Large Company Optimization from the Trenches
When it comes to a successful post-click marketing program, conversion optimization is key. Here Seth Berman, director of marketing for Blue Shield California, points out seven characteristics of highly effective conversion marketers with high-ROI post-click programs.
Recently I was a panelist at Conversion Conference West in San Francisco. The panel, entitled Large Company Optimization from the Trenches, was moderated by FutureNow’s Howard Kaplan, and my fellow panelists were Andres Amezquita from Mattel, James Niehaus from Symantec, and Joe Weller from RealNetworks.
80% Conversion Rate
Andres kicked things off by sharing that Mattel’s conversion on some of its properties are 80%. Some might wonder why he needs to worry about conversion optimization, but data geeks like us understand two important things. First, the higher your conversion rate, the lower your relative margin of error. A 5% conversion rate with a sample size of 10,000 at 95% confidence level has a margin of error of 0.43. That’s 9% of the conversion rate. If, however, your conversion rate is 80%, the margin of error is higher at 0.78 but it’s only 1% of the conversion rate. Second, small improvements at an 80% conversion rate yield big results. If every conversion out of our 10,000 sample size is worth $100, a 1% improvement on a 5% conversion rate is worth $500. But a 1% improvement on an 80% conversion rate is worth $8,000. The bottom line is that the business value of incremental conversion improvements actually increases as your conversion rate increases.
IT: Friend or Foe?
Next, Symantec’s James Niehaus shared seven characteristics of highly effective conversion marketers.
- Executive or revenue owner support
- Focus on quick wins
- Always be testing
- Cross functional buy-in and dedicated resources
- Avoid IT whenever possible
- You need to be technical
- Get the word out
Avoiding the IT department particularly resonated with the audience, but the panel showed compassion for what it takes to balance conflicting priorities in IT.
Consult the Experts
Joe Weller of RealNetworks unabashedly endorsed post-click marketing and conversion rate optimization consulting from the experts as well as the MarketMotive conversion optimization course that he took himself. His top tip was to share both successes and failures. He found that being able to report out on failures was beneficial because it conditioned management to expect some tests to fail. He also found sharing failures helpful because some tests were based on opinions of management, and it was important for them to see for themselves when their ideas didn’t work.
Keep it Simple
As the final panelist to address the audience, my objective was to keep things simple. To that end, I advocated that the most important thing conversion marketers can do is to pursue one objective at a time. By focusing on this at Blue Shield, we increased conversion of our single objective by 600% through a series of tests. There are so many things you could optimize, and by picking one at a time you can guarantee improvements. Another advantage to focusing on one objective with a series of tests is that you take the pressure off any single test to deliver the improvements. In this way, you diversify the risk across a number of tests and bring attention to the outcome of the program instead of each individual test.
Miss Conversion Conference West? No problem. Conversion Conference East is October 19-20, 2011 in New York City. Click here for more information.
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http://www.rich-page.com Rich Page
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http://www.twitter.com/allenkristina Kristina Allen
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http://www.twitter.com/allenkristina Kristina Allen
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http://www.twitter.com/allenkristina Kristina Allen
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http://twitter.com/sbermo Seth Berman
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http://twitter.com/sbermo Seth Berman
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http://makethemclick.com.au/library Mark @ Make Them Click
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http://twitter.com/sbermo Seth Berman
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http://twitter.com/sbermo Seth Berman
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