.

Heat rating: room temperature.

Step 2 – The Awareness Game

According to the iconic marketing book Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, there are five levels of awareness in the buyer’s journey.

You need to know exactly where your target falls on that spectrum, because it’ll influence the ad content you present.

To use our protein supplement example, the targets already know that supplements exist and what they do, but they’ve probably never heard of yours.

They need to be made “product aware” (your new supplement), and they need some incentive (discounts and deals) to give it a try and switch from whatever one they’re currently using.

That’s what your ads need to provide them.

If, on the other hand, you were the first to create a protein supplement, you’d start at the “solution aware” stage and offer claims and proof instead.

Heat rating: lukewarm.

Did you know? With Kissmetrics, you can track the effectiveness of your online advertising. Optimize your marketing by knowing which campaigns perform and which don’t. Check out our infographic to learn more.

Step 3 – Educate Above All Else

Consumers need to know more about your product or service before they hand over their cash. They need context. They need specific on who you are, what it does, why they need it, and what it’ll do for them.

To do that, consider a series of ads that enlightens them one step at a time. Takes longer, sure, but you’ll see a better conversion rate overall.

FBA Wizard had a FB ad that took people to a landing page to sign up for a free trial. It was your basic “Here’s something. Get it” approach. Conversion rate? About 1%.

Not good enough. They switched to a 4-part video series delivered over four days to their “warmest” cold traffic that educated people on the product and its context incrementally. The result? They nearly tripled the CVR to 2.93%.

Educate first, pitch second. Woo them before you sell them. The traffic temperature is starting to rise.

Heat rating: getting hot.

Step 4 – Target Reacquired

How often do you see an ad for the first time, click, and purchase? Most people – and this is especially true for cold traffic – need to see something multiple times before they pull the trigger.

Enter retargeting.

Using the Facebook pixel – a small snippet of code installed on your website – you can retarget people who have visited your blog, or landing page, or whatever.

They check out your supplement product page without buying, for example, but then see an ad with additional details for the same product on Facebook and make the leap.

That’s the power of remarketing. In the FB Averts Manager, under Audience, click on Create New > Custom Audience > Website Traffic and fill in the details.

You can also opt to retarget individuals who have engaged with your Facebook content directly – such as your Page, your lead ads, your videos – under Audience > Create New > Custom Audience > Engagement on Facebook.

Between the two – your site and Facebook itself – your bases are covered.

Heat rating: scalding.

And that’s that. We slowly turned up the heat and made cold traffic a scalding hot lead by approaching Facebook ads intelligently and zeroing in.

Too many marketers play the numbers game on Facebook, believing that with nearly two billion people on the platform, someone is bound to bite.

They might. But isn’t your business worth more than “might”. Start with your warmest cold traffic (your ideal customers), identify their awareness stage (and create your ad accordingly), educate before you pitch them, and retarget as necessary.

Cold to warm to warmer to red hot. That’s the right plan. Otherwise, you’re simply handing your money to Mark Zuckerberg (and I hear he’s doing “okay” financially).

Have you tried Facebook Ads? What was your experience? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

About the Author: Alex Fedotoff combines consumer psychology, conversion optimization, and Facebook advertising to consistently scale his clients’ businesses in ecommerce and SaaS niches. He is the Founder of AF Media, one of the most sought-after Facebook advertising agencies in the world, and is managing about $2.5 million dollars in profitable monthly ad spend. You can connect with him on Facebook.

Every SaaS business is aiming for sales success.

However, earning more revenue isn’t always a direct path. It’s a winding road of trial and error with internal and external factors.

Data is one solution to your sales woes. It can help your team discover gaps in the customer experience and transform your overall strategy.

The SaaS industry is a highly competitive market. As more companies emerge to claim their stake, use data to nurture your audience.

Products Don’t Sell Themselves

Your team can build a revolutionary product, but if no one understands its value, your target market may decide not to purchase it.

SaaS companies must realize that products don’t sell themselves. And while there are some exceptions to that statement, it’s better to train your sales team to solve people’s problems, rather than hope your audience will figure it out on their own.

Equip your team with the data to make better decisions during the sales cycle. Knowing vital information, like a prospect’s budget, personality, and beliefs, can determine how a sales rep prepares for a follow-up call.

And it’s not enough to just to talk about value with your SaaS prospects. It’s about creating something greater than what they already expected. Mark Cranney, operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz, writes:

“Some people think the sales force’s job is to communicate value to customers. To these people, sales is about buying a bunch of search Adwords or mouthpiecing a company’s message. They’re wrong. The true purpose of sales is to create new value for customers.”

To develop new value, it starts with personalization. You want to help customers find the solution to their problem, not just any problem. And that means having an open dialogue with your audience.

Below is an example from Attach, a sales engagement platform. The company uses live demos to start customer conversations. You’ll notice how the free demo is customized to cover the needs of the potential user.

How are you personalizing the experience? Give your product more worth by solving the customer’s unique issues.

Customer Experience Reigns Supreme

Your team’s mission is to dive into the product usage data to find glitches. By alleviating the everyday pains of the customer, they’ll have more time to reap your product’s benefits.

And that’s what you truly want. More value received means customer success and possibly a notable case study for your business.

Sales isn’t the sole responsibility of your sales team. Every team member is responsible for customer success, from lead to brand advocate. That’s why the overall customer experience matters throughout the entire journey.

Every customer interaction will determine whether a trial user becomes a customer or a recurring customer decides to continue with his service.

Communication is essential when making each customer experience worthwhile. If a lead has questions about a particular plan, are your sales reps readily available with answers?

If a customer wants to troubleshoot a quick problem, do you have an accessible knowledge base with detailed instructions?

“An enterprise software company that designs for IT and neglects to create a delightful user experience will lose when it comes to adoption. Emphasis on product usability and design will separate the winners from the losers in the world of SaaS,” states Jeetu Patel, vice president and general manager of EMC’s Syncplicity Business Unit.

Zoho Books updated its application to combat product workflow and visual design issues. With lots of experimentation, the team made the product better. Below is a side-by-side comparison from its old tabbed navigation to a new left-sided navigation.

Selling SaaS platforms involves everyone on your team. It’s one of the few ways to guarantee a memorable customer experience.

Customer Support Matters

Speedy and polite customer support teams play an integral role in SaaS sales.

It’s not enough to get a visitor to click purchase. You need knowledgeable staff to help customers.

Repeatedly, companies fail to offer superior support that not only answers the customer’s questions, but also reassures the customer that the brand is a leader in the industry.

Think of the support team as the front line of your brand. They mold people’s perceptions.

And it’s not unheard of for customers to love a brand’s products, yet decide to buy from a competitor because they offer better customer support.

In a fast-paced society, consumers want immediate access to their questions. Social media has offered businesses the chance to meet customers on their playing field.

Companies are answering service questions on Twitter, while moving complex issues to direct messages. Teams are even using social media to create moments of delight—recognizing customers for their brand loyalty.

Moreover, customers want to talk to a real person who can empathize with their issues. Live chat eases consumer anxiety.

Be mindful of how to use chat support to gain the most value. Respond in a timely manner and speak in a conversational tone—a few emojis can brighten up the mood. And add a photo to build a human connection with the customer.

Avoid neglecting customer support in the sales process. Set the baseline by giving customers your undivided attention.

Higher Retention Means Higher Expectations

With a host of competitors at their fingertips, customers desire SaaS companies to exceed their expectations. If not, they may decide to take their business elsewhere.

Research continues to prove that it’s more profitable to retain customers than acquire them. However, what’s rarely mentioned is how to retain customers.

Retention programs aren’t one size fits all across the SaaS industry. Every company possesses its own set of unique challenges to keep customers interested.

For instance, teams are quick to develop loyalty programs to engage their brand ambassadors. They start sending out email campaigns with discounts and inviting advocates to VIP events.

But that’s not always the best option for your customers. By asking for feedback and observing user behavior, you might discover that a Facebook group with exclusive content can achieve similar or better results.

Simply recognizing your customers can lead to retention, too. Are you highlighting your top customers on your site? RescueTime dedicates an entire page to showcase customer stories.

Customer retention also extends to your internal operations. Your sales framework must encourage team members to address retention.

“Once HubSpot realized that their churn rate was a sales problem, they dug into the data once again to determine the catalyst. As it turned out, the sales compensation plan they had in place was practically encouraging reps to ignore the potential for churn,” writes Sonja Jacob, former director of content marketing at Mattermark.

Achieving higher retention rates requires doing things differently. Find out what works best for your company.

Data Leads The Way

Sales reps need accurate insight to close deals. With data, your team has the opportunity to uncover customer issues and address operational challenges.

More than ever, prepare your SaaS company to dominate the competition. Seek to deliver customer satisfaction along with higher ROI. Let data lead the way.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

Broadly speaking, you can grow your SaaS three ways: acquire more customers, retain more customers or charge more per customer. At Planio, we focused heavily on acquiring new customers via content marketing and retaining those customers via investing in product development and customer success.

And it worked. In January 2015 our monthly customer account churn rate averaged 2.49% and in January 2017 averaged 2.1%, a 20% reduction. While a lower churn rate is always better, it wasn’t clear that we could get any more big wins by reducing churn. Acquisition was steadily growing as our content efforts started paying off. The last lever—pricing—was one we hadn’t touched in seven years since Planio started, so it made sense to us that it might be the lowest hanging fruit.

Below, I’ll bring you through the process we took in analyzing data on our customer behavior. We’ll go into how we chose our new pricing model, and we’ll show you the exact impact on our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) growth with real figures.

The Importance of Pricing for SaaS Products

Particularly if you are a bootstrapped startup without VC funding, pricing will determine how much you can afford to spend on product development, customer success and product marketing. Wondering whether you can afford to build out an inside sales team for your SaaS? Jason Lemkin says you need to charge at least $299/mo as a rough rule of thumb.

Price Intelligently point out the paradox that, despite its importance, SaaS startups spend very little time at all on their pricing – they cite 6 hours. They also comment that “your pricing is the exchange rate on the value you’re creating in the world.”

This number of 6 hours made us think that we should dig into our pricing. We spent probably even less back then when we first started by simply copying the prices of a few similar tools back then.

Sources of Data on Our Pricing

When you have lots of competition, it’s easy to get trapped into analyzing what the others are doing. The reason this can be a mistake is that competitors’ approaches might not be a good fit for you. For example, their sales and marketing model might be very different to yours and this is reflected in their pricing. Once you reached a certain stage in your growth, you can also analyze how your own customers are using your product.

In Planio’s case, we have about 1,500 paying customers. That gave us a lot of data on how our customers were using our plans. We started analyzing the distributions across the various criteria that make up the plans: number of users, number of projects and storage space. Box plots are a handy way to get a quick sense of the distribution of the number of users each account is using:

The box plot above can give you a quick sense of how many users our customers typically had.

You can see that the median is at 9 users, whereas the highest amount (excluding outliers) is at about 48 users. At the same time, our pricing plans at the time ranged from 6 users at the bottom end to 100 users at the top end.

When we compared the box plot above to our pricing plans, there was a clear disconnect:

• 75% of our customers has 30 users or less, so they fit within the bottom two plans;
• 40% of our customers had less than 6 users, so they fit within our bottom 9 euro/month plan.

The result of this disconnect was that a customer with a team of 7 was paying the same as a customer with a team of 30. At the same time, we had almost no customers with more than 48 users.

Our conclusion was that our pricing scale was not calibrated to our customers’ behavior. It was time to make some changes.

Paralysis by Analysis

At the time Planio’s founder, Jan, and I were staring at endless Excel sheets. A big question in our mind was whether we should increase the price on all our customers at once, or whether we should grandfather older customers and just have the new pricing model for newer customers.

Obviously, giving all customers an ultimatum of “pay an increased price or leave” might result in a lot of customers leaving – maybe even angrily. I recommend this approach anyways if you want to see exactly who values your product by sticking with it at the higher price. I think this approach might work if you have a limited amount of time to find product/market fit before you run out of funding runway. The reason is that your current customer base will just be a tiny fraction of your future customer base if your startup is successful.

But we’re bootstrapped, so there wasn’t an intense pressure for future rounds of funding. It also didn’t feel fair on our customers to give them this ultimatum. Then, we stumbled on a very simple solution that seemed the most fair to us.

The Quartile-Based Approach We Took

Going back to the quartiles from the box plot, we noticed that we could segment our customer base into four quarters taking the 25th, 50th and 75th quartiles as the boundaries between the plans.

We then created four quarters based on these points in the data, which would become the new plans. We also increased the pricing of our lowest plan on the basis that charging any business about 9 dollars a month for software core to their business is ranking it lower in value than the air freshener they use in the bathroom.

Did you know? With Kissmetrics, you can track the effectiveness of your online advertising. Optimize your marketing by knowing which campaigns perform and which don’t. Check out our landing page to learn more.

De-Risking the Pricing Experiment

Honestly, I found it stressful to change our pricing model. You’re tweaking with the revenue engine of an entire business. If things go wrong, the impact can be quite serious.

In our case, we reduced the risk of this pricing experiment by grandfathering existing customers, meaning that they could keep their existing plan. That meant that if the new pricing model turned out to be a fiasco, we could just roll-back a small number of new customers to the old model.

At the same time, we obviously limited our upside: if all our existing customers moved over to our new pricing model without a significant amount of cancellations, we’d stand to increase our monthly recurring revenue overnight by a significant amount.

I think if your SaaS has only been around for a couple of months, you can afford to be more aggressive with testing out new pricing models without grandfathering existing customers. Whether people stay with the new model or not is important data as you grow. In our case, we felt that we didn’t need or have to take that risk, because Planio is a bootstrapped company with 7 years of happy customers and we actually value growing slowly and steadily.

The second way we reduced the risk was to add more value to our existing plans. Previously, we had charged extra for our Team Chat and Customer Helpdesk features. We felt that these features added significant value, but customers were hesitant to pay extra for them, so we rolled them into the standard plans.

With these changes made, we deployed the new pricing changes on February 1, 2016:

The Results of the Pricing Experiment

After we switched over to the new pricing model, we waited for the emails and phone calls to roll in. I imagined hordes of discontented customers pounding down our doors.

But what really happened?

Crickets.

Just for the sake of comparison, we once changed the colors in Planio for default avatars to a selection of pastels, including a range of pink. That change unleashed two phone calls within an hour from (male) CEO’s fearful of suffering the stigma of a pink Avatar.

The impact of the change in pricing on our growth was, however, immediate.

An important metric for us is the average monthly recurring revenue we get per new customer. It tells us that in a certain month, a new customer bought a subscription worth, say 30 euro, on average.

As you can see below, the introduction of the new pricing model significantly increased the average monthly recurring revenue per new customer. Whereas the average MRR per new customer was €24.71 over the previous five years, it went up by over 100% to an average of €50.68 for the 12 month period after the pricing change.

Did this increase our churn rate?

Well in Planio’s case, churn went from 2.49% in January 2015 before the pricing change to an average of 2.1% as of January 2017.

There were some issues for customers who’d considered Planio before the pricing changes but then only signed up after February 1, 2016. We resolved those complaints by just giving them the old plans.

Analyze Your Pricing and Test New Approaches

Our new pricing model at Planio means that we are better at segmenting our customer value based on our customer needs. A small dev shop with 7 people is no longer paying the same as a division of a multinational with 30 people.

Once you’ve reached a certain level of customers, you can start using tools such as Kissmetrics to see whether your pricing segments are matching your customers and how they use your product. The impact on your growth rate will be significant for the business.

It’s also an ongoing process. In our case, we’ve evolved our pricing pricing several times since the experiment above. For instance, we now accept US dollars and Japanese Yen in addition to Euro, so time will tell how those experiments plays out.

In terms of leverage, a few hours a month spent on analyzing and reviewing your pricing may have outsized results.

About the Author: Thomas Carney works on growth at Planio, a task tracking tool for keeping product development and customer support in sync. You can read about productivity, getting more done, and work hacks over at the Planio blog.

Uber might be King of Growth Hacking.

The one everyone fawns over. The media adores. Growth Hackers join.

But these kinds of companies are the exceptions.

Their ascent so quick and scale so massive that the vast majority of us can’t play by the same rules.

Instead, we need to look around. At the regular companies. One’s who’re grinding out, day-to-day, trying to get as many paying customers as possible.

Unbelievably, one perfect example emerges. From the least likely of places.

The grandma-catering QVC serves as an exemplary model for increasing site conversions. No matter what industry you’re in.

Here’s why and what they’re doing so well.

How QVC is a Conversion Juggernaut

One day I was researching the top converting websites online.

The usual suspects were there.

You expect Amazon.

Walmart or Expedia.

But not this. Not them.

A home shopping network. The same tired, old format you see on late night infomercials.

Not the QVC, whose primary audience demographic consists of your grandparents and… well, that’s gotta be pretty much it.

Curious, I had to check them out.

And sure enough, what I saw blew me away.

What makes QVC a conversion master? The blueprint you should follow with underlying sales principles that should be adapted for your own site immediately?

Let’s start with the homepage.

#1. QVC Homepage

First things first. Checkout the QVC homepage and you’re met with their latest daily deal.

There are a few things happening here.

Right at the top, “New to QVC?” helps segment and orient first-time visitors. They also throw in a discount code to sweeten the deal right off the bat.

Next, those high-quality images that show the product in-use. Underneath, is a simple line of benefit-laden copy with a price anchor (“Under $90”) and free shipping incentive (which almost all consumers – 82% – want).

To the right, is a bright-red CTA that uses the next value-building step (“Choose Your Color”) instead of some vague, generic one you might see on other sites (like “Get Started” or “Buy Now”).

And last but not least, that giant daily deal “Today’s Special Value” with countdown timer.

So far so good. They’ve set the stage. Met first impressions successfully, which only take 50 milliseconds to form based on site design (94% of the time).

But that’s nothing. We’re barely scratching the surface.

There’s a concept called “conversion scent” in advertising and conversion optimization. It’s similar to ‘message match’. Basically, you want to make sure any copy, design, or page elements (like that big, bold countdown timer) follow someone to the ‘next step’ so there’s one seamless experience (and not a jarring, disrupted one that distracts people from converting).

For example, click on the featured homepage product (noting the countdown timer) and watch what happens next…

You’re brought to the individual product page that continues the timer where you left off, while also auto-starting a realistic, authentic video demonstration.

That’s heavy. Let’s save it for the next section below to unpack everything that’s happening (and why). We still gotta finish the homepage.

When you scroll down a little on the homepage, one of the next sections is their “Lunchtime Specials” one that has daily deals that run for only a few hours each day.

Selling online is tough. Average conversions are an abysmal ~2%. Partly because there’s no ‘human element’ (phone sales get an average of 30-50% conversion for comparison). And partly because there’s no urgency.

In most cases, people don’t need what you have. It’s a luxury. A take-it-or-leave-it kinda thing.

You manufacture urgency with scarcity; Cialdini’s bedrock principle. If something is limited (by either price or quantity), it’s more desirable. I dunno why. Evolution is weird.

Below the scarcity-induced Lunchtime Specials section, you get “On QVC Now”.

Two macro-things happening with this section.

First, the fact that they’re being presented on television automatically enhances their value and credibility. There’s prestige. It implies these are the ‘chosen few’ being ‘featured’. It’s no different (well, it’s better) than startups putting media logos on their site.

Second, are power words like “Now” and “New” (with extra credit for “On Air”). Power words speak to our ‘old brain’ ultimately controls what we do, decide (or buy).

“New”, in particular, is one of the most persuasive words you can use to grab attention. Power words leap off the page, tickle your primal instincts, and force you to find out more.

Now… (see that?!)

Let’s head back into the individual product page to do a deep-drive on the eleven different elements they use (all above the fold!) to sell the S– out of their products.

#2. Individual Product Page

You might want to grab a cup of coffee before starting this next section. It’s gonna be awhile.

Because here’s where the QVC really outdo themselves.

Let me count the ways.

No seriously. Let’s count them. (And keep in mind that these are almost entirely above the fold.)

Deep breath. And:

1. Autoplay Video: Immediately starts upon page load. Continues that product ‘scent’ discussed earlier, while showing the product in context so 4 out of 5 shoppers can get a feel of what it is, how it works, and what if will feel like to own one.
2. Countdown Timer: Already discussed. The ultimate in scarcity-boosting, slightly ‘spammy’ website techniques to manufacture customer urgency. But just below that, a beautiful example of price anchoring, making the ‘real’ price now seem cheap and affordable.
3. Payment Installments: Friction typically reduces conversions. A large, one-time fee is a big friction point, forcing the customer to assume all risk. But with installment payments, you’re able to make that lump sum more palatable and digestible for those on a budget. We’ll come back to this topic in the next section below.
4. Color Options: Even something as basic as multiple color options can introduce the feeling of personalization on a website. 75% of people like personalization, which means it should be unsurprising that almost the same amount (74%) dislike when a website doesn’t match up or cater to their interests.
5. MOAR VIDEOS: Honestly, we shouldn’t even have to touch on the importance of including more videos, seeing as they boost landing page conversions by 80%. Even executives – theoretically the most cold-hearted of consumers – get all warm and fuzzy when they can watch a product video.
6. QCard: No money? No problem! QVC has their own financing department, and they’ll happily underwrite your purchase. Once again, less friction = more conversions.
7. New Customer Incentive: New shoppers get a little added bonus (on top of all the other discounts and price slashing going on) to go ahead and take the leap.
8. Community Q&A: The importance of social commerce deserves an entire post of its own. Suffice to say, peer-to-peer recommendations are what drive product purchases today. You can use all the hyperbole you want on a page, but customers will look for reviews. Plain and simple. Here, this QVC product has 411 answers!
9. Speed Buy: Sure, the Add to Cart and Wishlist buttons are standard. But the Speed Buy is where it’s at. This is the QVC’s version of Amazon’s One Click to Buy. Why’s that important? Because that little damn button is patented and worth billions (with a “B”). That’s why.
10. Upsells: No easier way to drive up the average cost of each order than with a simple upsell offer to insure your brand new purchase. Best of all, it’s not like the QVC has to do anything extra if you choose this upsell. A partner takes care of the dirty work. They just get to collect some extra revenue on each little purchase that passes through their kingdom. Upselling a current product can be 20 times more effective than cross-selling (a similar but different product).
11. Delivery Date Estimate: The best saved for last. You punch in your zip code and they’ll give you an idea of how shipping will work, and how fast you’ll get it. Here’s why that’s important…

We’ve seen multiple times how the QVC is attempting to reduce friction to increase your impulse to purchase (and we’ll continue to beat that horse dead in the section below).

But that’s only half the battle.

At the end of the day, the big hurdle to an online purchase is instant gratification. Or lack thereof. There’s gonna be a delay of when that thing they just spent good money on lands in their hands (or on their doorstep).

So reducing friction is good. But it’s not enough. Andre Morys says we need to raise motivation, too.

That’s what this Delivery Date Estimate does. It helps us see a real, live date for when we’ll get access to the new product.

#3. Risk Reversing Payment Options

Number seven in the last section previewed the QCard, QVC’s financing arm to extend credit for their purchases.

Here are the full details:

Select products enjoy little-to-no interest payments, which lowers the bar (or barrier) to purchase).

Then that bar is lowered even with further with installment payments on the QCard (which you typically wouldn’t with other credit cards).

Why is this noteworthy?

Because one of the rising trends in eCommerce right now is “buy-now, pay-later solutions”

New upstarts like Affirm are essentially extending credit for eCommerce companies for big-ticket items that they may not be able to already afford.

We can sit here and poke fun at QVC’s customer segment all we want. But the fact is that they expertly recognize their customer’s problems and pain points, along with what hold them back from purchasing (like low fixed incomes).

And they’re doing things to bypass or lessen that burden.

On top of the infomercial-like installment payment options, they also provide a few different ways to return products.

They’re trying to make the process insanely easy. So they employ as many risk-reversing techniques imaginable. Customers can schedule a pickup so that they don’t have to leave their house! Even if the QVC loses a few purchases or returns in the process.

Conclusion

A few months ago I was at a dinner with several other marketers. Some of them worked with tech companies on subscription based products.

A conversation started about tips for reducing churn, and a few examples were given about how you can easily reduce churn by essentially making it a pain in the ass to cancel. Like a huge headache. Forcing customers to literally jump through hoops, taking several different steps, having to talk to people on the phone, even mail-in stuff.

And this out of body experience hit me:

“WTF are we doing?”

Purposefully making people’s lives harder? Just to shave a half-percent off your churn rate?

Topics like this are tough because it opens up a can of worms. So many unintended consequences.

QVC ain’t perfect. But they’ve been around for 30+ years. They’re a household name.

They use all of the classic hard-sell website techniques imaginable. But then they’ll give customers multiple different ways to easily return products (which costs them millions I bet).

Keep sight of what we’re doing and why. The end goal is a multi-million dollar brand that people love. Not a half percent higher conversion rate or half percent lower churn rate.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a marketing writer, agency partner, and creator of Copy Weekly, a free weekly copywriting newsletter for marketers & founders.

Facebook advertising is a big auction.

There are both winners and losers.

Now, you wouldn’t want to be on the losing side, would you?

So, what can you do to create Facebook campaigns that finish the race as champions, having collected many new customers in the process?

A smart move would be creating ads that catch people’s attention before any other Facebook post or ad can get to them. While there are many tips and hacks written about all across the web, here’s one that seems highly promising: playing on people’s emotion.

An analysis of 1,400 successful ad campaign case studies found that campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) as those with only rational content.

Trend Hunter Marketing analyzed 55 emotional marketing campaigns, and found the average popularity score to be 8.0 — higher than in other categories.

By spicing up your Facebook campaigns with a pinch of emotion and a dash of thrill, you can allure your Facebook audience, making them click and purchase.

There’s no limit to the emotions you can bring into play – excited, melancholic, delighted, shocked – you name it.

This post will teach you how to apply emotional marketing to Facebook ads (and celebrate a landslide victory over the competition.)

Ready to win the Facebook ads race? Let’s go!

1. Master the Art of FOMO

If you’ve ever attended an event because you thought “Maybe something cool would happen,” it was likely due to FOMO – the fear of missing out.

What if all your friends go out while you’ll be missing out on all the fun…

A study of millennials found that as many as 69% experience FOMO when they are not able to attend an event where their friends are going.

People are afraid of being left without an amazing experience.

But FOMO doesn’t only apply to attending events. It also applies to other aspects of life and business.

For example, Sumo has written Facebook ad copy that makes the reader think that everyone else is already using their software and the person reading is the last one out.

By saying that over 175,000 websites use their tool, Sumo makes the reader wonder if they’re missing out on something.

Now, you wouldn’t want to be left behind while all those other websites speed right past you. So, you’ll likely click on the ad to see how to get the tools yourself.

How to use FOMO in your Facebook ads:

• Mention the number of people already benefitting from your product.
• Pose a question, hinting that the person’s missing out on a great opportunity.
• Make the reader feel like there’s a fascinating community they’re not part of… Yet.
• Make your Facebook ad offer limited by time to nudge people to sign up faster.

2. Show the Excitement

Excitement is known for its ability to increase impulsivity and make people quicker to act.

So, if you’ll manage to get a person excited in your Facebook ad offer, they’re a lot more likely make the purchase based on the momentum.

The author of The Psychology of Social Shopping, Paloma Vasquez points out that:

“In a state of excitement or arousal, people think and behave very differently. Emotional states trump rational thinking; it’s easier to sell to consumers when they are excited.”

As you look at Try The World’s Facebook ad, you’ll notice that it breathes excitement for several reasons: the bright ad color, lots of exclamation marks, and the energetic tone of voice.

One can almost feel the excitement of opening the subscription box and discovering its treasures.

As you decide to use the excitement tactic in your Facebook ads, don’t let the sparkle fade before the purchase is made.

An article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that it takes 20 minutes for the feeling of excitement to pass.

In most cases, emotions fade even faster.

So, it’s best to keep your ad’s landing page as straightforward and compelling as humanly possible and lead the visitor to signup.

A few tips for creating exciting Facebook ads:

• Use bright colors in the ad design.
• Use exclamation marks and keep your ad copy short.
• Include an ad image that shows excitement.
• Showcase your product at the most exciting moment of its lifecycle.
• Make sure that your offer is actually interesting to the target audience.
• Include a discount offer to give the final nudge and make the ad irresistible.

3. Create a Curiosity Gap

If you’ve ever thought what makes Upworthy and Buzzfeed headlines so irresistible, here’s one of their secret weapons: the curiosity gap.

Put simply, the curiosity gap is the discrepancy between what we currently know and what we’d like to know.

And it works wonders if your goal is to get people clicking.

Copy Hackers was able to get a 927% boost in clicks on their Pricing page after applying the tactic.

And of course, curiosity gap can also be incorporated into your Facebook ad copy.

As someone spots HubSpot’s question “How well do you rank for SEO” in their Facebook Newsfeed, they’re bound to find out the answer. That is, if HubSpot’s targeting a Facebook audience of marketers.

The formula of curiosity gaps is simple: Ask people a fascinating question or tell them a cool story, and leave the best part untold.

SurveyMonkey, for instance, asks in the ad’s headline “Want a GoPro?” and sparks the reader’s curiosity to find out more.

The reason why this works is that people have a natural tendency to connect the dots and discover the answers. It will be hard for them to resist reading and clicking on your Facebook ad after it has posed a fascinating question.

When targeting a cold audience, it’s best to fill in their curiosity gap for free. With warm audiences, you can ask for something in return, e.g. their email address.

Download Our New Facebook Advertising Guide! We outline how to create a Facebook customer acquisition machine that consistently delivers new sales and customers. Download today!

4. Make People Happy

A study in 2010 of the most-emailed New York Times articles found that emotional articles were shared more often. The study also noted that positive posts were shared more often than negative ones.

What if the same rule applies to your Facebook ads – will positive ads get more likes and clicks?

There are three main tactics to make use the emotion of happiness in Facebook ads:

1. Brightly colored ad design.
2. Including an ad image with smiling people.
3. Using adjectives and verbs with positive connotations.

Eventbrite is applying all the three methods across their Facebook ad campaigns.

From the positive color scheme…

To smiling people:

Not only Eventbrite’s ads spark positive emotions towards the offer, but people will learn to associate the entire brand with happy feelings.

A study analyzed more than 1 million online reviews on sites like TripAdvisor and found that restaurants received significantly better ratings on days with nice weather and worse reviews on any day with rain.

If your goal is to make people remember your brand as a mood-booster on a rainy day, create more positive ad designs.

Happiness marketing can work especially well for B2C brands. For example, alcohol producers are often publishing commercials with people enjoying themselves on the beach or at a party. If you look at Corona’s ad profile, you’ll see that every ad follows this best practice.

5. Learn to Handle Negative Feelings

A Facebook ad sparking negative feelings isn’t always a bad thing.

Especially if it first ignites the negative thoughts and then offers a solution to cheer you up.

However, don’t overdo the negativity in your ads.

A study by researchers at Stanford GSB and Tel Aviv University discovered that small doses of mildly negative information — a so-called blemishing effect — might actually strengthen a consumer’s positive impression of a product or service.

The key to successful Facebook ads may lie in including just the right amount of negativity.

For example, Contently’s ad headline can make many marketers worry: “If the future of content isn’t blogging, what am I going to do?”

But just as the ad’s negative headline has grabbed the reader’s attention, it offers a solution: “More videos. More downloadable content. More infographics.”

According to the viral content study by The New York Times, some negative emotions contribute more to virality than others. Most specifically, the negative emotion of anger.

Here’s how to put negative feelings to good use in your Facebook ads:

• Capture your audience’s attention with a negative headline.
• Let your audience know about a small default about your product to show you’re not hiding anything.
• Remind the readers of a negative fact or situation they encounter on a daily basis.

6. Offer Hope for Better Future

We all hope that we’re going to be prettier, smarter and funnier.

That’s one of the reasons we buy new things — to improve our lives.

While deep inside, everyone knows that most of the time material things won’t make us happy; we still keep hoping they will.

Shopify’s Facebook ad plays on the emotion of hope, using aspiring language and brilliant copywriting.

“Start your journey” and “Get more out of life” are both great slogans and talk to Shopify’s target audience.

Now that you already know that the emotion of hope can be activated by masterful copywriting. Is there anything else you can do?

In fact, there is — as you create a Facebook ad sparking hope, also provide a platform or a solution to reach the better future. For example, if you promise to double a company’s revenue, be clear about how you’ll do it.

Asana’s Facebook ad promises many great improvements in teamwork, making a project manager wish their team could achieve even more.

7. Help People to Feel Proud

According to Dan Hill, author of Emotionomics: Leveraging Emotions for Business Success:

“Emotions process sensory input in only one-fifth the time our conscious, cognitive brain takes to assimilate that same input.”

This means that emotions have a strong effect on our immediate actions.

LEGO’s Facebook campaign makes moms proud of their kids, reminding them of the children’s capacity to create amazing things.

Moreover, LEGO’s campaign hooks with the previous point — using the emotion of hope. Many parents are drawn to the offer because they’d like to see their children learn and succeed.

Another way to make people feel great about their purchase is to remind them that they’re making a smart choice.

That’s exactly what the Dollar Shave Club does by saying their product is the smarter way to shave.

The person who buys the subscription will know they’ve made a clever deal and will feel good about it.

8. Create a Sense of Urgency

When you give people too much time to make a decision, they’re going to postpone the conclusion and will likely forget about it.

However, when presented with a limited time offer, people get worried about missing out on the awesome offer.

Applying scarcity and urgency on a website helped an entrepreneur increase sales by 332%. How much can you increase your ads’ click-through rate by using the same tactic?

For example, Target’s Facebook ad creates the sense of urgency by limiting their discount offer to a specific date.

Groupon has even added the end time with the time zone specification to make their offer feel more urgent. This way, there’s no doubt when the offer’s going to end.

How to create a sense of urgency in your Facebook ads:

• Define clear dates, e.g. “Today only” or “Offer ends in 24h.”
• Offer a great discount, e.g. “Get 60% off today.”
• Keep your offer simple and brief.
• Place your best offer in the ad’s headline or the image.
• Match the ad’s offer on the landing page.

9. Surprise Your Audience

Psychology Today reports that fMRI neuro-imagery shows that consumers use emotions rather than information to evaluate a brand.

If you’re looking for a strong emotion that will immediately catch your audience’s attention, create an offer that’ll surprise them.

A simple way to surprise people is to conduct an original survey and share interesting stats with your ad audience. That’s exactly what Grammarly has done:

You can also learn to apply the surprise-and-delight approach that’s based on the principle that nice surprises make people feel special and important.

Offer a free coupon or some other pleasant surprise to win your Facebook target audience’s attention and trust vie a series of small gestures.

G2 Crowd offers a $5 Starbucks gift card in exchange for filling in a quick survey. This works for two reasons:

1. People are pleasantly surprised to get the gift card.
2. By filling in the survey, they’ll become familiar with G2 Crowd’s brand.

When you create noteworthy Facebook ads, they’ll distribute organically via the likes and shares of your target audience.

According to a Nielsen study, 83% of people say they always trust the recommendations of friends and family, which makes it ever more important to engage your target audience.

10. Spark the Sense of Belonging

Some of the world’s most successful brands were originally built through low-cost community-based marketing. Starbucks, Google, Apple … The list goes on.

People are hardwired to search for understanding and support from their peers. A sense of belonging to a large community improves our motivation, health, and happiness.

What if you could frame your Facebook ad offer as an invitation to an exclusive club of awesome members?

This approach is often used in event marketing. By presenting all the famous attendees, conferences make people interested in joining them at the venue.

Here’s an example by Litmus, inviting the viewers to join “the talented community of marketers and designers.”

How to use emotional marketing to create a sense of belonging:

• Frame your offer as an invitation into an attractive community.
• Include the names of influencers using your product.
• Mention the size of your user base to convince people of the community’s worth.
• Make the entry challenging enough for the person to value the community.

11. Untap the Power of Guilt

People feel guilty about different things, but one thing’s for sure: if you can hit the right nerve, you’ll win their attention.

Consumers who feel guilty tend to respond well to small, short-term fixes. That’s why the number of new gym memberships soars after a long holiday period and declines shortly after.

A study published by researchers at The University of British Columbia suggests that guilt can be a powerful tool for motivating self-improvement and for selling self-improvement products and services.

But not only — guilt as an emotion can also be used in the B2B industry.

For example, Scoro’s Facebook post asks, “Are you working hard or hardly working?” makes a person think whether they’re really contributing enough.

The Facebook ad also offers a quick solution: 89 productivity hacks to improve oneself.

Remember that emotional marketing with guilt works best if you also provide a quick fix to the audience’s problem.

Slack’s Facebook ad has taken a similar approach by stating “Your inbox is out of control.”

Another reason why this ad works is the strong emotional word “Yikes” in the first ad image, instantly catching people’s attention.

How to use guilt for successful Facebook campaigns:

• Remind your audience of a small mistake they’re making.
• Offer a quick solution to their problem.
• Use strong words that spark negative feelings and help to grab attention.

12. Make People Feel Important

Performance coach Tony Robbins has named the feeling of being significant to be one of the six basic human needs.

We all want to feel important and valued by others. And smart marketers know how to use this knowledge to create irresistible ad campaigns.

For example, Google’s Facebook ad looks at every benefit through the prism of you: New domains that tell your story. Get your domain today. Find a domain name for your story.

Here’s another clever Facebook ad example by Spotify:

By creating a highly personalized value offer, Spotify will ignite curiosity while also making the person feel important.

To make your ad audience feel important, create a personalized ad and use the word You to talk directly to the reader.

Conclusion

Emotions can go a long way in helping to create click-worthy Facebook ads.

According to a 2016 Nielson report, emotions are central to advertising effectiveness. The ads that generated the best emotional response also generated a 23% lift in sales volume.

Applying emotional marketing tactics to your Facebook campaigns isn’t as difficult as it seems. All it takes is smart copywriting and original ad design. And of course, a touch of creativity.

To wrap it up, here are all the emotions listed once more: The fear of missing out, excitement, curiosity, happiness, negative feelings, hope, pride, urgency, surprise, sense of belonging, guilt, feeling of importance.

Find out what works best for your target audience, and see your sales results grow.

About the Author: Karola Karlson is the founder & author of Aggregate, the most upright blog about marketing, growth, and data. She’s also a contributor to marketing blogs like AdEspresso, HubSpot, and KlientBoost, and works as the Digital Marketing Manager at SaaS startup Scoro. Karola’s all about random cool ideas, growth marketing, and taking new marketing approaches on a test drive. Connect with her by visiting her blog or on Twitter.

For some reason, people tend to be equating SaaS companies with free trials.

I find this pretty bad indeed.

Here’s why:

It’s true that many software companies see outstanding results with the free trial business model, but it doesn’t imply that everyone should use it. That’s just silly. Every single business is different, and the same strategy never fits all.

Force fitting a free trial system in your business can be really dangerous.

In this post, I’ll cover three of the most common scenarios where a SaaS company should NOT offer a free trial. Take a look through them and see if any describes you.

Scenario #1: The Product Doesn’t Deliver Results in a Reasonable Period of Time

“Do not offer a free trial when your customer can’t get a complete picture of how your product benefits them during a reasonable free trial period.”

– Wayne Mulligan, Co-founder of Crowdability

I couldn’t agree more with Wayne.

Let me explain:

The only purpose of offering a free trial is to remove the risk barrier, right?

Think about it. Companies offer free trials to show their prospective customers the value they’ll get if they decide to buy the product – they just want to alleviate all doubts and help their users make an informed decision. That’s it.

If your product doesn’t show the value within a reasonable time frame, a free trial simply makes no sense.

For example, if the user needs to gather accurate data to measure the value of your software, and he or she can’t get such data within the trial period, then that trial is worthless.

Also, it could be that your customer needs to contribute sensitive data to your system to evaluate it properly. In this case, the free trial won’t be helpful either.

In both examples, the trial period is simply not enough.

Now you might be thinking: “Why not just extend that period?”

Fair question. For some companies, it might be a viable solution. But the truth is there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. It all depends on your current situation and many other factors – like your sales cycle and working capital.

To help you out, I’ve listed below three of the most comprehensive guides on the topic. I’m sure they’ll get you on the right path:

• The Best SaaS Free Trial Length
• How Long Should Your SaaS Free Trial Be? It Depends…
• What’s the optimal free trial duration?

Scenario #2: The Product is Too Complicated

Listen:

NEVER assume that your prospective customer will even attempt learning how to use your product. If the process isn’t obvious or – at the very least – simple, they won’t see the value.

In simpler words, if your product is too complicated, a free trial will probably not work for you. Why? Two main reasons:

1. Without training, enterprise-level software tends to intimidate users, making free trials generally ineffective.
2. Complicated processes tend to cost more money. Unless you have deep pockets, getting people to use your product for free might not be viable.

And when I say, “complicated,” I mean your product lies into one of the following categories:

• Your product has a complex integrated process. For example, when you need the help of developers to integrate your product into your client’s website or when people require extensive training to use it.
• Your product involves upfront implementation work.
• Your product needs third party integration to demonstrate a complete flow.

Companies like Marketo and Infusionsoft understand this concept very well. Both companies offer practical solutions, but they understand that people won’t get the most out of their products if they don’t know how to use them properly. So rather than offering a free trial, they offer free demonstrations.

In fact, Infusionsoft goes beyond your “typical” demo. Instead, you can decide whether to explore the product’s key features on your own, reserve a spot for a live webinar and Q & A session, or even schedule a customized tour from a small business expert.

This kind of attention helps you get a clear feeling of the product’s quality and its value.

Anyways, the bottom line is this:

If your product is too complicated or requires extensive training to deliver its full value, try with free demos. This model might work better for you.

Scenario #3: The Free Trial is Giving Away All The Value

Look:

Be careful about measuring results by focusing on user acquisition. I mean, if those users don’t turn into paying customers, they’re worthless. Savvy companies always bear this in mind.

If you want to increase your bottom line through free trials, you need to integrate the process in your sales funnel first and measure results by sales, not users.

The key lies in this simple, yet neglected concept.

Marketing expert and evangelist Trish Bertuzzi has worked with many SaaS companies, and she makes a fascinating point in his article on Why Free Trials Don’t Always Make Sense:

“…For some applications, there’s very little value delivered beyond the free trial period. If it’s a solution that helps manage a task done once per year – for example, arranging the annual user group conference – why would the prospect actually pay for the solution once that task is done?

In this case, the SaaS company is essentially giving away the full value of its solution. A free trial can attract users, but not many paying customers.” – Trish Bertuzzi

Her recommendations include:

• Offer a “sandbox demo” – letting your prospective customers try your product in a controlled environment might increase the effectiveness of the demo.
• Create an explainer video – explainer videos are proven to work extremely well for SaaS companies and – sometimes – a clear video is enough to explain the benefit.
• Money-back guarantees – if the free trial model doesn’t fit your business, you can still offer a money-back guarantee to reduce the risk involved in the purchase.
• No-obligation contracts – if your customer doesn’t get what she or he expected from your product, that customer could end the relationship without any problem. This reduces risk and entices more people to buy.

Many startups tend to imitate what other successful companies are doing, but remember, what works for others might not necessarily work for you. If a free trial model isn’t profitable, better rely on different strategies.

Don’t Take My Word For It – Test It Instead

If your business lies within one of the three categories outlined above, a free trial model will probably make no sense for you, BUT it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it at all.

I mean, there’s no way to know for sure unless you test it. Every business is different, and your results may vary. So please, don’t follow my advice blindly. I’m not trying to stop you, but to “awaken” you – never do things just because “you’re supposed to.”

The fact you’re running a SaaS company doesn’t mean you should offer free trials nor copy what your competitors are doing. Better trust on your own testing.

It’s the only way to figure it out.

What do you think? Are you going to test it? What other tips do you have? Make sure to share your thoughts in the comments! Brutal or otherwise.

About the Author: Josue Valles is a freelance copywriter, professional blogger, and business writing coach. He’s on a lifelong mission to help businesses find their voice and to turn boring ideas into brilliant stories. If you’re interested in working with Josue, you can email him at josuevallesp@gmail.com.

Technical challenges aren’t the problem.

They might be a problem. A hurdle for sure.

But it’s rarely THE biggest problem responsible for traction or flaming out.

Likewise, churn is an issue. It can send you in a negative tailspin.

But again, top line growth masks all. Papers over enough cracks until you can get your head above water. You keep getting people in the door and you can get by with many other ‘leaks’ along the way.

No. The biggest problem is obscurity. Nobody knowing who the hell you are. And therefore not willing to give you the time of day (let alone, their email or credit card info).

Most companies struggle simply because they can’t get enough people in the door.

Not Calendly.

Here’s why, and how they had to ‘flip the funnel’ in order to scale growth to massive heights in only 24 months.

Calendly’s First World Startup Problems

I recently had the privilege to interview Claire Suellentrop with Brian Sun at Autopilot. We talked about her history and story. Where she came from and where she’s going. In my completely unbiased opinion, it’s super interesting. You should read it. ;)

But it was the admission that Calendly had over 10,000 beta users that stood out.

They amassed more users than most mature SaaS companies. While still in beta. (That alone probably deserves it’s own post. Tope, you readin’ this?)

Calendly didn’t struggle with the first pirate metric that most others do. That was more or less taken care of initially. They could open up to paying customers and already see a nice chunk of them convert overnight.

Claire didn’t have to get knee deep in Facebook ads or pray to the SEO Gods at the beginning like most marketers do. Instead, she had to look deeper into the conversion funnel to figure out (a) who their most active customers were and (b) how to better tell their story.

Because that unsexy, unglamorous stuff buried deep at the bottom of the funnel is where the real money is made.

Calendly’s built-in network effects means that each successful customer should bring in additional customers. So their unique position meant they could switch focus from top of funnel stuff you read about online everyday to the stuff that’s rarely (if ever) addressed: keeping peeps happy.

They spent a lot of time going backwards initially. Re-tracing their customer’s steps and getting a better understanding of who they were (and what they were trying to do).

That started with segmenting their user base by most active customers. They already knew people in sales and revenue-oriented roles loved the product. So those were easy.

But it was the ones they didn’t know about that surprised them.

How Calendly Discovered New Use Cases

Segmentation is one of those boring research things.

Everyone says it’s important. Starts with the basics like vertical/industry/demographics/role. And then stops. Because: MOAR SEOS!

True segmentation actually goes a lot deeper. There’s segmentation by purchasing occasion, for example. Or specific events, like Christmas, that act as a catalyst to buy certain products.

Use cases are similar. Exploring people’s daily lives to see how and when potential uses for your product pop up.

Calendly was already aware of a few obvious use cases.

Claire said that they initially “pictured it being a bunch of sales guys that would add it to their outreach emails”. You know, cold calling 2.0 and all that.

But they knew there was more. They were watching how actions people took in their software lead them to the most profitable customers. So they lined up dozens of customers interviews to uncover how the product was fitting into their day-to-day workflow.

The objective was to uncover the real reasons people used the product (vs. the manufactured reasons everyone internally believes) and use that to better construct landing pages or other site-wide messaging to drive faster Activation and stronger Retention.

Today Claire is doing much of the same work with Love Your Customers. She’s working with companies to find these ways to improve their onboarding flow to drive product adoption faster. Digging into existing customer behaviors and using that data to make Activation shorter or faster. And then coming up with new ways to re-engage those who abandon.

Calendly discovered new use cases they hadn’t even thought of during those initial interviews.

Case in point: marketing automation.

Marketing leaders and sales managers were building marketing funnels that were completely dependent on scheduling through Calendly.

Customer interviews helped Calendly realized that it wasn’t just a sales rep tool, but an essential piece of their ‘marketing stack’.

They were then able to turn around, write new support docs explaining this use case, create content on teaching others how to similarly use Calendly in their own marketing efforts.

Like this one from Sean McVey, Director of Demand Gen at Virtru.

“Only 25–30% of inbound leads were actually scheduling demos— which was a low conversion rate, considering people were clicking very specific CTAs like ‘See a demo.’”

So he decided to rethink the typically boring Thank You confirmation page, instead embedding Calendly directly to remove friction in the signup process while also removing the burden from his salespeople’s backs.

Sean told Calendly that even after this tiny change, he “saw pretty quickly that our conversion rate was nearing 50% or more.”

So he took it one step further, personalizing the Thank You page (and therefore, sales person + calendar) depending on deal size.

Then he also set-up Slack notifications to fire every time a new lead filled out their form. And another for when a Calendly appointment was successfully sent.

So he could easily count daily conversions – both the initial form submission and successful appointments booked – for reporting, analysis, and iterating.

The results?

“Within the first month of using Calendly, we jumped to 61% of leads scheduling a call,” said Sean.

Sounds cool, right?

Here’s how you can do it, too.

How to Create a Calendly-Driven Marketing Automation Sequence

Forms are the backbone of marketing automation.

They’re the springboard to triggering everything else because people are explicitly showing intent in something specific.

Here’s what HubSpot’s form fields look like:

1. The little infinity-looking sign indicates a ‘smart field’. So if someone fills this out once, they don’t need to fill it out again on your site. HubSpot will save the contact’s record and ‘bank’ these answers so that these ‘smart fields’ will disappear if it recognizes an existing contact’s email and IP address.
2. Qualifying questions, like Annual Revenue Range?, can be used to, well, qualify prospects. But as in the example we just saw, they can also be used to determine which funnel this prospect should be placed into. More on this in a second.
3. Biggest Marketing Challenge? is more of the same. Another example that can be used to both qualify a prospect but also determine where to send them (or who to send them to) after submitting.
4. The final hidden field changes this prospects lifecycle stage once they fill out the form. So they now go from being a general contact to a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) or Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) depending on their answers.

Next up, these contacts are added to a ‘smart list’ depending on their answer.

These lists are dynamic (as opposed to static), so they update continuously. And they control how these specific people will be ‘enrolled’ into automation workflows.

For example, here’s one my company uses for new applications we receive. People applying for jobs are then controlled and segmented based on which position they’re interested in.

So now someone who’s interested in a Marketing position can be sent over to the person in charge of Marketing (or, me).

But guess what? You don’t need fancy software to do this. Gravity Forms also works perfectly. They have conditional logic that allows you to determine the ‘thank you’ confirmation message someone sees depending on how they answer a question.

Let’s bring this back to Calendly.

Deal size is one easy answer. Depending on a company’s revenue (or number of employees in Sean’s case), you can usually tell if a customer’s going to sign up for $3,000, $30,000, or $300,000 worth of products and services. Qualifying questions can be used to determine whom those people should speak to (or whose Calendly link they should receive).

Referral source is another. The Outbound 2.0 Bible, Predictable Revenue, says to specialize sales roles. So one person qualifies outbound leads while another for inbound.

Here’s how that might looks using Gravity Form’s conditional logic:

If their Source matches Inbound (or personal Referrals), they go to my calendar.

You can also extend this sequence with Zapier. (Here’s a previous article I wrote about hacking automation with Zapier for more background.)

Zapier lets you create filters that will determine whether or not this new submission should go somewhere else (to a new page, a new app like Calendly, etc).

For example, you can have a radio button or drop down that explicitly asks people if they’re interested in a Demo (or not).

So if they answer yes, only filtered contacts get through. And you can instantly add them to a well-oiled workflow that also adds the new prospect to a series of other apps you might be using.

Remember: Processes > hacks.

For example, a new successful form submission leads to:

1. Adding to your CRM
2. Sending a Thank You / Welcome follow up email with Calendly link
3. Sending a message to Slack about the new lead
4. Creating a new deal in your sales pipeline
5. And creating a series of tasks in your project management software to follow up.

And of course, like any good automation sequence, you can build this out depending on a few scenarios.

For example…

✅ Someone filled out a form but did NOT create a new Calendly appointment? Send follow up emails or texts with the appropriate link until they do.

❌ Still no answer after ~30 days? You can safely assume they changed their mind. You can have an automation sequence that will automatically unroll them as a lead.

✅ Appointment go well? Add them to your invoicing software and send it out!

For example, you can use the same info already submitted (like client contact, company name, etc.) to create and send a new Freshbooks invoice. Connect Stripe or PayPal to Freshbooks and you can now not only accept payments online, but also monitor payment status with Slack messages.

The sky is truly the limit.

Conclusion

Traction is the #1 problem for most startup companies.

But not Calendly, who was able to ‘go live’ with thousands of beta users already in the pipeline.

Instead, their major hurdle was in making sure people not only converted but stuck around for the long-term, too. Increasing retention leveraged their network effects; empowering each existing customer to bring in brand new people.

So Calendly dove deeper into understanding what makes their customers tick. They lined up interview after interview. And used each new insight or tidbit of wisdom to better tailor their messaging.

Integrating their product into marketing automation use cases was one powerful example.

User stories, like Sean’s, allowed them to showcase how current customers were solving difficult challenges. How those customers were benefitting in both hard ($$$, %%) and soft (hours saved) terms.

And how their product was the only obvious, viable alternative for other people like Sean.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a marketing writer, agency partner, and creator of Copy Weekly, a free weekly copywriting newsletter for marketers & founders.

Communication.

It’s the only way to demonstrate your product’s value to potential customers. Your goal is to convey information about new features, successful case studies, and industry trends.

Converting B2B free trial users into paying customers involves lots of communication about why your product trumps competitors. In-app messaging is a powerful tool to send on-time, contextual messages to connect with users.

“Customers are focused on your product at the moment of [in-app] communication, and can be delivered immediate, direct information that is targeted specifically to them and their patterns of behaviour,” states Alex Cohen, managing director at Xander Marketing.

Take full advantage of in-app messaging. Here are five ways to gain more paying customers:

1. Upgrade Your Onboarding

Trial users are ready to get started with your platform. Convinced by your promises to deliver, it’s your responsibility to exceed users’ expectations.

First, let’s debunk the notion that it’s easy to transform free trial users into customers. They still need guidance toward the sale.

That’s why onboarding is so important to the success of the user. You want these initial interactions with your product to showcase the best of your brand. To keep them hooked, your team must continue to offer solutions.

With in-app messaging, you can pinpoint targeted actions to activate the user sooner. Send tailored messaging to help the individual learn how to gain quick wins from your platform.

The CoSchedule team executes this strategy well. During the trial period, users receive tidbits on how to improve their experiences.

What’s also vital is celebrating small accomplishments with the user. A note of congratulations makes them feel part of your brand family. While the achievement is fresh on their minds, you also can ask users to complete another action.

Delivering ongoing value means setting expectations and understanding the user’s business goals. When tackling the onboarding process, strive to guide the user to a positive outcome.

2. Feature Product Updates

Alienating trial users is one mistake businesses make when interacting with this specific group. Giving them limited information won’t help them become customers faster.

While you may attempt to create exclusivity, trial users don’t like hearing the phrase: “Oh, you’re just a trial user. That’s unavailable to you.” Instead, look for ways to involve them in your brand community.

Work with your team—product, marketing, and sales—to include trial users in announcements about your application. It’s an effective way to show these potential customers that your product is constantly evolving, and you want them to be part of your growth.

Broadcast new product features within the application to encourage immediate use. Make sure to give specific instructions on how to use the feature and how it will benefit the individual. If not, you risk them ignoring every message you send.

Try giving simple examples to exhibit the ease of use. Depending on the complexity of the feature, you may want to add screenshots or a short video tutorial.

Check out the example below from Slack. When the company announced its video call feature, the message contained simple steps for users to follow.

Moreover, invite users to ask questions or report bugs regarding the new feature. It helps your team improve the product, and trial users know that their concerns are addressed.

3. Provide Educational Training

Education is the foundation of converting trial users into loyal customers. You need to properly train users how to gain value from your product. Without it, people will get frustrated and decide to churn.

SaaS companies must ensure that the learning curve isn’t too steep for their audiences. No one wants to feel like they are taking an advanced math class. Plus, people don’t want to waste hours (or even days) learning how to get your platform to work correctly.

So it’s not good enough to just say your product is easy to operate. It actually has to fulfill that promise, or you risk losing your trial user to a competitor.

In-app messaging works as another distribution channel for your marketing team to teach trial users. You can deliver helpful content to guide people throughout the journey.

And you don’t have to explicitly say that your message is for educational purposes. In the screenshot below, Hint Health frames the message in a “Did You Know…” format.

With the power of data, your team also can decide who needs more training. Segmentation is an effective strategy to personalize the learning experience. That way, the advanced user isn’t getting bored with beginner content.

“One of the main benefits of in-app messages is the capability of hyper segmentation, so why wouldn’t SaaS companies take advantage of that? Sending the same message to every user without even knowing if they’re interested can be a huge shot in the foot,” says Gabriela Tanuri, Content Hacker at Pipz.

Be ready to train your trial users when they sign up, and customize the education to fit the user’s needs.

4. Gather User Feedback

In-app messaging is one of the best channels to collect user feedback. It’s a chance to speak directly with the user inside your platform.

You can learn about user challenges in real-time. So your team knows exactly when the individual used the specific feature and how the problem is affecting the user’s progress.

You’ll also gain insight on which benefits matter most to the user. Then, you can target more content resources around those particular benefits.

“From VIPs to free trial users and more, in-app messages have quickly become the best way for our team to get feedback from customers in the right place at the right time — and we’re noticing that the feedback is better when we can get really specific with both our targeting and messaging,” writes Dave Gerhardt, marketing at Drift.

You can employ the 1-10 rating scale to get feedback from your users. It’s quick and easy for the person to participate, and your team receives qualitative data to improve the product.

Part of the sales process is listening to your users. Therefore, pay attention to user feedback to boost your revenue.

5. Leverage Sales Opportunities

Most companies want to create new channels to gain sales. In-app messaging helps facilitate the sales conversations with the trial user.

Like any sales call, there’s an appropriate time to ask users to explore your pricing plans. Avoid solely using in-app messaging to just convert users. Your audience will spot this tactic immediately and will start ignoring your messages.

If direct sales doesn’t work best for your company, try using it to take the conversation offline. Message users about setting up an appointment for a tutorial to demonstrate the product’s value. You also can offer special discounts or bonuses to this targeted group to clinch the sale.

Train your support team to spot opportunities to show trial users benefits only for paying customers. It’ll spark the user’s curiosity about upgrading his plan.

Another idea is to send customer success stories via the messaging platform. Users will become inspired to achieve similar results as their paying colleagues.

If the user doesn’t seem interested in buying at all, experiment with using in-app messaging to ask for referrals. Read this message from the Nickelled team:

Messaging for More Conversions

Building quality relationships with your audience starts with communication. In-app messaging offers an opportunity to connect and support your trial users in the customer journey.

Strive to educate users about your product and respond to users’ concerns to improve the overall experience. In-app messaging is your pathway to more conversions.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

Picture this: it’s your first time in a new city. You flew in last night for a conference, and this morning, you need to grab coffee on the way to the convention center.

You find a nearby cafe on Yelp with great ratings, so you make the walk over from your hotel. But when you arrive, the cafe isn’t quite what you expect.

The counter is surprisingly difficult to find — way in the back, behind a maze of tables and chairs you have to weave through. When you finally get back there, you glance around for the menu board…but there are none on display. Confused, you ask the staff behind the counter (who’ve barely acknowledged your presence) for a menu…and you’re handed a water-stained paper list of the baked goods available.

In a hurry and getting frustrated, you explain that you didn’t need a food menu, you just need some coffee. “Oh, we don’t have a coffee menu,” says one of the baristas, “But our drinks are…” and he rattles off a long list of hip-sounding names — none of which describe what the drinks actually are (black coffee? Iced latte? Cappuccino?)

You don’t have time to figure this out — so, coffee-less, you thank the barista and leave. You’ll have to find another cafe, or head straight to the convention center sans caffeine.

Good Marketing Can’t Save Poor Activation

If you’ve ever been in a scenario like the one above, just reading that story probably made you cringe. And it should — because SaaS users endure this painful experience every day.

And they could be your users.

You may have the healthiest marketing budget in the world and the stickiest, most relatable content attracting new users. But funneling those users into a sub-par onboarding flow is a recipe for dismal activation rates — creating minimal trial-to-paid conversions.

In other words, 50 glowing Yelp reviews can get people in your door, but a frustrating in-store experience will have them walking right back out again.

Why SaaS Teams Struggle With New User Activation

Smart founders and marketers already know activation is crucial to the customer journey — like Ty Magnin, Director of Marketing at Appcues, who writes that activation is 74% more impactful than the other “pirate” metrics.

So why do teams struggle to boost their new user activation rates? Two common reasons:

Activation challenge #1: seeing the “what,” but not the “why”

While it’s common knowledge that you should track user activity during onboarding, knowing what users are doing in your app is only half the picture.

Not many analytics platforms reveal the why’s prompting users to take (or not take) certain actions — why are they setting up this part of their profile, but not another? Why did they actually sign up in the first place?

Without knowing those why’s, it’s difficult to know what “Aha!” moment will keep users’ attention.

Activation challenge #2: misunderstanding of users’ true use cases

You may know one or two key ways folks are using your product — but can you confidently list the top four? The top six?

When I ran marketing at Calendly, we knew our best customers used our product for a variety of use cases: to acquire new customers, to manage relationships with existing clients, to interview and hire great candidates, etc.

However, it wasn’t until we personally interviewed 5-10 power users from each segment that we uncovered the many unique needs within those use cases.

For example, we knew that sales people (our main “customer acquisition” users) were sharing Calendly links with prospects in 1:1 emails. But we discovered that marketing professionals were also using the product — they were building it into their automation systems to more efficiently route inbound leads to sales reps.

Through our interviews, we understood, on a more nuanced level, the various ways our segments defined “success.” Had we not held these conversations, we would have continued making blanket assumptions about our key use cases — and provided a blanket onboarding experience to match.

Both activation challenges above can be solved by getting “close to your customer” (Drift CEO David Cancel discusses this at length in his AMA).

But the bigger question is: how do we actually get close to our customers?

Get Close to Customers > Improve Activation With Jobs To Be Done

Jobs To Be Done (JTBD), originally a product development theory, has been gaining serious traction over the past few years in the marketing landscape. If you’re new to JTBD, the theory goes that people buy and use a product because they want to make their lives better in particular ways.

In other words, we “hire” products to do certain jobs that improve our lives. If a product does its job well, we keep hiring it over and over. If it doesn’t, we “fire” it and look for something else.

By understanding how your customers improve their lives with your product, you can work backwards to map out the key activation events new users must take to ensure your product does its “job” correctly and quickly — resulting in more customers “hiring” your product long-term.

While a full discussion of JTBD would require an entire book (I recommend this fantastic option by Alan Klement), you can get quite close to your customers with this basic understanding.

By continually asking your new and long-term customers these four JTBD questions, you’ll have all the data you need to identify the key activation points your users must hit, so you can build more effective onboarding experiences and convert more trial users into long-term customers.

The 4 JTBD Questions That Reveal Users’ Key Activation Events

Question 1: How would you describe your job title + role at work?

Users who should answer this question:

• Long-term paying customers
• Trial users

Why this question is so helpful:

• When asked to long-term customers, this question can reveal which types of people most often get value from your product long-term (i.e., the people you most want to market to and build for).
• When asked to new users, this question reveals whether any new segments of people are being attracted to your product as it evolves over time.

Where to ask it:

• Long-term users: survey or customer interview
• Trial users: in-app poll or chat message

Question 2: What was happening in your world that led you to sign up for [PRODUCT]?

Users who should answer this question:

• Long-term customers
• Brand new paying customers

Why this question is so important:

• This question reveals the struggles your customers are enduring (the “jobs” they need done) that motivate them to seek you out.

Where to ask it:

• Long-term users: customer interview. You really need some time to let customers dig into the details, and this is hard to do in a survey.
• Brand new customers: on the payment confirmation page. This is when they’re most engaged, and they’re feeling most confident that your product solves their struggle.

This is one of the questions Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers asked Crazy Egg’s customers when she optimized the Crazy Egg homepage. The result? A 13% lift in conversions.

Just as Joanna used customer responses to craft powerful homepage copy, you can use these responses to create more effective onboarding. Break your onboarding flow into segments around the most common “jobs,” rather than pushing everyone into the same unsegmented flow.

Question 3: What happened during your trial that convinced you [PRODUCT] was the right solution?

Users who should answer this question:

• Long-term paying users
• Brand new paying customers

Why this question is so important:

• This question reveals the “Aha!” moment at which the user realized your product could successfully do the job. The more users you can drive to this moment, the higher your conversion from trial > paid. Once you’ve identified the “Aha!” moment, you can map out the activation events a user must reach to arrive at “Aha!”

Where to ask it:

• Long-term users: customer interview. You really need some time to let customers dig into the details, and this is hard to do in a survey.
  Brand new customers: on the payment confirmation page, or in a survey shortly after signup. This is when they’re most engaged, and they’re feeling most confident that your product solves their struggle.

As I interviewed power users at Calendly, a pattern emerged: the faster a trial user shared their Calendly link and booked a meeting with someone, the more likely they were to become a long-term user. For our ideal customer, the “Aha!” moment was the experience of receiving a new meeting in her calendar almost magically, without any email tag involved.

This helped us create an onboarding experience and content series that helped users get their first meeting more quickly.

Question 4: What were you skeptical or anxious about when you signed up, that would have prevented you from using [PRODUCT] long-term?

Users who should answer this question:

• Long-term paying customers
• Brand new paying customers

Why this question is so important:

• This question uncovers the roadblocks to activation (e.g, the opposite of the “Aha!” moment). When you know what users are worried about during their trial, you can write emails or in-app copy that acknowledges and dispels those worries, reducing the likelihood of abandonment.

Where to ask it:

• Long-term users: survey or customer interview
• Brand new customers: survey or customer interview

The team behind budgeting software You Need a Budget knows their 34-day trial period is fraught with roadblocks — many stemming from a user’s personal (often unhealthy) relationship with money. To combat this, they send a series of friendly emails to people in the trial phase, each designed to help the user overcome one common anxiety in the way of activation:

Bringing it All Together

If you’re regularly collecting input from your customers, you’ll know whether your “Yelp reviews” are funneling folks into a pleasant “coffee shop” experience, or whether your onboarding process is leaking ideal users.

Start with these four JTBD questions:

• How would you describe your job title + role at work?
• What was happening in your world that led you to sign up for [PRODUCT]?
• What happened during your trial that convinced you [PRODUCT] was the right solution?
• What were you skeptical or anxious about when you signed up, that would have prevented you from using [PRODUCT] long-term?

Have you asked your customers similar (or different) questions recently? What did you learn from them? How did it change the way you think about your product, your positioning, or your customers’ use cases? Share your experiences in the comments below.

About the Author: Claire Suellentrop is the author of Websites that Convert, a one-sitting read that helps SaaS founders create compelling website content + copy. Get the first chapter free. Claire helps smart, friendly SaaS companies like Calendly, FullStory and Wistia get inside their customers’ heads. Then, she turns those user insights into high-converting marketing experiences — including landing pages, email sequences and onboarding flows.

An important metric in any marketer’s dashboard is sitewide conversion rate. Of course, that broad metric alone can be misleading. Though most marketers typically segment their data by traffic source (e.g. organic search, Facebook ads, affiliate traffic, etc.), another way to analyze the data is by tracking page-specific conversion funnels.

For instance, when customers land on a certain product page, are they then 20% likely to complete a purchase? If so, is that a better product-page conversion rate than your average product-pages? Should you be driving more traffic to that SKU? Also, are there pages that visitors interact with that drive no conversions at all?

If so, then perhaps it’s worth figuring out how you can redirect that traffic to other pages that may be able to better convert those visitors. Or you might want to consider removing that page entirely since it may offer little to no value to your audience.

Below, I’ll outline a three-part guide for capitalizing on page-specific conversion rates.

1. How to Determine Page-Specific Conversion Rates

Before you can calculate page-specific conversion rates, you need to set goals within your Google Analytics account that track specific activity. Of course, there are multiple ways to qualify a conversion. A few common examples are:

• Account creation
• Email subscription
• eBook download
• Order purchase

Once this is done, you can then segment your data to get a firmer understanding of how well certain pages perform. Below are step-by-step instructions for how this is done within Google Analytics.

When you enter your analytics dashboard, find the left panel and click Behavior to expand the section. Under that, select Site Content followed by Landing Pages. This allows you to review broad stats about each of your website’s individual pages.

Next, above the main graph in the middle of your dashboard, choose Goal Set 1. This will allow you to start analyzing page activity against conversions.

By default, the listed pages should be sorted by Sessions volume, with the highest trafficked pages showing first. A quick scan of the top 25 or 50 most visited pages and their respective conversion rates will give you an idea of which ones may need further improvement (particularly, URLs that receive a ton of visitors but few conversions).

Another important way to sort the data is by Goal Conversion Rate. This will help you identify the pages that have unusually high conversion rates, which you may draw copy, design and style inspiration from to improve your higher-trafficked but lower-converting pages.

To ensure you identify conversion rate optimization opportunities worth pursuing and are analyzing statistically significant data, you should consider applying filters that explicitly include pages from targeted sections of your website or omit ones that may muddy your results. To do that, you must find the small link that reads advanced to expand the menu. Then, you can set multiple rules to filter your findings. Afterwards, remember to click the Apply button at the bottom of the menu.

This tells Google Analytics to provide a manicured report featuring only the pages you need for this analysis.

2. How to Take Advantage of High-Converting Pages

Once you’ve identified which pages convert the most traffic, a few ways businesses can capitalize on those pages include:

• Directing more internal traffic (from other pages) to those pages. This would mean strategic internal linking or careful changes to site navigation. In an effort to grow your business, you will want to strategically guide any visitors your site receives to webpages that engage them and are more likely to facilitate a conversion.
• Driving more organic and paid marketing site visits to those high-converting pages. To do that organically, marketers must work to actively improve the SEO of those pages and direct earned media traffic to them too. To accomplish this through paid channels requires brands to buy ads that send visitors to those pages.
• Mimicking the design, style and value proposition offered on those pages to optimize the rest of your website. Clearly, you have done something right with those particular pages which help encourage conversions on your website. So, as a marketer, it would be wise to try and identify the key elements that make those pages so engaging. This would allow you to replicate that experience across other pages that do not support your end goals.

Knowing which pages convert traffic better empowers marketers to create higher-converting user funnels.

3. What to do About Low-Converting Pages

Another consequence of this analysis is the discovery that many of your webpages do little to facilitate conversions. Naturally, you may ask yourself:

• What value do these pages offer?
• Could we improve their conversion rates?
• Could we still take advantage of the traffic they receive?
• Are they worth keeping and maintaining?

With that in mind, here are four things you can do with your lowest-converting pages:

• Keep them. First, decide what the primary purpose of each of your webpages are. The privacy page, for instance, is there almost entirely out of legal obligation. Your knowledge base and help desk may be available just to serve as educational guides. These examples and more may be worth keeping since conversions are not their primary — or even secondary — metric for success. As long as they manage to offer some value to users, these types of pages may be worth holding onto.
• Optimize them. For more conversion-oriented pages, such as landing pages and product pages, you will want to invest resources in optimizing them to facilitate more conversions, and lower their bounce and exit rates. You may do this through a series of A/B tests and by mimicking the copy, design and style of your higher-converting webpages.
• Redirect incoming traffic. You will almost certainly find a handful of high-traffic pages with paltry conversion rates. Unfortunately, many of them may be difficult to optimize given their primary purpose such as your “About” page (which provides a brief summary of the brand, its values and the people behind it). So, rather than aim to optimize them for conversions, redesign these pages to direct their incoming visitors to higher-converting pages. Consider adding call-to-actions (CTAs) that encourage page visitors to click onto other sections of your website that may facilitate a better customer journey and a higher likelihood of conversion. There are exceptions though: your users’ “Account” pages (which are primarily used as part of the post-purchase experience, where users may only be visiting to track shipping details, review past orders or leave a customer review) should be left alone since these users do not need to be “converted” again.
• Get rid of them. The sobering truth is that not all of your webpages are worth hosting. In fact, an audit of your page-specific conversion rates may help you uncover webpages that might not be properly representative of your brand. Rather, they may be a distraction to visitors and a detriment to the user experience. You may be better off without these pages. Of course, removing content should be a last resort. Before you commit to getting rid of certain pages, find out if there are other ways having them may benefit you. For instance, some pages generate strong organic traffic and have hundreds of inbound links; removal may lead to a loss in overall domain authority for SEO and would be ill-advised. Other pages are informational, such as FAQs (frequently asked questions), or are part of the post-purchase experience and are aimed at delivering a seamless customer experience.

Conclusion

To grow your business, sometimes you have to think outside of the box and approach problems unconventionally. An analysis of page-specific conversions can help marketers analyze their buyer funnels more in-depth. It also enables them to discover powerful solutions to bottlenecks and roadblocks along the customer’s journey.

If your overall end-to-end conversion metrics are failing you (and you’re limited on design, engineering and CRO resources), you’ll want to identify areas within your current website experience that are already highly engaging to customers and use that information to your advantage. So if you have a poor sitewide conversion rate, consider reviewing the effectiveness of your page-specific conversion funnels. You might find just what you need to drastically improve your marketing performance.

About the Author: Danny Wong is a digital marketer and writer. As Conversio’s resident Tale Spinner, he authors in-depth guides that teach Ecommerce store owners ways to manage, grow and scale their business. To benchmark your page conversion rates against your peers, check out our 2016 Product Page Conversion Rates Report.

As a people-based analytics platform, Kissmetrics tracks users through every step of the growth cycle – from first visit to signup to every step thereafter.

Today, we’re taking the next step in analytics by releasing Populations, a new feature that makes it easier for growth marketers and product teams to track and understand key groups of people across their growth cycle.

With Populations, you’ll quickly see how these critical groups are performing, and in just a few clicks easily segment your Populations for greater insights.

With this new feature, you can stay on top of your growth cycle:

• Track: Create Populations based on any behavior combination they want, to monitor your business growth cycle.
• Understand: Your data is clearly organized around your Populations so you can quickly understand the health of all of your key growth segments at a single glance.
• Focus: Quickly know which Populations are growing or shrinking, so you can focus your initiatives on the Populations that need it the most.

Here’s how it works.

Tracking Your Growth Cycle

Let’s say you’re the Director of Growth Marketing for a SaaS company. You need to keep a constant eye on all areas of your growth cycle, that is:

• Signups
• Activation
• Product usage

Tracking this is actually quite difficult with most analytics tools because you have to go to a series of reports to see what’s going on across the growth cycle. That’s where Populations comes in. In just a few clicks, you’ll be able to see how all Populations are trending, who is in each Population, and you’ll even be able to segment to see the breakdown of the Population by property. Let’s see these features in action.

Overview Page

Here’s a simple example of three Populations common to SaaS growth cycles and how each are performing:

• Signups – These are the people that have signed up for a trial sometime within the last 30 days.
• Product activation – Users in this Population are those that activated the product in some way. Maybe they reached some area of the product where the aha moment is reached.
• Active Users – If people are logging in, they’re likely using your product and are engaged users. People in this Population are those that logged in at least three times in the last 30 days.

This overview gives us some good information about the early stages of customer acquisition and adoption – we see how many people were in each Population, and how it’s performing against 90 days ago. This provides a quick glimpse into where we stand in our growth cycle.

To dig into more detail, let’s see how our signup Population has performed over time. To do that, we’ll go back to the Overview page and click on a Population. Let’s see how signups have performed over the last 90 days.

Populations Page

The Population page has a few features:

• See how a Population is performing over time. You can change how far back over time by simply entering a different amount of days in the top right corner.
• You can save the Population to a report (more on this later).
• See every person in each Population by clicking on the blue button near the bottom.

So for this Population, we see that in early January there’s a spike in signups, doubling in just a couple weeks. If there was anything that changed with our marketing during this time, we’ll know that it was the driver of this bump in signups. Often times a conversion bump may be responsible for this sustained increase. It’s also striking that we’ve doubled conversions from where we were 90 days ago. This means that whatever changes have happened in marketing activities have worked in increasing signups.

To see some of the data that makes up the Population, we’ll click on the Segmentation tab.

Segmentation

Let’s see which country is contributing most to signups.

This shows us that the bulk of our signups are coming from the United States. We’ll get a more complete view in this list:

The “9 property values” tells us that all of our signups are coming from nine countries. But over 90% of signups originate from the United States.

Keep in mind that we can break this down by any property we have. We are not limited to just country. You’ll find it best to mix and match properties between your various Populations.

Using Populations In Reports

You’ll also be able to apply a Population to any report. This makes a Population act as a “filter” for any of your reports.

For example, if you want to see how a Population moves through a funnel, you’ll just create that funnel and apply a Population to the report.

When you save a report with a Population, you can access it from the Overview page:

Click on one of those reports, and you’ll get the report that only has the people in that Population:

And we’ll have a funnel only for the people in our Signups – Last 30 Days Population. This helps us narrow down a specific Population to see how it is performing. We can use any report for a Population; we aren’t limited to just the Funnel Report.

Common Populations Use Cases

Many of our early beta testers used Populations to track key parts of their business. SaaS companies find it useful to create these Populations:

• New monthly visitors – Go beyond just tracking the total amount of people coming to your site. Create a Population to find how many new visitors have come to your site without ever previously visiting. Then segment it to see what’s driving the Population.
• Active trial users – Getting people to see the value of your product during the trial phase is the most important step to getting them to convert to paying for your product. Creating an engagement to track active trial users (the ones who are actually using the product) will help provide clues as to whether your trial process does a good job at showing customers your product value.
• Monthly trial conversion – Tracking the conversion from those trial users into paying customers will help you see if the changes you make over time are impacting this conversion.
• At-risk customers – Engagement is crucial for SaaS companies, and if users aren’t logging in, it may be an indicator of a future churn. Track these people and prevent the churn before it happens by creating a Population.

E-commerce companies will benefit by using these Populations:

• Monthly buyers – Purchases are the lifeblood of e-commerce companies. How many people bought this month? How many of those were new customers purchasing for the first time? Tracking these Populations can help you understand how your overall sales are performing.
• Loyal purchasers – Repeat purchases are necessary to sustain an e-commerce company. A Population that tracks repeat purchasers over time will show if you’re gaining loyalty or if you’re losing it.
• One and done buyers – Are there people that purchase but never return to buy anything again? Hopefully not, but with Populations you’ll quickly and easily see how many (or how few) one and done buyers you have.
• Browsers – How many people are browsing your store without buying? If there’s a lot (of a large percentage of your overall traffic) it may indicate that your site doesn’t convert well or it isn’t attracting your target audience.

The list doesn’t stop there. We know that each business is unique and has their own KPIs. Track those important benchmarks and anything else that is important to your product and marketing with a Population.

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Your problem isn’t what you think it is.

More traffic can definitely paper over some cracks. Likewise, more downloads, installs, or sign-ups always help.

But that’s not it.

That’s not the thing holding you back.

Because if 70% of free trials are useless (as reported by one study we’ll get to in a second)… more traffic or signups isn’t gonna help you. Pouring more water into a leaky funnel will won’t help you fill it any faster.

Instead, you gotta turn your attention to fixing those holes, first.

Specifically, starting with how to get more people successfully Activated and engaged to stick around for the long haul.

Here’s how to do it.

Revisiting The Top of the Funnel Fallacy

Less friction generally means higher conversion rates.

Example: Go from eleven down to four form fields and conversions shoot up 120%.

Pat yourself on the back. Fire off a blog post to GrowthHackers.com and call it a day. Plenty of artisanal stout beers to go ‘round.

But here’s the thing.

More isn’t always better. Over-optimizing conversion rates – taking drastic actions to boost one isolated number – don’t always pan out in the long run.

Just ask Moz, who found out that, “Many, many [website visits] visits are often correlated with high purchase prices.”

In other words, the most profitable customers didn’t convert after a single session or two. In fact, those that did were more likely to churn and bounce the quickest as well.

Instead, the most profitable customers often visited the website at least eight times prior to signing up for a free trial.

Totango ran a study years ago that illustrated a similar point. Their data showed that you’ll see a higher conversion rate (~10%) without asking for a credit card during sign up then you will when you do (~2%).

But that doesn’t matter. Because they don’t stick around long enough to mean anything.

Only around 20% of those trials are actively evaluating the product and considering crossing your finish line. (While as much as 70% are completely useless.)

A similar study looked at how customer conversion rates changed when a credit card was required upon sign up. The results showed that as many as 50% of people who used theirs during the initial signup will convert. While only around 15% who didn’t use their credit card will go on to become a customer.

TL;DR?

Over-optimizing the top of the funnel is pointless if it doesn’t result in more bottom of the funnel customers. Otherwise, you’ll stand to gain more from focusing on the middle of the funnel. Because: loyalty economics.

Here’s where to start.

The Three Components of a Successful ‘Activation’

The middle of the funnel never received a ton of love before Dave.

Sure, self-proclaimed ‘social media gurus’ loved to ramble on and on and on about this “engagement” thing. But they never bothered to stop and actually explain what it meant or how to prove it. Probably too many campfires to croon kumbaya around.

But then in stormed Dave, with his TV-MA, profanity-laced, multi-colored, seizure-inducing blog posts that undoubtedly crippled at least one poor epileptic.

His startup metrics presented a simple framework that connected the dots from Acquisition to Revenue.

This clever device practically made Activation and Retention household names for geeky growth hackers who didn’t quite yet have growth hacking to growth hack about growth hacking.

The Activation piece specifically focused on that all-important, yet least understood part of the funnel: delivering a ‘happy’ first experience so that people stuck around and came back to the site.

This is the ‘engagement’ part. It didn’t just mean signups. But a host of other behavior-based metrics like the number of pages people viewed prior to signup. The number of visits and the time on site. And the number of features used.

Fraser Deans, co-founder of Nickelled, breaks down Activation into three separate buckets in an excellent Medium post. (Also, he gets a +1 for squeezing “bloody brilliant” into the title).

Those three are:

• Phase One: Pre-Signup: Messaging that ‘primes’. It introduces, teases, and prepares someone to take a successful action.
• Phase Two: First User Experience: The ‘mission critical’ steps to take that deliver utility.
• Phase Three: Post-Signup: The follow-on activities to ‘seal the deal’.

Simple and easy to understand. A good a place as any to start.

Phase One: Pre-Signup

1. Begin at the Beginning

As in, the place where peeps are coming from. Because it can tell you a lot about who they are, what they’re looking for, and how to best ‘prime’ them for a successful Activation.

For example, look up your business in Google’s Customer Journey to Online Purchase to understand when people use certain channels.

Great. Now pull up your analytics and check out current traffic over the past 30 days to six months. Where are they coming from?

Perfect. The majority of site visitors here are coming to the site directly or through Search (both Organic and Paid). That means a lot of ‘branded’ traffic.

Here’s why that’s important.

2. Find Out What that Traffic is Looking For

Someone’s ‘path’ through your website can tell you a lot about where they are in the funnel.

One way to spot this is the User Flow report inside Google Analytics. It’s not perfect, but it allows you to view which pages people are going to by the original Source.

Another way to look at this is by going to your most popular content and adding a secondary dimension based on the Source / Medium.

Isolating each Source and its destination helps you connect the dots. It helps you spot different segments and funnels. For example, that Social brings in new people to blog posts while those that click on a Branded Paid Ad already know all about you.

Then you can improve upon it.

3. Optimize these Funnels

Most companies obsess over the home page. Or they obsess over the latest blog posts from the past month.

But when you go through those first two steps, you’ll quickly notice that neither are among the most popular ‘paths’ through your site.

Instead, here are some from ConversionXL to look for:

At each step you want to streamline/optimize/improve how people go from one to the other. Often that includes ‘priming’, which means getting your message match spot on, too. Here’s how it plays out with an easy eCommerce example.

Someone looks for a specific product in Google. Maybe it’s “mens chukka boots.” They see and click on the Special Offer.

Which sends them to a product page (because they clicked on a the shopping ad) that features language referencing not only the product but also the Special Offer that was alluded to.

Got it? Good.

On to the next one.

Phase Two. First User Experience

4. Outline ‘Success Milestones’

Now you got ‘em. The trick is to keep them around.

First, start by outlining those “customer centric success milestones.” These are the steps that people take which should equal a ‘happy first experience.’

Often that means the user takes action. They upload something. Add in some details. Or connect some accounts.

For example, Lincoln outlines creating an online store. Which makes my life easy, because now I don’t need to think up an example. ;)

So if I’m BigCommerce, maybe that starts with first helping people pick an eCommerce theme. That’s critical before anything else, because first impressions are design-driven.

Onboarding starts there…

… before going to the other boring (albeit important) stuff like determining a URL, setting up payment gateways, worrying about taxes or shipping, etc.

5. Instrument Each Success Milestone

Now instrument these steps along the way so you can measure, iterate, and improve. (Using, oh, I dunno, Kissmetrics perhaps.)

For example, here’s what those individual milestones look like for Patrick McKenzie’s Bingo Card Creator:

Each step is concrete so you can measure which activities (or transitions) lead to the greatest drop offs.

Here’s an eCommerce example using the Shopping Analysis from Google Analytics.

Different use case, same steps (or more or less).

Instrumenting these events gives you the ability to zero-in on where people are leaking outside your funnel. Here’s how to fix it.

6. Test Biggest Drop-offs First

Revisiting our online store example from a second ago, let’s say a major dropoff occurs on that initial “Pick Theme Design” step.

People are signing up but not, for whatever reason, moving past all the options they face. Maybe there’s too many options. More options = more complexity = less conversions in some cases.

Ok. So let’s simplify instead.

Where are those visitors coming from initially?

Let’s pass some referral data through the signup process. That way you can immediately show Fashion-related themes to those who just Google “Fashion online stores.” And apply that strategy across the board to increase the rate of users successfully completing that micro-step in your funnel.

Buffer, for example, found simplifying the onboarding process was key to their Activation, too.

Leo Widrich told Chargify that they found success in restraint. Instead of trying to make users actually share something (which is the entire purpose of their product), they instead just wanted them to connect their social accounts, setup timezones, and optimize posting times.

“So we rebuilt our onboarding process to focus on those items first and not push sharing and all other features instead. It made a huge difference in our activation!”

Phase Three: Post-Signup

7. Systematically Move People from A -> B

You’ve iterated on each Success Milestone now. Ran a few tests and know where the problem areas lie.

The next step is to make sure as many people as possible are attempting to complete each. And sometimes they require a little gentle prodding along the way.

This is classic marketing automation, where you’re automatically following up with people about completing the ‘next step’, until… you know… they complete the next step.

No need to overcomplicate this. See: 451% new qualified leads and 34% increase in sales.

So take your pick. HubSpot can do it. And the yet-to-be-release Kissmetrics Campaigns will be able to fire off emails based on certain conditions (e.g. signed up but no login) Stay tuned for the release. Same process (key word there) no matter which tactic we’re talkin’.

The trick is to ‘systemize’ follow-up at each step or milestone. Often in multiple channels.

8. Increase Messaging Frequency with Multiple Channels

Advertising 101:

• Reach is the number of new, unique people.
• Frequency is the amount of times you hit those same people.

Usually people get the first one. But don’t always do the second.

For example, sending one follow-up email every three days is fine. But often not enough. Not when you’re competing against a few trillion in the meantime.

You can increase frequency, without pissing everyone off, by looping in other channels.

Like reiterating the same messaging with live chat throughout your site or inside your app.

You can also supplement the process with longer, in-depth trainings, too. For example, Contactually is an awesome tool. But like many others, that utility is only gained if people use it consistently over a period of days/weeks/months. And sometimes people need a bit of a head start with some ideas of how to do that. Enter: training webinars.

9. Switch to 1:1 ASAP

A sign up is a conversion. Technically speaking.

But they’re not closed customers until they’re sticking around and you’re charging their credit card.

So you might have them on the hook. But you still need to close them.

The best tactic, bar none, for location-independent closing? Phone calls at 30-50%.

Every other step here emphasizes scale. And they all work well to one degree or another. But taking that final 1:1 plunge is worth it, according to Close.io.

So much so, that they recommend calling signups within five minutes!

“The quicker you can call someone after signup, the higher the likelihood of reaching them and being able to have them in the ‘product frame of mind.’”

Bonus points go to fanatical customer support. Close.io has engineers on their support team that will work outside of business hours in order to make sure each signup’s first experience is, in fact, a “happy one.”

“It’s not uncommon for us to be answering support requests at 4 AM.”

But doesn’t asking for a phone number lower signups initially?

Yes, it does. But it can often be worth it, too.

Conclusion

There’s nothing special about these 9 activation secrets.

They’re not especially clever. Not very impressive hacks.

What is uncommon, though, is the systematic application of each.

Activation, or creating a “happy first experience”, is fairly straightforward. You figure out what people are looking for. What they’re trying to accomplish in order to solve some pain point in their life. And then you make changes in order to better help them do that.

The concept is easy and straightforward. The hard part is doing the work.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a marketing writer, agency partner, and creator of Copy Weekly, a free weekly copywriting newsletter for marketers & founders.

SaaS teams are living a lie.

They believe the same value that acquired a customer will lead to a renewal. While focusing on customer retention is commendable, teams must reexamine their data to exceed customer expectations and achieve business growth.

“With the right insights, you can target your efforts in a meaningful way that will maximize renewal rates by showing your customers you’re paying attention to their needs,” writes Raj Badarinath, former vice president of product marketing at Avangate.

That means monitoring your target audience’s behavior to improve customer success. Let’s explore how data impacts your SaaS renewals.

Analyze Product Usage

Engagement is critical to encouraging customers to renew their monthly or yearly subscriptions. If a customer isn’t using your product, don’t expect them to stay a customer for long.

When customers initially purchase your product, they’re excited and ready to dig into the platform. The problem arises when that excitement dwindles and they don’t see the value anymore.

It’s similar to when children receive a popular toy adore. They play with it for a couple of days. Then, next week it’s buried under a pile of clothes not being used.

You don’t want that to happen to your products. By monitoring your product usage data, you can learn how often and when your customer logs into your application. This insight serves as a roadmap to engage the customer in product adoption.

Identify key behavioral actions that most renewal customers take. Let’s say that’s completing their full profile within your platform. Then, it’s in your best interest to start sending emails and in-app messages persuading customers to finish their profiles.

Also, set up triggers in your analytics platform to alert team members when the usage data drops for specific customers. This proactive measure ensures you connect with customers when the decline starts, not months later.

Product usage is helpful for spotting “at risk” customers. Use the data to facilitate customer renewals.

Validate Customer Value

Customers buy products to solve a particular problem. They want solutions that will offer some type of benefit.

For SaaS businesses, that value must be ongoing; your company can’t survive if it’s solving one-time challenges.

Dave Blake, CEO and founder of ClientSuccess, suggests creating milestones throughout the customer journey:

“Define success milestones along the journey. This should be very clear to everyone. These milestones are moments that manifest that a customer is progressing and having success with your product or service. We call these moments of truth.”

This strategy works because your team can monitor the growth of the customer’s success. Also, if you add these milestones to the customer’s dashboard, she can see her achievements within your application.

One of the best ways to confirm value is to simply ask the customer. You don’t need to conduct one-on-one interviews with every single person. A short email works well, too.

Below is an email Alex Turnbull of Groove received during the early years of starting his company. The customer validates the value received and states a concern as well.

Asking for customer feedback prepares your team make critical business decisions. It also gives you perspective on which customers will renew.

Monitor Customer Support Tickets

A huge part of customer success relies on exceptional support services. No matter how streamlined your product may be, SaaS customers will have questions about your product.

Customer support tickets are qualitative data showing whether or not your customer understands how to use your platform. By simply tagging their questions with beginner, intermediate, or advanced, you can monitor over time if the customer’s product knowledge is progressing.

Depending on your business, this strategy may indicate gaps where you need to offer more educational tools. Encourage your marketing and support teams to work together to produce content addressing the ongoing needs of the customer, like integration setup and common feature mishaps.

Sometimes the quality of the ticket response isn’t the issue. Analyze your response times and channels to track if you’re offering the best support at the right time and place. A three-day response time might be too long of a wait, and your customers may prefer live chat, rather than email.

Keep in mind that support also extends to social media channels. Customers constantly leave messages on Twitter and Facebook to give suggestions and air out grievances.

Asana understands the importance responding to social media posts. Here’s their response to an upset customer:

The company might not earn a renewal from this customer, but it shows a good faith effort to the rest of their customer base.

Track Net Promoter Scores

Satisfied customers serve as a step in the right direction for earning renewals. When people can offer more positives than negatives about your product, you know your team is making progress.

With the Net Promoter Score, your team can gauge the satisfaction of specific customer interactions. You can learn their feelings towards email support or even a live chat session.

And if you’re monitoring the customer satisfaction within a time period, you can identify areas of improvement in your system—which is beneficial for your business.

“The great thing about NPS is that it’s totally customer driven. When you track it over time and see what causes fluctuating scores, you can move into a cycle of continuous improvement where you quickly respond to any issues that affect your customers. This is good for long-term growth,” states Trevor Hatfield, founder of Inturact.

Skyword recently sent me an email asking for my feedback. Without directly asking if I like their platform, they gained data from me based on my response to a 1-10 rating scale.

Focus on delivering your brand’s promise to boost customer satisfaction. It’s helpful for earning the customer’s trust to gain that next subscription renewal.

Investigate Internal & External Factors

Every customer renewal isn’t solely determined by your actions. Internal and external factors beyond your control can force customers to cancel their subscriptions.

So exactly what major influences are affecting your customers? And how will you learn about these changes?

As a B2B brand, your customer’s management might be evolving, and they’ve decided to select new vendors. Or another company acquired your customer, and now new leadership is moving in a new direction.

Other outside influences could include changes in shopping trends that eliminate your customer’s product demand, or a public relations crisis diminishes the company’s value.

Your SaaS business isn’t responsible for these possible cancellations. However, you are responsible for doing the research the mitigate this revenue loss for your business.

Do the research to learn more about your customer’s industry to prepare for these incidents. Setting up a simple Google Alert can notify you about fluctuations in your customer’s market.

Also talk candidly with customers about their current and future needs. They may feel comfortable discussing how certain changes affect their relationship with your business.

While every customer won’t renew, you can take proactive steps to forecast for these adjustments. Take the time to counteract revenue drops before they happen.

Analyzing Data to Secure Renewals

Don’t assume your current customers will automatically renew their subscriptions. Take a look at your data to analyze post-purchase behavior to ensure customer retention.

From product usage to customer support tickets, your SaaS customers are leaving behind clues on whether or not they will continue with your service. Leverage this data to increase your renewals.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

Online search has changed everything.

Years ago, acquiring a customer online was easy: reassure the potential buyer your product is the best on the market and push for the sale.

Not anymore.

Today, consumers can research a product online, compare brands on cost, reputation and more, and decide which provider is best for their needs.

This progression—from becoming problem-aware to making a purchasing decision—is called the buyer’s journey…

…and it’s one of the most important marketing concepts you need to be familiar with.

With 67% of the buyer’s journey now completed digitally, it’s become more important than ever to mail campaigns that educate, inform and most importantly, nudge your prospects into taking action (read: purchasing your products).

And yet:

Identifying the buyer’s journey is a real challenge for most marketers.

A recent survey by DemandGen found 61% B2B business owners cited developing targeted content by buyer stage/interest as one of their greatest challenges in nurturing leads:

Much has been written already about mapping the buyer’s journey to content marketing and paid traffic, but nothing, to my knowledge, has been written about what to do after a visitor has subscribed to your email list.

So, in this article, I’m going to show you how to map your email marketing campaigns to the buyer’s journey, how you can match the right offers to the right prospects at the right time, and of course, how to develop lifelong relationships with your existing customers while doing so.

What is the buyer’s journey?

According to HubSpot, the buyer’s journey is the active process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate, and purchase a new product or service.

This journey, depending on whom you ask, ranges from three to fifteen stages. In this article, we’re going to focus on the three most important stages:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Decision

The buyer’s journey (otherwise known as the customer journey) is often represented as a funnel-shaped process that comprises the above stages, from lowest purchase intent (awareness) to highest (decision).

In the image below, it’s further expanded in six stages, with the first (awareness), third (consideration) and sixth (purchase) stages corresponding with the three in the image above:

It’s important to mention here how you communicate with your prospects will vary depending on which stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in.

What’s more, depending on the market you’re in and how far along a prospect is in your funnel, a potential buyer’s journey can last anywhere from three months to a year.

Offering potential buyers exactly what they’re looking for according to how far along they are in the buyer’s journey gives you the highest potential to convert them.

Let’s discuss how to do that.

Part 1. Awareness

Imagine, for a moment, you’re experiencing back pain.

Unaware of what’s causing it, you turn to Google and type in, “Why do I have a bad back every morning?” Your goal, at this stage, is to educate yourself as much as possible and put a name to your ailment.

After reading a few articles online and confirming with a chiropractor, you discover your bad back isn’t the real problem. Rather, it’s a symptom of a bigger problem:

You have a bad mattress.

Having given a name to your problem, you become aware and begin actively looking for a solution.

This is known as the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey. And it’s where each potential buyer begins their journey before becoming a customer.

Often, a prospect discovers your brand either through organic search (they clicked on a piece of content in the search engine results pages) and/or paid traffic (they clicked on an ad).

Some e-commerce businesses, like Birchbox, utilize content marketing:

Others, like M.Gemi, rely on Facebook Ads:

The goal, having acquired a new lead, isn’t to push for a sale (that is unless they’re at the decision stage of the buyer’s journey). Rather, it’s to educate, entertain or inform through interesting and relevant email campaigns.

On a deeper level, it’s to encourage engagement (e.g. increase opens, clicks, etc.), segment new visitors by interest (and where they are in their journey), and increase top-of-mind awareness (TOMA).

Harry’s utilize content to educate their prospects on how to shave properly, thus, positioning themselves as the go-to authority on that subject:

Metrics to be aware of at the awareness stage include:

• Sessions – This is especially important if you’re driving traffic to product pages on your site.
• Percentage of old visitors vs. new visitors – Are prospects returning to your site, thus, becoming more familiar with your brand?
• Engagement – Put simply, are readers opening and clicking through on your campaigns? If so, you’re obviously doing something right (well done, you!).

It’s important to mention here not all goals or challenges have urgency.

You might feel like you deserve a new pair of designer pajamas (who doesn’t?), but it’s unlikely to take precedent over something relating to your physical health (like a painful back).

There are a few things to consider before creating awareness emails.

Let’s discuss each briefly.

1. Identify triggers

Think of a recent problem you experienced.

Nothing major. A minor one will suffice.

Now:

What happened before you experienced that problem?

If you’re like most people, it’s likely there was an event that occurred before it happened.

This, in marketing, is known as a “trigger”: the event that begins your progression through the buyer’s journey.

If you’re running an online retailer, for example, a trigger might be your prospect has a black tie event coming up and needs to learn how to tie a bow tie:

To identify triggers, login to Google Analytics.

If you’re using Google AdWords as an acquisition channel, click Acquisition > AdWords > Search Queries:

Or, if you’re using content through organic search, click Acquisition > Search Console > Queries:

Your prospect is often identified by the type of queries they’re making such as what, who, where, when, why, and how (e.g. “How to tie a bow tie”).

It’s important to exclude brand queries when doing this because you want to identify potential buyers who aren’t yet aware of who you are.

Analyzing search queries will offer insights into your ideal buyer and help you craft email campaigns that are relevant to their needs and interests.

72% of buyer’s turn to Google during the awareness stage, so it’s important not to neglect the importance of identifying what you’re already ranking for in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

2. Survey your existing customers

When researching your existing customers, it’s worth gathering a combination of quantitative and qualitative data.

The former is measured in numbers (e.g. the number of purchases a customer makes per month). The latter, on the other hand, is only observable (e.g. the reason a customer didn’t renew their subscription).

While quantitative data is easier to generalize, qualitative data provides more insight into why your existing customers are buying from you rather than a competitor.

Using software like Typeform, you might ask customers:

1. How would you describe yourself in one sentence?
2. Where exactly did you first hear about us?
3. What’s the one thing we’re missing?
4. What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing right now?
5. What are the top three things that nearly stopped you from buying from us?
6. What will happen if you don’t overcome the challenge you’re experiencing?

As a rule of thumb, aim for a minimum of 100 completions. Remember, the more data you have, the easier it is to identify what your customers want to move away from and move toward.

To learn more about surveying and its best practices (including whether to incentivize or not), read my article on e-commerce email marketing.

3. Create a buyer persona

With enough quantitative and qualitative responses, recurring patterns will (hopefully) emerge in your data. With that information, as well as your own understanding of your market, you can create buyer personas for each of your ideal customers.

A buyer persona, also known as a customer avatar, is a representation of your ideal customer:

Having one—or many, depending on how many products you have—will help you determine what kind of content you need in your email campaigns, the tone and style of your copy, as well as where your audience gathers information and their preferences for consumption.

For a more in-depth dive into creating buyer personas, read our interview with Zeph Snapp.

Part 2. Consideration

Let’s return to our previous mattress example, for a moment.

You’ve clearly defined your goal (to replace your mattress) and are committed to addressing it as soon as possible (remember, not all pain points have urgency).

At this stage, you’re evaluating the different approaches or methods available to solve your challenge, which, in our example, involves researching mattresses online.

Otherwise known as the evaluation stage, the consideration stage occurs when your prospect has clearly defined and given a name to their problem and is committed to researching and understanding all of the available methods for solving it.

Casper, an e-commerce company that specializes in mattresses, include playful reviews in their consideration emails to move prospects further along the buyer’s journey:

Shopify, knowing their prospects value demonstrations, offer a free online training to showcase their product:

You’re not asking for a purchase, yet. You’re simply inviting further engagement, albeit with more investment from your potential buyer.

Anyone who’s clicking through to read customer reviews or attend a webinar is more likely to become a customer than a recipient who’s only opening emails.

Metrics to monitor closely at the considerations stage include:

• Returning visitors – Are certain recipients opening and clicking through on consideration emails more than others? If so, that’s a good indication they’re close to moving down your marketing funnel.
• Webinar registrations – If you’re running an evergreen webinar, the number of registrants should be consistent, if not increasing over time (providing you’re continuously capturing and converting leads, of course).

Part 3. Decision

At the decision stage, your prospect has defined their solution and is whittling down a long list of potential vendors in their given solution strategy.

Specifically, they’re looking for information on how your product works, how others like them have been successful, and what their experience might look like if they decide to move forward with your company…

…and that includes what happens before they make a purchase.

Take, shipping, for example.

You wouldn’t think it was that important, right?

Wrong.

According to a recent survey by Baynard Institute, 61% of shoppers cite extra shipping costs as their reason for abandoning their cart during checkout (even if they fully intended to make a purchase).

It’s no surprise, then, that most ecommerce businesses have cart abandonment emails, specifically for prospects that were close to making a purchase, but need a final nudge of reassurance.

Asics, an athletic equipment company, reiterate the benefits of their free shipping policy in their cart abandonment email, in the event the prospect wasn’t aware of it, to begin with:

Of course, not everyone at the decision stage will make it as far as your checkout (especially if they haven’t decided which vendor to purchase from).

This is in part because many potential buyers want to try your product before making a purchasing decision.

In fact, it’s why companies like Lemonstand offer a free 14-trial with their product:

Campaigns geared around free shipping, free trials, case studies and more, are perfect decision stage emails.

Dollar Shave Club is so confident they will acquire a lifetime customer with each email lead, they offer a free trial of their product (including free shipping):

When the offer is too good to say no to, it’s usually for a good reason. A company like Dollar Shave Club knows its customer lifetime value (LTV), thus, can afford to take a hit on the front-end when making this type of offer.

The secondary goal, at the decision stage, aside from making a sale, is to:

• Optimize funnel conversions – Can you increase email open and click-through rates, reduce cart abandonment, and more by writing better subject lines?
• Maximize revenue – Can you increase average order value by offering tiered pricing, upselling, and more?

Metrics you need to pay close attention to include:

• Customer lifetime value (LTV) – As mentioned above, knowing your customer LTV will allow you to make irresistible offers (such as free shipping), thus, getting to yes quicker and more easily.
• Customer cost per acquisition (CPA) – This is especially important if you’re using paid traffic as an acquisition channel (e.g. Facebook Advertising).

Get the above metrics right, and it’s possible to earn $38 for every $1 you spend.

So, make it count.

Beyond the Buyer’s Journey

It’s tempting to believe the buyer’s journey ends when a prospect becomes a customer, but the reality is you need to continue delivering value after they purchase.

Why?

Aside from reducing email unsubscribe rates and improving customer satisfaction, consistently offering value after purchase helps turn customers into evangelists for your business…

And that’s something every business can profit from.

Have you mapped your email campaigns to the buyer’s journey? Leave a comment below.

About the Author: Sam Thomas Davies is the content marketing manager at Sleeknote: a company that helps ecommerce business owners capture and convert more leads without hurting the user experience. Follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

As much as we’d like to think that a conversion is a nice, neat and organized path from one point to another, the conversion process is often more like a twisting road map of tangents, intersections and loops that involve a whole host of customer touch-points. Analytics attribution can help you not only make sense of the path your customer took to get to you, but also help you optimize that path. Let’s take a closer look:

Analytics: Skimming the Surface

Google offers an excellent example of explaining why analytics alone are not enough. In this example, a hypothetical Mrs. Smith is in charge of marketing for a store that sells shoes both through a retail storefront as well as a website. Her goal is to sell more shoes to professional young women in the 18-24 age range.

Her first job is to figure out how this particular group finds the shoe company’s website and storefront. Do they hear about it on Facebook? Do they find it locally by searching on their phones? Do they click on a paid ad? And once they get to the site, what pages do they go to? Do the pages they visit differ seasonally (flip-flops in the summer versus boots in the winter)? Does the blog highlighting new shoe trends get much attention?

All of these are answers that she can easily find through her analytics platform. But analytics only skims the surface and answers questions about the people once they make a decision to interact with your ad and visit your site.

What about everyone else? There are people out there now shopping for shoes who have never heard of your site or your offers. How do you get them to notice you and encourage them to want to engage with you? How can you make your existing ads more effective to reach these people in the first place? And how do you know when and where they actually take the step to engage?

That’s where attribution comes in.

Attribution: Digging Deeper into Customer Engagement

Of course, the concept of attribution is enough to excite any serious marketer. There’s simply no better way to determine which avenues are truly giving you the best ROI, but, as you might imagine, the solution of attribution is pretty complex. It’s not enough just to have the data, but be able to act on it intelligently.

So before you jump in to attribution, ask yourself the following questions:

Can I See All the Touchpoints?

If you just have a few digital channels, like social media and paid ads, attribution will be much easier to set up and implement than if you are working across both brick and mortar and other channels like TV, radio, magazines and such.

Can My Staff Understand and Work With the Data Attribution Shows Them?

You may need to work with a third party firm that specializes in analytics and attribution in order to properly understand and act on the details you’re getting from multiple touch-points. Lots of information is going to need to be collected and sorted – requiring a hefty investment of time and experience.

Do I Even Need Attribution in the First Place?

Analytics attribution crunches a lot of your data to get to the core insights that drive conversions. But there are many, many variables to account for, so much so that a “one size fits all” guide just isn’t possible. If you’re able to glean insights easily from your analytics, or you don’t have much of a prospect to conversion path, you may not want to shoulder the time and expense of investing in attribution when analytics alone will give you the answers you need.

If you have decided that attribution is something you want to pursue, you’ll be glad to know that Google has created a tool within its analytics suite that will help you see how different attribution models impact the value of your marketing channels.

For example, if a user finds your site by clicking on an ad, but doesn’t buy — only to return a week later by clicking a social media ad and uses that moment to simply browse, but is retargeted through an ad where an order finally takes place — which of those three touch-points would be considered the attribution?

There is no right answer, which is why Google created the Attribution Model Comparison Tool.

Did you know? The Kissmetrics Person Details report shows you everything a customer does before buying or signing up. See which pages they visited, who referred them, and which steps they took just before converting. Request a demo to learn more.

Using the Attribution Model Comparison Tool

To access this tool and try it out for yourself, simply log in to your Google Analytics account and go to Conversions > Attribution > Model Comparison Tool in the sidebar.

From here, you’ll want to choose at least one model (but you can compare up to three) via the dropdown menu.

If you don’t see any data here, you’ll want to make sure you have either e-commerce tracking and/or goal conversion tracking set up in Google Analytics

Now comes the fun part — selecting a default attribution model. You can keep it simple, by giving conversion “credit” to the first or last interaction point the customer had with your product, or you can spread it out to give equal conversion consideration to all the touch-points in a customer’s engagement with your brand.

Here’s a description of the different types and when they’re the most useful.

The attribution model you choose will depend on your business and conversion goals so there is no “right choice” for everyone.

For example, if the products you sell don’t involve a lot of buyer decision-making, you’ll probably want to use the Last Touch Attribution Model. If you want to focus more on brand-building and awareness, the First Touch Attribution Model may be better in your case. If you’re running a promotional campaign, and you want to credit interactions that happened closest to your promotion, you’d want to use the Time Decay Model.

Of course, the fact that you are manually assigning where to give credit can inadvertently cause you to ask, “am I doing this right?” After all, one of the main advantages of collecting all this data is to let the software analyze it and decide where best to associate a conversion. Currently, this kind of data-driven attribution is only available for Google Analytics Premium/360 accounts. If you enable this feature, your data is analyzed immediately, however the first report won’t be available until after seven days.

Using Attribution Successfully

As you can see, using analytics attribution can give you the kinds of deeper insights on which marketing channels are delivering the best ROI and customer engagement. However, it is not a “magic pill” and requires a deeper knowledge of your customer base and prospects and the set of rules you want to apply to them when they engage with your brand. The benefits of doing this, however, can not only help you improve your prospect-to-customer conversion path, but also free up your time considerably to focus on the channels that matter most.

Are you using analytics attribution in your own business? Share your experiences with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

When it comes to moving people and making deliveries, few companies are more widespread and more widely-recognized than Uber.

But how do they do it? And what can we learn from them? As it turns out, there’s a great deal of data being collected, produced and visualized behind the scenes — all working to create a more efficient company and impact transportation as a whole. Let’s take a closer look.

The Company Behind the Data

Uber was originally started as a black car-hailing service: UberCab, in San Francisco.

Although it cost about 1.5 times as much as a traditional cab, the fact that you could hail an UberCab from your smartphone was a huge hit with consumers and new cities were added quickly. Other ventures, such as a bike delivery service and food delivery, were also launched and tested in select cities.

How it Works

Getting a ride from an Uber driver is beautiful in its simplicity: simply open the app, set the pickup location, request a car, get picked up and pay with the tap of a button. But there’s a great deal of data wrangling going on to make all of this happen in a (relatively) smooth process. Add to that the fact that sometimes there are things out of even Uber’s control, like poor city transportation infrastructure, traffic jams, uncooperative drivers and much more.

Despite these setbacks, Uber has changed the way we move and is poised to change even more as the service comes to more and more cities. But what’s actually happening in the background and what can we learn from it?

The Process Behind the Scenes

Uber has a massive database of drivers, so as soon as you request a car, Uber’s algorithm goes right to work – in 15 seconds or less, it matches you with the driver closest to you. In the background Uber is storing data for every trip taken — even when the driver has no passengers. All of this data is stored and leveraged to predict supply and demand, as well as setting fares. Uber also looks at how transportation is handled across cities and tries to adjust for bottlenecks and other common issues.

Uber also gathers data on its drivers. In addition to collecting non-identifiable information about their vehicle and their location, Uber also monitors their speed and acceleration, and checks to see if they are working for a competing company as well (such as Lyft).

If you’re reading this wondering if it’s a gross invasion of privacy – you aren’t the first. But Uber is very clear about how it uses the data gathered on its platform. A section of its privacy policy for U.S. customers and drivers reads:

Uber uses your personal data in an anonymised and aggregated form to closely monitor which features of the Service are used most, to analyze usage patterns and to determine where we should offer or focus our Service. We may share this information with third parties for industry analysis and statistics.

While the ever-present spectre of data misuse is nipping at Uber’s heels, there’s no doubt that the anonymous, aggregated data they collect insights from is nothing short of amazing.

All of this data is collected, crunched, analyzed and used to predict everything from the customer’s wait time, to recommending where drivers should place themselves via heatmap in order to take advantage of the best fares and most passengers. All of these items are implemented in real-time for both drivers and passengers alike.

Monitoring Supply and Demand

One of Uber’s biggest uses of data (and likely the one that draws the greatest ire from passengers) comes in the form of surge pricing, a model nicknamed “Geosurge” at Uber. If you’re running late to an appointment and you need to book a ride in a crowded downtown space, be prepared to pay almost twice as much for it.

Back in 2011, during New Year’s Eve in New York, a journey of one mile went from $37 to $135 over the course of the night.

This kind of dynamic pricing is similar to the pricing strategy used by hotels and flights for their weekend or holiday fares and rates – except Uber leverages predictive modeling in real-time based on traffic patterns, supply and demand. It has even been granted a patent on this type of pricing.

If you’re thinking this would have a ripple effect on how many people request Uber rides at a time – you’d be right. So Uber doesn’t just flippantly flip the Geosurge switch every time it wants to make extra money. Instead, it uses –you guessed it– data science to analyze the short term and long term effects of surge pricing on customers.

In the short term, surge pricing substantially affects the rate of demand, while long-term use could be the key to retaining or losing customers. Customer backlash on rate-hiking is strong, so Uber has considered using machine-learning algorithms to predict where demand will be strong, so that drivers can adequately prepare to meet that demand, and surge pricing will be significantly reduced. This new system has not yet been released, but Uber knows that in order to get and maintain a strong customer and driver base, it needs to put data to work for it in new and innovative ways.

They do this by building a myriad of in-house data wrangling systems, from Argos, which monitors millions of system interactions and metrics and alerts engineers in cases of serious outages to Gurafu, a tool which engineers a better, safer route in real-time for drivers. Systems like these are also put in place for new Uber service roll-outs, including UberPOOL and UberEATS.

Keep in mind, however, that supply and demand data are not the same from city to city, so Uber engineers devised a way to map the “pulse” of a city to connect drivers and riders more efficiently. And if you think all major metropolitan cities are alike – think again. Just look at how New York City compares to London:

Passengers are out and about in New York City during the evenings, while London is bright well into the night — demonstrating that what works well for Uber in one city doesn’t necessarily correspond to another.

Visualizing Data Analytics

Of course, collecting all this information is just one step in the big data journey. The real question is — how does Uber determine the best way to make decisions using this information? How do they glean actionable points out of the data they collect?

For example, Uber manages billions of GPS locations. Every minute, their platform juggles millions of events. How do they leverage these details into a way to better manage moving people and things from place to place?

Their answer is data visualization.

According to Uber’s own data intelligence blog, data visualization specialists range from computer graphics professionals to information design. They handle everything from mapping and framework developments to data that the public (such as drivers) sees. And a lot of these data extrapolations and visualizations have never been done before, which has created a need for tools to be developed in-house.

Without getting too technical, some of the many applications for their data visualization challenges include:

Mapping Applications for City Ops Teams and General Managers

These are the teams at Uber who need up-to-the-minute details of current supply and demand. In the same vein, marketing professionals might need aggregate data to plan a campaign. So the Uber engineering team built a system that would show distributions of Uber drop-offs in real-time as you drag your cursor over a given area.

Another example is of particular importance in big cities, where understanding the density of a given area may lead to dynamic pricing changes. Uber demonstrates this with a combination of layers that let them drill-down to see specific areas in more detail:

But these aren’t just data visualizations for engineers and data scientists to pore over. Data visualization also helps the public better understand what Uber does and how it works, such as this visualization of how uberPOOL helps reduce traffic — a visualization that was shared during founder Travis Kalanick during his TED Talk:

What Can We Learn from This?

It’s one thing to demonstrate how Uber uses data science, but another completely to discover what their findings mean for the rest of us (beyond just a ride on-demand). Uber teaches us a great deal about using big data – and not just sitting on it. They also teach us to look for connections in every possible ounce of that data. Every time you’re collecting information but not using it, there’s the potential for a missed opportunity to grow and improve your business.

And if such a tool doesn’t exist to crunch the data the way you want it — take steps to make it work. Even if that means rudimental cobbling of existing tools, much of what Uber has done needed to rework existing systems so that they fit an entirely new mold. This has allowed them to remain flexible and adapt on-the-fly — key traits that any good digital marketer should possess.

It’s also worth realizing that, much in the same way as Uber records the pulse of a given city, that not every answer you glean from your data can be carried over and applied in a blanket-like fashion to a completely different city. That gathering the data independently and analyzing it for what it is (and not how it matches or doesn’t match some other collection) is what’s going to make the insights and opportunities pop out.

And finally, take that inspiration and run with it. Uber started out small, but in seeing the monumental success they gained in San Francisco, realized that such a service could be extremely beneficial across the country and around the world. And not just with cars but also SUVs, luxury cars, food, bike messenger deliveries and much more. The potential was there — untapped and waiting to be explored. It remains to be seen if these other services will ultimately succeed as much as the original Uber did, but no one can deny that they pounce on opportunities like no other.

By this point you may be wondering — all of this technology and data is being used — just to get a ride? But in fact, Uber is much more than that. It’s changing the way people and goods are moved around the world, in turn branching out to help reduce traffic congestion and pollution as well as bringing attention to infrastructure issues within cities. Uber is having a marked effect on our economy, our transportation system and our culture as a whole — concepts only made possible by the power of data.

What are your thoughts on how Uber uses data in its business and beyond? Share your experience with us in the comments below!

Additional reading:

If you enjoyed this article, you may find these useful:

• How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons (New York Times)
• Uber allegedly used secret program to undermine rival Lyft (The Guardian)

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

The majority of customers use multiple devices on their journey to purchase.

And they’re gonna take nearly a dozen ‘touches’, too.

Case in point: people who receive choreographed emails + ads are “22% more likely to purchase” than those that only receive one or the other.

That means the likelihood of one campaign, on one device, one time, generating a significant conversion, is slim to none. And getting worse.

So why stop there?

Facebook ads can generate interest. Also leads. Or you can use them to trigger marketing automation, SMS, webinars, and even direct mail to generate a steady-stream of new business.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Lead Ads

Facebook ads work best when you re-create a funnel.

Different ads are used to first generate interest, before following up with those people to generate leads, before later following up with leads to generate customers.

That means different campaigns on different devices at different times. That’s the key to creating a Facebook customer acquisition machine that consistently creates new demand for your products and services. (You’ve read that eBook, right?)

And when you begin setting that up, you’ll notice that different ad placements will work better at different times. For example, mobile is great for brand awareness + discovery because of (1) consumer behavior and (2) more inventory and (3) less competition.

That means people read and consume content on their devices. But don’t usually convert as highly.

Except… for one exception: Lead Ads.

Introduced a year+ ago, this little handy ad unit removes the biggest hurdle to conversions on mobile devices (having to click through to a landing page and type your personal data into tiny form fields with your big thumbs).

Six+ months ago, AdEspresso threw their money in the air like they just don’t care, testing the performance of lead ads vs. landing pages.

The results? Lead ads outperformed landing pages for driving mobile conversions.

Which is great! ‘Cause mobile internet usage already eclipses desktop (and showing no signs of slowing down).

So one down, four more to go. Simply use Lead Ads for mobile to generate leads from an already-curated custom audience.

Only one problem…

Facebook collects user data in their Lead Ads so people don’t have to manually submit their emails, etc. But all that data’s still locked up tight inside Facebook. Not much good it’s gonna do in there alone.

You could manually download a .CSV file and upload it to your CRM. But c’mon. Don’t you have, like, hobbies? A family? A friendly bartender at least? Much better things to do.

(If not, there’s always unpaid interns – right?)

Fortunately, Facebook already integrates with MailChimp. So you can seamlessly pass subscriber data over without getting your hands dirty. (Presumably, more are on the way.)

Otherwise, you’ve got two other alternatives.

The first is Zapier. An awesome little tool that helps you ‘hack’ marketing automation features that would normally cost a bundle.

The second is a marketing automation tool that costs a bundle. But worth it in most cases.

For example, AdEspresso’s Data Sync feature will connect your ad campaigns to powerful programs like HubSpot or Infusionsoft.

And that’s where things get interesting.

2. Marketing Automation

We’ve already given up the punchline.

Consumers bounce around from channel to channel and device to device on their long journey to becoming a customer.

So let’s be frank: no way you’re gonna do that manually.

You can try, sure. But once again, see: a life.

IF you wanna generate results, you gotta ditch one-off campaigns in favor of personalized segmentation. The only way that’s gonna happen is with some fancy MarTech tool.

The good news, again, is that you don’t have to blow your budget.

Facebook already integrates with MailChimp natively. And their ‘automation recipes’ have improved significantly in the past year+.

So new leads generated courtesy of your Lead Ad can now enter seamlessly into an automation workflow that delivers what was promised and begins the nurturing process.

For example, the initial lead offer could be a time-tested eBook. But anything would do, including a checklist, free guide, whitepaper, free course, or webinar (which we’ll come back to later).

People opt-in from their mobile device on Facebook and automatically start receiving your pre-set emails that deliver twofold:

1. Educating new leads on how to solve their problem (with your stuff).
2. While also building trust with these new leads at scale.

Of course, you can also kick things up a notch (BAM! – Emril style) with a more sophisticated setup like HubSpot that allows for IF/THEN branching technology and a slew of other premium features.

For example, people will go through this initial sequence and may not convert. No problem. Let’s see if we can re-engage them by targeting the pain point they’re dealing with.

Now. Do any of these people click a specific link? Maybe a link mentioning your product or service? That signals at least some interest or intent. So why not pull them out and add them to a brand new list with follow-ups that go straight to the point.

The point is that you’re starting to build a scalable system that’s constantly following up with people depending on where they’re personally at in time. In different channels and mediums that already mimic their own behavior.

(So you can and should, for example, also keep retargeting these people on Facebook by creating a brand new custom audience with your lead list. Which means they’re now seeing next-level ads on FB that are tied to email messaging they’re also receiving.)

But of course, we’re just scratching the surface. Because marketing automation doesn’t just stop at email marketing.

3. SMS

Sometimes, ‘boring’ niches are also the most interesting.

The competition level is often so high that there’s no room for errors. You don’t have the time or money to waste on Facebook bots if they aren’t gonna deliver results ASAP.

Which is why this next example caught me by surprise.

You see, tax relief is one of these aggressive niches. There are a few savvy competitors all going after the same, small pool of poor saps with crushing tax bills.

That means tax relief companies go straight for the jugular when they smell blood. (Jaws would be proud.) The quickest way to learn what works, is to simply go research exactly what some of the biggest companies are already doing in that space.

So here’s how it went down.

The Facebook ad offered “free tax tips”. Or similar. Doesn’t really matter to be honest.

You opt-in, and instead of seeing your email inbox blow up with a carefully crafted automation sequence, your phone dings.

Curious, you glance over and see the following SMS begin to pour in.

Look at that!

SMS marketing automation in action. The first message is literally just a teaser. It hints that you’re about to receive a phone call. It preps you to respond. (Pavlov would be proud.)

This company wastes no time beating around the bush. They go straight for the phone call ‘cause those convert at 30-50%. But that’s not all.

When you don’t answer (because seriously, who in their right mind wants to sit on the phone with an aggressive tax relief person for only research-sake), you get another message a few minutes later.

Classic IF/Then being played out on your mobile device. ‘Cause SMS opens are as high as 99%. You can’t help but look!

Few ways to do this.

Autopilot can make it happen. So too can TextMagic or BurstSMS with a little help from Zapier.

Once again though, don’t stop there.

Let’s stick with tax relief for a second.

Person opts-in to the initial offer. Next step is to get them on the phone to review tax options. They resist. That means they don’t take the ‘next step’ in your funnel to view options, pricing, etc.

Cue: custom audiences. These people viewed one URL (the initial Thank You confirmation page) but haven’t taken the next step, so SMS messaging (is that redundant?) can be tied back to retargeting Facebook ads yet again. In other words, you can literally see who visits the landing page, but fails to visit the Thank You confirmation page, and then send a text message to prompt them along.

4. Webinars

There’s a reason most B2B marketers use webinars: scale.

Only one problem with them: math.

To generate XX buyers at $YY customer value, you need A LOT of people registering for your webinar. For example, a measly $1,500 takes a lot of work.

Here’s how it breaks down:

1. Three customers paying $500 LTV.
2. At a 3-4% purchase rate.
3. Requires 50 people to attend.
4. But only around 40-50% of registrants will actually attend.
5. So you need like ~80-100 to sign up.
6. Average webinar registration rates are around ~50%.
7. That means you’re gonna need at least ~200+ peeps to visit the page in the first place.

And that’s why Facebook ads are a perfect fit. Look no further than this textbook example from the GMAT Club:

Perfect. Now, how do you remove as much friction as possible? How do you get people from A -> B with the least amount of work that might screw up your numbers?

Once again, pass data automatically. For example, setup an integration between Facebook Lead Ads + GoToWebinar.

You can also have this data passed first to your CRM or marketing automation software and then register them for the webinar, too.

+1 for sending SMS webinar reminders, too.

Because as we’ve learned so far, multiplying channels = increasing odds of success.

But we ain’t done yet. Time to go old school first.

5. Direct Mail

The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs says that channel results decline over time.

It’s natural. Inevitable even. More and more competition generally reduces effectiveness. That whole supply vs. demand thing.

We can sit here and complain about trillions of emails being sent. Or we can do something about it.

We can improve segmentation. Message match and timing. Personalization that extends to ads in other channels like Facebook, SMS, and webinars.

But let’s not hesitate to dust off old, forgotten stuff either.

Direct mail, incredibly, still works. One company used an account-based marketing approach to target $30 million+ companies and saw a 25% response rate from direct mail.

Lob is one of my favorite examples in this case, because you can connect and send through an API. Which means… yes, you can automatically send stuff to new Facebook leads.

Picture this:

You run ads to new people who might be attending a conference. And/or you retarget existing contacts who might be running to the conference. When you confirm their interest and attendance, you physically mail an offer to them that will compel them to visit your booth.

Like sending an empty iPad box with a note to come pick theirs up in-person.

That’s what Matt Heinz did, retelling the story to Topo, “We sent two-day packages to executives in advance of a big conference. The package was an empty iPad box. We wrote in the direct mail to come by our booth to pick up the iPad. Most executives came by just to compliment us. It worked.”

Part of this strategy’s appeal, they point out, is that executives are notoriously difficult to reach. They don’t have time to sit on webinars and you’re not likely to find them downloading whitepapers, either. So took an unexpected approach to get results.

Conclusion

One-off campaigns are dead.

They’re just a piece of the puzzle. A beginning to a long journey.

The trick is stringing together multiple campaigns that already mimic how your customers are already behaving.

That means you gotta show up all over. If the effectiveness of a single channel is in decline, you can sidestep it by roping in multiple channels.

Facebook’s peerless retargeting (courtesy of custom audiences) means you can use it at nearly every step of your marketing and sales funnel. You can use it to trigger new leads, follow up with prospects, and line up sales appointments.

But only if you’re showing up in multiple channels on multiple devices. Just like your customers.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a marketing writer, agency partner, and creator of Copy Weekly, a free weekly copywriting newsletter for marketers & founders.

Last year, mobile internet usage overtook desktop for the first time. If you’re not tailoring your marketing strategy specifically for mobile users in 2017, you’re losing out.

Mobile internet access has soared in recent years and it’s quickly become entrenched in our culture. 50% of smartphone users grab their smartphone as soon as they wake up, and 80% of all internet users own smartphones.

Google is actively trying to make the internet more friendly for mobile users by penalizing sites that aren’t optimized for mobile devices.

With this rise in mobile internet users and a continual decline in email open rates, you’ve simply got to adopt different communication channels to get their messages heard.

Push Notifications for Businesses

Push notifications represent a great way to communicate with your audience. According to a study by Localytics, 52% of smartphone users have push enabled on their devices, and these notifications can be used to benefit businesses in the following ways:

• Directing users to your social media channels
• Promoting products and services (especially special offers)
• Building trust and brand reputation by delivering valuable content
• Engaging users who aren’t currently on your site
• Restoring abandoned carts for ecommerce applications

As legendary entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk once proclaimed: “Marketers ruin everything”.

I’m guessing it’s pretty much inevitable that brands will come to recognize the high engagement rates of push notifications, and then thoroughly overdo the tactic until they annoy their audiences and force them to turn push notifications off.

But until then, keep in mind that someone who’s installed your app will already be more receptive to communication from you – as long as you don’t abuse this trust.

Instead of being overly aggressive and spammy, focus on delivering value to your audience via push notifications in order to build brand reputation for the long-term.

Personalization

Generic mass marketing techniques are dying out. In this age of information, personalization is the key to victory.

In a 2014 marketing survey, 94% of marketing professionals in multiple industries stated that personalization was “important,” “very important,” or “extremely important” for meeting their marketing objectives.

The great thing about push notifications is that you can segment the audiences you’re targeting in a very personalized way.

For instance, a clothing brand may want to send different messages to users based on the types of items that they’ve browsed and purchased in the past. Sending different recommendations to men and women is probably a good idea – and the same applies to customers who have browsed products for young children versus those for adults.

Kissmetrics Campaigns: Send triggered emails to users to nudge them toward engagement. Learn more about the soon-to-be-released Kissmetrics Campaigns.

This approach is backed up by data. Of people who open a push notification, 54% of users convert from segmented pushs, compared to only 15% who convert from broadcast messages.

Geo-targeting is another great feature you can use.

If you’re a retail outlet, for example, you may want to send out reminders for time-based promotions to anyone who’s within the immediate area. Bars may want to promote happy hour specials using the same technique.

By including the user’s first name and mentioning what area they’re currently in, you’ll capture their attention far more effectively than a generic message would. Using emoji’s has also been found to increase retention.

When you’re setting up push notifications, I recommend allowing a variety of notification options for your users. If they have control over when and why they get notified, they’ll be more likely to opt-in and stay engaged.

Ultimately, if you can create a high value, personalized experience for your users, they’ll be more likely to engage with your push messages – and think highly of your brand – over time.

Pitfalls to Avoid

As I said earlier, sending generic, batch push notifications should be avoided. Similarly, carefully consider your target demographic so that you don’t send them inappropriate messages.

A while back, for example, the My Pet app received some negative publicity after a 9-year-old girl received offensive notifications, which her mother equated with cyber-bullying.

While the dark-humored notifications may have been appropriate for an older demographic, messages like “You are horrible! You are the worst owner I’ve ever had” weren’t appropriate for young children.

Ouch.

Timing is also crucial when sending push notifications.

If you send low-value information to your audience in the middle of the night, you’ll destroy their trust (and upset them in the process). Research suggests that afternoons on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are the best times to send push messages.

It’s also essential that you sync your push notifications with your other marketing channels. If someone reads your marketing email, only to get a push notification about the same content half an hour later, they’re going to get frustrated.

Finally, remember that if someone opts in to receiving push notifications from you, treat this as a privilege. Always make it easy for them to opt out and don’t spam their phone continuously every day with trivial messages.

7 Case Studies to Review

If you can avoid the common pitfalls of push notifications and deliver high value, personalized content to your audience, the rewards can be great.

Here are some examples of brands effectively using push notifications to boost engagement to inspire you:

1. JetBlue

Like many airlines, JetBlue has adopted push notifications to remind its customers when to check-in.

When flyers check in, they’ll get pleasant reminders exactly 1 day before the flight is scheduled to depart. In-flight status updates in the form of push notifications are also available for customers that select this option.

Key Takeaway: JetBlue offers high value, practical content that helps to improve the flying experience.

This isn’t going to result in any immediate sales, but JetBlue’s efforts cause flyers to think positively about the brand, making them consider the airline the next time they go to book a flight.

Unsurprisingly, in a study on push notifications, opt-in rates were highest in the travel and transportation niche (78%). People really appreciate being reminded about the key details that will improve their journey when they’re traveling.

2. The Bump

Guess what particular topic parents-to-be can’t stop obsessing over? Their unborn child, naturally.

The Bump is an app for first-time moms that delivers status updates about the ongoing development and growth of their child.

Those who sign up receive regular push messages about the size of the baby (typically using fruits as a reference point), as well as things to expect in coming weeks.

Key Takeaway: Push notifications work best when you’re messaging someone about something they really care about. People are far more likely to want status updates about their unborn child than they are spammy sales messages from a store they vaguely remember.

If you’re thinking about using push notifications, first consider what is of most value to your audience. If your planned notifications don’t reflect that value, don’t bother sending them.

3. La Redoute

La Redoute, which specializes in French-style fashion and offers a huge range of products, boasts a turnover of over $1 billion dollars, making it one of the largest ecommerce apparel retailers in the world.

If you’re in the ecommerce space, you know that the problem of abandoned carts (people adding an item to their cart, then leaving the store before finalizing the purchase) is very real.

In order to combat this and retrieve lost customers, La Redoute started a push notification campaign where mobile app users would be contacted if they left the store with an item still in their cart. Each notification is highly personalized and links the user to their cart where they can complete the purchase.

Interestingly, their push notification retargeting clickthrough rate was 2-3 times higher than on classic mobile ads.

Key Takeaway: Push notifications can be an excellent tool for reviving abandoned carts. By personalizing your messages and sending vibrant images of the items that your customers missed out on (for whatever reason), you can dramatically improve your conversion rate.

4. Ticketmaster

In order to deliver relevant offers to its audience, Ticketmaster utilizes geo-targeting and assesses user histories.

By determining what types of events people like attending, Ticketmaster can segment its push notifications and send offers that feel more personalized to its audience – resulting in higher conversion rates.

Key Takeaway: Segmentation is necessary if you have a large audience and want to maximize the impact of your push messages.

5. eXtra

eXtra is Saudi Arabia’s leading consumer electronics retailer and is currently experiencing 100% year-on-year mobile growth, primarily thanks to a push notification campaign that engages its mobile users on a personal basis.

In the past, the company used retargeting emails to re-engage with mobile users, but since switching to push notifications, they experienced a dramatic improvement in sales.

Within six weeks, those who had opted-in to receive push notifications were returning 4X more and often spending twice as much time on the site.

Key Takeaway: When crafted correctly, push messages can be a more intimate form of communication. This re-engages previous customers, builds brand loyalty and improves your long-term profits.

6. Netflix

With a vast sea of user data available to Netflix, the company can craft highly personalized push messages that draw on each customer’s viewing history.

As they’ve found, sending a simple reminder about a series that someone has been watching is an excellent way to improve engagement.

Key Takeaway: The more data you have on the ways in which people interact with your brand (particularly their purchasing history), the more you can tailor your push messages to resonate with them.

7. PLNDR

PLNDR is an online streetwear retailer that uses customer-focused push notifications to boost engagement. After determining what types of items its users are engaging with, PLNDR sends specific daily deals that are virtually guaranteed to resonate with their customers.

By including multiple layers of personalization and narrowing down on its user’s interests, PLNDR’s push campaigns have resulted in a 4% purchase rate on mobile (though some of the brand’s push messages have experienced more than a 20% engagement rate).

Just like La Redoute, PLNDR also utilizes retargeting notifications to remind users who have abandoned their carts about the items they’re missing out on.

Key Takeaway: Use your customer data to determine what types of items your audience likes, then send them special deals based on their interests.

Getting Started with Push Notifications

Push notifications are an excellent tool for delivering value to your customers, improving brand loyalty and driving sales. Personalizing your messages based on user data keeps your content relevant and your customers engaged.

Because push notifications are more intimate than other forms of communication, they’re ideal for reopening a channel of communication to previous customers and reminding users when they add an item to their cart but don’t complete the purchase.

Check with your e-commerce provider or marketing tool to see what options are available to you to take advantage of push notifications today.

Can you think of any other tips for making the most of push notifications? Please let me know in the comments below.

About the Author: Aaron Agius, CEO of worldwide digital agency Louder Online is, according to Forbes, among the world’s leading digital marketers. Working with clients such as Salesforce, Coca-Cola, IBM, Intel, and scores of stellar brands, Aaron is a Growth Marketer – a fusion between search, content, social, and PR. Find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, or on the Louder Online blog.

Ask any successful entrepreneur why their startup succeeded and they’ll almost always point you to a growth strategy they followed.

They’ll tell you how much they believed the strategy will work because it was solid and had a really high likelihood of paying off.

For example, Johnathan Dane (founder at KlientBoost, a company that grew from 0 to $1,000,000 in 12 months) says “You may be obsessed with tactics, but you should care more about solid strategies…nothing beats winning slowly and surely by turning silent visitors into repeat visiting fans…”

It’s the same with most high growth companies.

They pick a solid growth strategy and follow it. Then they begin to get small wins. And they repeat the process. Before you know it, they’re all over the place.

However, before you would even get the chance to use a solid strategy, your product and site has to be ready for conversions.

Get Your Product in Demand and Site Ready for Conversions

This may come across as a no-brainer.

But you’d be surprised at how many businesses fail only because their product wasn’t in demand, or lose revenue because their site just wasn’t ready for conversions.

Just recently, CB Insights reached out to investors and founders to collect post-mortems on 204 failed startups. From their findings, they were able to pinpoint 20 top reasons for these failures.

Guess what turned out to be number 1 on the list? There was no market need for the product.

Serial entrepreneur and VC David Skok says “A major reason why companies fail, is that they run into the problem of there being too little or no market for the product that they have built.”

When a product is not in demand, it’s because it didn’t solve a problem enough people had. This makes it impossible to achieve growth, which is why building something people want is the necessary first step towards growth.

In the same vein, a site that is not ready for conversions can also thwart the success of any strategy. This is when the site is having issues on things like signup processes, pricing, web copy, CTAs, etc. These things easily get users annoyed, make them leave the moment they get on your site and never return.

For instance, Rebecca Kelley, content marketing manager for Intego, recently shared how her company was getting decent click-through rates from a PPC campaign.

But after tracking (via their analytics program) those who actually made a purchase, they found that far less than 1% of visitors from all that traffic were actually buying their products. Why? Their payment sign-up process was awful. Kelley says, “…it was a no-brainer–our signup process is awful. We lose a lot of people in that process…”

Their product was in demand, and we know this because people actually clicked through their ads and made attempts to convert. The only problem was that Intego’s site wasn’t ready for the conversions because of their self-described “awful” signup process.

Kissmetrics Campaigns: Send triggered emails to users to nudge them toward engagement. Learn more about the soon-to-be-released Kissmetrics Campaigns.

Key takeaway: In Intego’s case, they had a faulty signup process. For you, it could be something else entirely. You need to anticipate every issue that may arise from your site (or offerings) and get them settled before you decide to build and follow a strategy. You can do this by using a Funnel Report to see where people are dropping off and finding what you need to test. You can also use a Funnel Report for your onboarding.

Here are few things you should be looking out for:

• Site speed and responsive design: We’ve seen enough stats and surveys over the years proving that poor site speed annoy most visitors. Make sure your site loads quickly and works on mobile. Use Google’s speed test and mobile tools to make sure you have your bases covered.
• Messaging: Your copy, from homepages to other pages, matters a lot. If your messaging is not intact, people will have a hard time seeing your offerings as their solution. Kissmetrics has a lot of resources on copywriting. Take your pick from the hundreds of articles.
• Social proof: If you’re a startup, it may be difficult for some visitors to hand over their information (let alone credit card number) if they don’t see others haven’t done it first. This is why it’s so crucial to get social proof and testimonials on your site. A site without these critical elements can be getting lots of traffic with little to no conversions if there is no proof that their products really solve problems for people similar to those visiting the site.
• Design: Good design with clean copy shows to visitors that you care about your craft and likely have a solid product waiting for them after they signup. Focus on getting your design right before launching. If you’re looking for a simple way to get started, check out Launchrock. Quality templates are always a safe bet if you (or anyone on your team) are not design-inclined.
• The issues you cannot anticipate: This is the the tricky part. There are some things you cannot foresee becoming an issue. This is why it’s important to have a feedback loop in place so you can gather this information and then react quickly to solve any issues that arise.

Bottom line: No matter how solid a strategy is, it will eventually flop if it’s selling a product that nobody wants, or if the marketing site doesn’t convert.

Building Your Strategy: Aim for Small Wins

Once you get your product right and your site ready for conversions, next thing to do is target small wins.

After all, virtually no one hits it big at once.

And by now, most marketers know this already. Every high growth company you see created a strategy that had a high likelihood for success and followed it till they hit their breakthroughs.

This strategy is usually filled up with subsets of tactics that bring in results gradually, little by little. And then in the long run, those small pieces of results come together to become a big bang. To those not watching the company day-to-day, it may seem like they were an “overnight success”. But few of those companies that truly achieve the “overnight success” tend to fade quickly.

In contrast, the companies that seem like overnight successes actually had small, incremental wins that led them to their success. They achieved their first major customer, got on the frontpage of inbound.org, were featured in the press, etc. Every successful company had their small wins that contributed in making them what they are today.

Buffer, for example, is one of these companies. They had their strategy, which was to write guest posts and get users from the blogs they write for. Now they’ve reached a stage today where they’re used by thousands of users and companies.

But a whole lot of those guest posts were the small wins that led them to where they are today. Leo Widrich (Buffer’s co-founder) says he had to write about 150 guest posts within the space of 9 months before they got their first 100,000 customers.

Each of those 150 guest post were small wins that led to their big win — 100,000 users.

That’s how high-growth companies grow.

They accumulate a good number of small wins and end up with a bang. They go from 500 users to 1000, 3000, 6000 and so forth.

Another example that comes to mind here is Groove. Back in 2013, Groove rolled out a series to share their journey to $100k in monthly revenue with their blog readers. Their plan was to get lots of subscribers via this series and ultimately grow as a business.

The strategy worked. Today, Groove has thousands of paying customers and is now close to $500k in monthly revenue.

But here’s the thing (again), they understood they wouldn’t get to where they desired at once.

So they targeted small wins:

• They built relationships with more than 80 influencers– even before launching the series.
• Got a spot on the front page on Hacker News.
• Started to get their stories featured on well-known publications.
• And so forth…

Small wins. Accumulate them well enough and you’ll have an aggregate big win in the long run.

Even more, small wins are the best productivity boosters for business people. According to a study by Harvard Business Review: “Through exhaustive analysis of diaries kept by knowledge workers, we discovered the progress principle: Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.”

The more you achieve small wins, the more motivated you get to do more — because it just means you’re heading in the right direction.

What Happens When Your Strategy Goes South?

Your strategy, no-matter how solid it looks, can fail. Experienced marketers know this already. It’s a bitter truth. But it is what it is: the truth. And I had to learn this the hard way.

A few years ago when I started out as a freelance writer, I had a “brilliant strategy” for my freelance business. I saw what other experienced writers were doing but for some reason decided to do something entirely different, thinking I’d get a better result than other writers.

My “brilliant strategy” was to launch a blog about startups. I thought I’d use that to attract founders. And when founders came to my blog and read my content, they can consider hiring me as their writer. After all, startups usually need a lot of content.

Long story short, the plan failed.

Why? Most startup founders don’t oversee the writers that their companies hire. That’s the job of their content/marketing managers. Those are the people my content should target, not founders!

So I was writing content for the wrong set of people. My “brilliant strategy” was a big mistake that wasted a lot of my time and resources. But guess what? I learned…and grew.
It’s pretty much the same case for you. That’s what you should do if your strategy goes south: Learn…and grow.

Summing Up: Get a Solid Growth Strategy

That’s the one secret that virtually every high growth company you see have in common. They get a solid growth strategy, and follow it to success. But again, before the strategy, ensure your offering is in sync with the market. Once that is done, everything else becomes relatively easier. Lastly, if your strategy goes south, simply re-strategize and get a new solid plan.

About the Author: Victor Ijidola is a freelance business writer (for hire) who’s been featured on sites like Inc.com, The Next Web, MarketingProfs, etc. He’s also runs Premium Content Shop.

Historically, retail search marketing was synonymous with Google text ads. But fast forward to today, and Google Shopping ads have replaced text ads as retailers’ preferred method of advertising on Google.

In fact, 2016 was the tipping point: Retailers spent 53% of their AdWords budgets on Shopping ads — for those keeping score, that’s more than half.

Unlike text ad campaigns, which relied on verbal wizardry and endless A/B testing to optimize, Google Shopping success means analyzing quantitative performance data for all of your products. Even a smaller retail catalog of a few thousand items yields millions of Shopping KPIs to consider — no easy feat for busy e-commerce pros.

Fortunately, AdWords comes equipped with some handy tools designed to help marketers cut through all that noise, and quickly take data-informed actions to improve their Shopping campaigns. Here are four to get you started.

1. Dimensions Tab

The Dimensions tab is my starting point when optimizing Shopping campaigns. Easily findable at the top right of the AdWords console, the Dimensions tab features several Shopping-focused views of campaign performance.

Here are just a few of the ways you can put the information contained in the Dimensions tab to work for your campaigns:

• Implement day-parting adjustments – View your Shopping campaigns by Hour of day or Day of the week to see when your campaign’s conversion rates are highest or lowest. With this information, you can apply bid modifiers to your campaigns to bid more on traffic during high converting days/times — or decrease bids on days/times when conversions falter.
• Throw in geo-targeting filters – Select the Geographic view to see how your campaign performs by country, region, metro area, city, or the most specific location available. Once you’ve determined which regions are the best or worst for your campaigns, you can apply geo-targeting bid modifiers to pump up your bids for clicks from top-performing areas.

2. Item ID Report

Diving deeper into the Dimensions tab, you’ll find the Item ID option. This takes you beyond aggregate campaign performance, and surfaces performance KPIs for individual items that you sell.

You’ll find the Item ID report in the Dimensions tab, under the Shopping drop-down menu. After selecting this option, you’ll see your campaign broken down item-by-item. Relevant KPIs are then displayed for each product.

If your catalog features hundreds or thousands of items, you’ll see a lot of data. You can swiftly make sense of it in the following ways:

• Sort by clicks – Rank your products by clicks to highlight the items that are most important in the Shopping channel. These items might differ from your top sellers in-store or on other digital avenues.
• Consider product breakouts – You may notice a handful of products that are performing especially well in Shopping. Consider breaking each one out into a separate product group with a slightly higher bid. This will allow you to drive even more revenue from items that are already strong sellers in Shopping.

Once you’ve uncovered insights around your top products, regions, and times, you’re ready to answer some more critical questions. Which search queries are driving the best traffic to your campaigns? And what devices are your customers using?

3. Search Terms Report

Search queries add an extra layer of complexity to Google Shopping. Some search queries indicate higher purchase intent and yield better results than others.

But unlike text campaigns, which enable marketers to select the exact keywords for which their ads appear, Google’s algorithms decide what queries trigger your Shopping ads.

Fortunately, AdWords offers a detailed look at the search terms powering your campaigns. Like the Item ID report, the Search terms report is also housed under the Dimensions tab.

Your Search terms report probably contains tens of thousands of unique queries. But here’s how to manipulate it to determine which queries are most valuable to your campaigns:

• Sort by impressions – See the queries that are driving the greatest number of impressions of your Shopping ads. This will give you a deeper understanding of the terms your customers use to find your products. You can use this intel to inform the language you use in other marketing efforts. You can also compare this view over different time periods to see if the terms that trigger the most impressions align with the words you use in special promotions or change with the seasons.
• Sort by cost – Stack your report by cost to unearth those terms that are driving up costs, i.e. receiving many clicks, but not yielding conversions. This could mean that the items Google is surfacing for that term are not exactly what searchers want. If a term is not yielding efficient conversions, consider adding it as a negative keyword to your campaign. This will guarantee your ads won’t surface for a weak query in the future.

4. Devices Report

The interactive, scrollable carousel of Google Shopping ads is the first thing shoppers see on the mobile SERP. It’s no wonder, then, that mobile Google Shopping ads’ share of total Shopping revenues keeps growing year after year.

And AdWords’ Devices report enables retailers to capitalize on this trend by displaying performance stats across various device types.

You’ll find the Devices report under the Settings tab. While the information displayed in the device report might seem self-explanatory, here’s the best way to use it:

• Examine your performance across devices – First things first, take a look at your device report to see how the various device types stack up in your campaigns. AdWords breaks it all down by mobile devices, desktops, and tablets with full browsers. What you find might surprise you…
• Adjust or segment – Did your device report reveal that one or more device types aren’t efficiently driving conversions? Consider applying a negative bid adjustment to bring ROAS for the offending device type in line with your overall campaign goals. If you really want to take things to the next level, you can also break out mobile traffic into its own campaign. This will let you set device-optimized bids for items that perform better on mobile than on desktop.

Conclusion

Spend some time poking around the reports and campaign views outlined above, and it’s immediately clear just how much data is generated by even a modest Shopping campaign. But these hacks all offer an excellent entry to being proactive — rather than reactive — in the new Google Shopping-centric search landscape.

For the full scoop on these tools and how they can supercharge your Shopping campaigns, check out the recent webinar we presented with Kissmetrics 4 Data-Driven Hacks to Turn Searchers into E-Commerce Shoppers.

About the Author: Mike Perekupka is a Senior Statistical Analyst at Sidecar. He also moonlights as an Adjunct Professor of Statistics at Rowan University. Before joining Sidecar, Mike was a high school math teacher and a data analyst for NASA. When not crunching numbers, he can be found on the nearest tennis court preparing for his next tournament.