Recently by Jade Ingmire

When someone orders iced tea, don’t serve them maple syrup

It’s no secret that pouring it on too thick will make consumers suspicious and distrusting of your advertising. It’s no secret that advertisers continue to do it anyway. But there is a quiet uprising occurring, an anti-movement springing up in the form of sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Yahoo Answers. Such user-based sites aren’t new, but due to the bombardment of glitzy, insincere ads, flash banners and billboards, they are taking on a momentum of their own.

Consider their influence. I’d argue that TripAdvisor reviews supersede “star” ratings when booking a hotel. If enough people on Buzzsugar love a movie I’ll by a ticket, even without seeing a trailer. Why? Because I value the opinion of people who don’t have anything to gain by selling me on something more than I value of the opinion of people who do: even if the opinion is the same.

So does this mean that advertising is obsolete?

Is the average Joe the new mad man?

Or is there another solution?

The short answer is yes.

Read on to hear my solution, what I call “the truest best.”

Old school Internet marketing still has its place. But we need to shift our focus from slathering our ads in hyperbole and get back to something simple: what I call “the truest best.” The theory is simple: by stripping away all the puns and play-on words, and focusing completely on the end user’s experience, only then are we able to come up with the truest ad strategy for our client. And whatever’s truest (whatever benefit appeals most to the end user) is the best. No matter how unhip, no matter how anticlimactic, no matter how “inconsistent with market research.”

Examples of Truest Best:

• Dove Deodorant: Stays on skin, not on clothes.
  It’s not sexy or flashy. But it matches the right benefit with the right person and so I will buy Dove first.
• AT&T: More bars in more places.
  Even with all the iPhone hype, better reception beats access to YouTube videos for many people.
• Apple: Everything is easier on a Mac.
  True, and very appealing.

In our over-saturated advertising marketing, consumers are both drowning and desperately dehydrated in their search for an effective product-buying strategy. To meet their needs, Internet marketers need to make discovering these types of truest best benefits our holy grail. We need to focus our energies on resources on finding out definitively what it is, and selling it accurately. There are several ways we can achieve this:

How to Get the “Truest” in Truest Best:

1. Offer an incentive for customer feedback (clarify the feedback can be good or bad so it doesn’t come across as a bribe)
2. Make it bite size: Rather than burying people in surveys and focus groups, include one question in your monthly e-newsletter, or post a rotating poll on your site.
3. Video testimonials: I have often thought these were the wave of the future. If you can get a real, live reputable person (not a celebrity, but your target market) to do a video testimonial, it’s worth about a thousand flash banners.
4. Pay customers to blog about your product. Make it a publicly known fact that you are paying them, and again, allow them to say whatever they want. This sounds risky, but it isn’t. The good stuff they say will be more convincing than any tagline, and the bad things will provide invaluable feedback for you.
5. Fix stuff based on their feedback. It’s not enough to diligently harvest feedback. You have to act on it, publicly, and acknowledge that the changes are a result of customer feedback. This might sound counterintuitive. I imagine it’s like when the first person came up with the idea of publishing corrections in the newspaper. “You want us to acknowledge our mistakes…in print…and apologize for them?” It must have sounded insane. Today of course, newspapers as an institution have a strong reputation as just and unbiased, largely because of their corrections sections. And Internet marketing campaigns can benefit from the same sort of revolutionary accountability.

This is only half the equation. Now that you’ve found the truest factor, you need to help it become its best. You have to make it look good, sound good, make it easy to find and simple to interact with. Wait...that sounds like...you guessed it, Internet marketing. Phew, you still have a job after all. The bottom line, Internet marketing is still necessary, and so are end-users . By working together, you create advertising that connects the right people with the right benefit, so everyone wins.

86 the Internet Marketing Assembly Line

“That sounds wonderful!” you are thinking. So why doesn’t it happen? It doesn’t happen because Internet marketers have so many checkpoints on the way to producing a campaign, and most of those don’t ever involve interacting with an end user. Once an Internet marketer has gotten themselves past their boss, their client, and their client’s boss, they are ready to call it a day.

If you are a Creative Director or Account Manager, the best thing you can do is have your team interact directly with the end user. Take them on a field trip, schedule interviews, read their trade publications and eat their cereal (ok, you don’t have to eat their cereal.) But you see the point….Don’t ruin their souls in tiresome bureaucracy and back-and-forth with the client. That is your job, not theirs, and it will not inspire them to do their best. You help them create the Truest Best by interacting with the end user, and then you defend that campaign on their behalf.

Turning honest-to-god opinions into Internet marketing gold

The moral is obvious: People are over glitzy spokespersons and overt, over-the-top marketing material. They want to hear the off-the-cuff, honest-to-god opinions of people who have nothing to gain by telling it like it is about a roach motel or a pot roast that tastes like roadkill. And if you can find the benefit that turns those honest-to-god opinions into good opinions, you’ve got the blueprints for a brilliant Internet marketing campaign.

 

An interface only a shoemonger could love

I am looking at a site so cluttered and ugly, it connotes every $1 table yard sale you’ve ever seen. I am looking at a site with such a dizzying array of calls to action, you feel like you are on a street corner in Tijuana. I am looking at a site where I and every single one of my friends shops, regularly and enthusiastically.

If you haven’t been living on a smoke-monster-ridden island, you’ve heard by now about Zappos.com and their amazing offer to new employees. Here’s an excerpt from Harvard Business Publishing with the details:

It’s a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time. So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period. After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

An online business sinking oodles of money into impeccable employee training and charismatic customer service-at the expense of slick interfaces and intuitive onsite usability? That’s Internet marketing heresy…right?

It’s called retail therapy because it’s supposed to be therapeutic

With a projected revenue of $1 billion this year, up from $70 last year, Zappos is growing like the gladiator sandal craze sweeping summer 2008. Some more callous individuals could credit their success to certain shrewd business policies: a four million deep shoe selection, four day shipping, free returns. But this writer would argue that all these little economical perks only add up the huge emotional benefit Zappos offers. In the end, Zappos is simply friendlier and more caring than the other more spectacular, nee severe online shoe retailers (cue grim look at month-late Lands End ballerina flats).

Zappos knows that people don’t really shop in order to own whatever they purchase. They shop to celebrate, to splurge, to console, and to feel indulged. The sooner other Internet marketers catch on to this simple fact, they’ll jump on the bedside manner bandwagon being paved by sites like Apple and Zappos. This doesn’t mean you have to pool all your energy into making a warm and fuzzy site. Both of these companies manage to deliver extraordinary customer service without a whiff of bedroom slippers. But some way or another, you need to communicate that you care about what your customers care about, and you are going to make their life better.

The Harvard article acknowledges this when it says “But it’s the emotional connection that seals the deal. This company is fanatical about great service—not just satisfying customers, but amazing them.”

Nice Sites Finish First

The success of Zappos got me thinking about all the other sites I troll most regularly, all of which are guilty of the gravest internet marketing sins. There’s the horribly functioning MySpace, where unexpected errors pop up as regularly as new indie bands. There’s Facebook, where a broken application prevented me from feeding my poor little online fox for weeks and having to endure the humiliation of a bad owner score. How much am I on these sites, despite their grievous technological imperfections? Oh, about once an hour, I’d say. Why? Because they are the same sites that make it possible for me to connect with long lost friends from school, family members I’d never met, and global acquaintances in exotic places whom I would never be able to communicate with otherwise.

The moral? Even in a faceless marketplace, people crave good relationships, whether with an old college pal or a customer service person who is expressing genuine care about their complaint. On it’s face, there’s no difference between Zappos and the I-forbid-you-to-shop-here shoe forest of the Nordstrom Rack. The single factor that saves Zappos from being an online casualty is kick-ass, no-holds-barred, brilliant customer service-and this is something every internet marketing company and website owner should be learning from.

At my company, we’re working on a compromise. We’re cultivating a new feel we call “professionable” which combines super professional service with a cheeky personal touch. So we’ve taken our top-notch team and added all their baby pictures to our website. It’s not quite a $1000 bribe to quit, but it is our little way of putting the personal back in the online paradigm. On that note, we’d love to have you stop by sometime.

 

The Divine Comedy of Cubicle Life

You’re about to graduate college, so in no time at all you’ll be a master in the post-grad basics. You’ll learn to dress up for interviews, even though you may wear flip flops for the rest of your career. You’ll learn that in the roshambo of the real world, connections always trump resumes. You’ll learn that every single character on The Office is real, and probably sitting next to you.These learning curves will be the cartography of your first career. Here’s some advice for grads about to make that leap:

Work in Marketing. When I was a post-college job-seeker aka waitress, my friends and I all dreamed about the two M’s: “marriage” and “Master’s degrees,” the magical terms that would deliver us from a life of fried onions and uniform flare. Little did we know there was a third "M" that could accomplish this brilliant deliverance: marketing! Why? Because we take anyone! And not in a bad way. Marketing is just a really diverse field in which almost all talents and fields of study prove valuable. At my Internet marketing firm we have hired ex legal assistants, waitresses (ahem), used car salesmen, and yes, people fresh out of college, all of whom have gone on to have inspired marketing careers. Best of all, marketing is a reasonably fun, reasonably well paying career field, so it’s a good first job for those new to the nine to five gig.

Think of your talent, not your title. When I started my first real job I was a copywriter, because my major was Creative Writing. Natural progression, right? Kind of. My mistake here was focusing on the conduit (writing) rather than the core talent that drove it (creativity.) If I had taken a step back, I would have realized writing was just one offshoot of the thing that really moved me: creative pursuits. Now, I direct photo shoots, help design web pages and landing pages, write sonnets and jingles, produce YouTube videos, and am generally both happier and more valuable to my organization. Moral? When you are job hunting, don’t search “Accountant.” Search “meticulous” or “detail oriented.” If you were a Kinesiology major, search “active” or “physical.” You could up being a store window designer or an event planner just as easily as a soccer coach or physical therapist-and be much happier!

1. Never say “I don’t know” or “I’m sorry,” if you do and you aren’t.
   Apologetic behavior is mistaken by young professions as humility, but really it is just humiliating. If you’ve done your research, present it confidently. If a co-worker is accusing you of wrong-doing, don’t automatically stammer an apology. Look into to it to see who’s really at fault. Similarly, never apologize for needing help or not understanding someone’s explanation. You’re a smart cookie, and it’s your superior’s job to explain things to you in a way you can comprehend.
2. Cultivate a valuable resource.
   If you want to be pricelessly popular in your office, there is a way to achieve it without going out drinking every night or typing everyone’s reports. It’s simple really! Just cultivate one valuable resource everyone else in the office is too lazy to buy, and be really generous about sharing it. In my office, I’m the Grand Swami of Scotch Tape, seated directly across from to the Czar of Kleenex. Across the way is the Sultan of Spoons. Sure, people could go by their own office essentials, but they never will as long as you are ready with a steady supply. Share generously, and people will come to value you as a priceless addition to the office-no overtime necessary!
3. Job security is any career where you can never know it all.
   This may seem contrary. You may think that once you have found out all there is to know about your field, you will finally be on top of your game. Wrong. Once you’ve learned all you can, you’ve exhausted what you have to offer to your industry. I work in Internet marketing, a job where it is virtually impossible (har har) to know it all, and that fact alone ensures me gainful employment for the rest of the foreseeable future. As long as there is more to discover, I will always be relevant and useful. Equally important, jobs where you can never learn everything keep you challenged, dazzled and humbled-a recipe for lifelong job satisfaction.
4. It might take you up to a year to like your first job.
   “A yearrrrr?” you groan. Yep, a year. It’s dog years in school time but it’s light years in a career field. As college graduates, you are the babies of the job force, and your development tracks as such. Consider the cognitive progress between a newborn and a one-year-old child. Babies pretty much spend the first year of their life processing their new world, taking in new sights and smells (in their case boiled carrots, in your case ink toner), deciding who they can trust and who they can’t, throwing a few tantrums and slowly, surely settling into their place in the world. On your first day in the office as a newly-minted office worker, you may be blinking in a disoriented darkness, wondering how you left the cozy womb of college for this unfamiliar new terrain. But as the year flies by you will find your job-legs, shakily at first and then with increasing confidence, picking up the industry language word by word, until one day you find you at last feel comfortable, and realize that you were in the right field all along. Baby steps, baby.

I know something you don’t. A marketing secret. It’s really, really interesting. Not amazing, but learning it can expedite your marketing career quite nicely. Luckily, It doesn’t require a fancy degree or months of monk-like dedication in a cave to master. It’s less of a learned technique and more of a psychological sleight-of-hand, but not a mean one. Just....insightful, I suppose.

What’s particularly striking is that, given the simplicity of this technique, it is used by a seldom few. This is stunning, because some industry veterans believe this one little technique is the make-or-break, sacred bedrock of any marketing campaign. I wouldn’t go that far, but it is true that this one little clever-but-not-brilliant tactic can save you hours of mind-scrunching, brain-bending agony spent braying to the marketing muses. As someone with three years of moderate to mind-blowing marketing success under the belt that holds up her fancy pants, I can vouch for it. Because I know something you don’t, and I want you to know it too!

If you know it, you can whip up a decent piece of copy on a dime, get the green light on most projects, or coerce your way into a sales call. And it’s not even hard! An exceptionally clever child could do it, or maybe even a brilliant baby.

I know something you don’t. But I feel sorry for you, so I’m going to tell you what it is. I know you’ve been out in the cold, wandering through the lonely marketing technique streets alone, unable to catch a break or sell a campaign to save your life. Well that’s all about to change, mi querida, my dear confidante. Once you hear this technique, your boss is going to be bounding into your office daily, begging you for ideas. Your clients will be brimming with praise for the mighty, cash-money-making marketing campaigns you’ve conjured seemingly out of the air. Your colleagues will defer to you in meetings, poised breathlessly to hear the next pearl of wisdom that drops from your lips. And once you know this technique, you can use it over and over! That’s the beauty of it. Once you’ve got a jaguar in your pocket, there’s no need to go trolling for kittens, am I right?

I’m torturing you, I know. You’re ready, panting, frustrated, tickled, by the thought of your imminent success and all the retroactive glory you’ve deserved for so long will finally be heaped on your head. Here it is: I KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON’T......

The day didn’t grow darker, exactly. But the light shifted in a way that was almost imperceptible, the day that Mediocrity rode into town. It rode a limping horse with a second-hand saddle on which it balanced precariously. Behind it rode its army: Whining, Ambivalence, and Lame Excuses.

Taking a deep swig from its flask of Lethargy, Mediocre started to spit then decided it didn’t have the energy. “Well, well, what do we have here?” Mediocre said, with a mocking eye. “If it isn’t Creativity and it’s earnest band of overachievers.”

He took in our shiny uniforms, our gleaming stable, and our stamping horses. “How’s burning the midnight oil going? Those brilliant notions still waking you up in the middle of the night….” he drawled. He jumped as Critical Thinking threw a knife that landed right in the center of a nearby oak tree. “We’re not going to mince words Mediocrity,” said Critical Thinking. “ We aren’t going to bribe and flatter. We are going to focus all our energy on the most effective way to run you out of town.”

“What are we waiting for?” cried Good Ideas, hopping from foot to foot. “I have ten scalable solutions in mind right now. He’ll be nothing but a case study by the time I’m done!”

Visionary just closed its eyes and hummed.

Lame Excuses lurched forward. “It’s not our fault. The muse just hasn’t been in,” it shrieked. “We can’t create on demand.”

“There just hasn’t been time,” Whining trilled. “No one’s even explained it right.” Ambivalence started to say something, but settled for a smirk.

“We are here to run you out of town Mediocrity,” Creativity said firmly. “Hop on the raft of Malaise and go back to the lukewarm land of Status Quo where you belong. You have no place on the Professional High Road. I’m surprised you were able to climb this far anyway.”

“Oh, we may have cut a few shortcuts here and there,” said Mediocrity, smiling sweetly. “But we still got here, didn’t we, just the same as you.”

Just then, the Results Police rode in, with Metrics, Testimonials and Revenue behind him. “You aren’t the same as Creativity, Mediocre,” the Sheriff said sternly. “And we can prove it. Me and my boys have been watching you for a long time. You may have gotten lucky for a while, sped through a few assignments, took the easy way when no one was looking, cheated your clients out of decent output. We are charging you with jaywalking across the street of Hard Work, shoplifting fancy buzzwords to avoid genuine thought and prostituting the integrity of your profession. It was only a matter of time before someone caught onto your Mediocrity. Let’s go.”

Creativity and its army turned and left, each blazing its individual trail home.

When it comes to marketing, it’s always peanut butter and jelly time.

No, this isn’t some lame joke about how lunchtime is the best part of an internet marketing gig, nor is it some vaguely incestuous reference to the necessary blend between technology and creative. Actually, this is a story about my fourth grade teacher, who in between Newberry classics and ancient Greece, gave me my most valuable internet marketing lesson to date.

The infamous peanut butter and jelly lesson goes something like this, and I’m sure many of you can relate:

Her: “Tell me step by step how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Me: “Pull out two pieces of bread.”

So far, so good.

Me: “Now open the jam and spread it.”

Teacher opens jam and starts spreading on desk.

Me (alarmed): “No, not on the desk, on the bread! ON THE BREAD!”

Teacher (innocently): “Well why didn’t you say so?”

This went on for quite some time, and by the time my teacher completed my instructions there was peanut butter on the projector and saw marks in the Social Studies textbook. As a saucer-eyed fourth grader, it was pretty much the equivalent to the fall-out from a war, and I was totally freaked.

My guess is, anyone who has ever worked in internet marketing in a non-freelancer capacity has dealt with a not-on-the-desk-on-the-bread moment. As an impressionable nine year old, I wanted to slap my still-hot-from-recess forehead and marvel at my octogenarian teacher’s ineptitude to infer even the most obvious instructions on how to make the most basic of items: a freaking peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Now, as a creative lead, I am firmly sandwiched myself under a host of managers and over a rotating team of designers, writers and developers. What middle management blues have taught me more than anything is that there are in fact two secret staple ingredients that keep a simple project from turning into ludicrous pandemonium.

Sometimes a rose is just a rose.* In other words, a landing page does not have to be a ship, a sandpiper, or a head of arugula in order for your audience to listen to you-really!

In fact, there are many other lonely literary devices out there that just might give your internet marketing an unexpected boost. Witness A List Apart’s arresting use of allegory in this article on Findability. I never met a metaphor that made me want to kneel down and Eskimo kiss an internet marketing discipline the way this article did. Similarly, at Christmas this year, I wrote an ad in rhyming couplets that went on to be a best-seller for one of our clients. And yet another time, we did an online mad libs campaign for a client, one of our most successful social marketing endeavors to date. What will we think of next?

Better yet, why don’t you think of it first? Next time you are writing marketing copy, don’t be muzzled by the metaphor. Try foreshadowing, irony (shown here with a healthy side of hyperbole), sonnets, epistolary, etc. Why? Because metaphors are going the way of alliteration when it comes to contrived “cleverness,” and because internet marketing could use some good old-fashioned onomatopoeia.

At the very least, if you must use metaphor, write what you have to say first and then apply the metaphor afterwards. If you do it the other way, you are destined to dilute your point.

Even better, challenge yourself to use of the above literary devices this week, because using metaphors to be clever is like eating Thai food for culture. It’s a little better than nothing, but barely (and for the record, that was an analogy, not a metaphor.)

*According to closet internet marketing genius Aretha Franklin.

Yes, Gen Y is young, driven, spoiled, busy. But a slew of recent advertisements neglect to notice that we are also well-educated, scarily mature, and shrewd as hell. In other words, we know when we’re being talked down to. And now we are talking back with a message for you: When it comes to banking and savings accounts (and any other important issue), Gen Y doesn’t just want to have fun. When it comes to serious issues, we want to be treated seriously, shown the value, and supplied with all the facts. So please, lay off the bright colors and one word ads. We’re young adults, yes, but we’re not infants.

Yes, Gen Y may be more free-spirited than older generations, but that cavalier attitude applies to things like exposed bra straps, not our hard-earned post-collegiate cash flow. By pandering to offensive stereotypes, these institutions ignore their very real selling points (Washington Mutual: free checking, ING Direct: best interest rates) in favor of bubblegum-colored advertisements featuring bonehead exclamations. Who thought of this? Hopefully marketers will soon realize if we’re old enough to have banking accounts, we’re old enough to care about things like ATM fees, interest rates and having our hard-earned money safeguarded with responsibility and respect. In conclusion, whoever said orange was the new Gen Y bank ad color was seriously disturbed! For examples of fierce creative done correctly, why not check out the Portentfolio?

With the ‘R’ word hovering, the volatile internet marketing industry is bound to suffer right? Not so fast. One odds-defying industry offers inspiration to those of us in the ever-fragile web biz. Read on for survival tips culled from their mysteriously hardy shelves...

Start With an Untapped Community

If you cater to a targeted community, especially one that had no other place to go before you came along, you will be able to withstand the impact of more generic giants. Such is the case with Barbara Bailey, who started Bailey/Coy books in Seattle in 1986. The first bookstore to target gay/lesbian literature, she’s sort of like the Perez Hilton of the printed word. Bailey knew she needed an edge to get her indie bookstore off the ground, and by paying attention to her community, the pride-filled mecca of Capitol Hill, she has preserved a following of people who remember when Bailey/Coy was the only place to shop for such GLTB books. Lesson: target a unique audience. Mistresses, Taxodermists, Hare Krishnas all need web love too.

Add a Practical Angle That Doesn’t Clash with Your Principles

It is possible to capitalize on a lofty dream in a lucrative way.The key is to look at what you are really trying to accomplish. For Pat and Ed Rutledge of the charming A Book of All Seasons in the snow town of Leavenworth, the goal was promoting literacy, but also providing a cozy place full of personality. By opening up a bed and breakfast upstairs, they were able to support their bookstore dream even when the sales weren’t there. As a result, they’ve been able to stay in business since 1992. Try and apply the same ingenious thinking to your website. When websites with personality pay off, everyone wins.

Have A Special of the Day

It’s not just for soup anymore! Weekly, monthly and daily features are a great way to capture and build an internet audience. From A List Apart’s Fresh every Friday post to Manolo for the Bride’s Friday Caption Contest, savvy websites know readers love knowing when to tune in for their favorite web fare.This is exactly what Chris O’Hara capitalized on at her Spokane bookstore “Auntie’s Bookstore” where she hosts a daily activity from reading, knitting, and live music since 1985.

Target a Certain Niche

This is similar to targeting a unique community, with a slightly different lens. What it means is that rather than focusing on a unique demographic, you target a unique subject matter that might actually draw a fairly diverse group of people. For example, our blog Bridezilla.com is about having a thinking-woman’s wedding, so it appeals to people interested in feminism, fashion, wedding planning and blogs in general. The same can be seen from Peter Miller Architecture and Design Books, an independent bookstore that carries only architectural, design and graphic titles. Though it’s a specific focus, these books would appeal to anyone from architects, art lovers, interior designers, graphic designers or people who just simply want to support indie bookstores.

Remember It’s Still a Business

You may not want to be cutthroat and corporate, but maintaining your professional polish is still the make-or-break factor for independent businesses. There’s a fine line between independent and the wedding singer lady who paid Adam Sandler for singing lessons in meatballs. Don’t let your “indie” attitude overtake your need for good customer service. I once walked into a Twice Sold Tales and asked for a title. The surly store clerk said to me “This isn’t Burger King.” Needless to say, that bookstore is still struggling and Burger King, is well, King. This is not the way it should be, and the ability for independent businesses to still maintain their professional standards is what’s going to change it. Peter Miller, a Harvard Alum makes this point brilliantly when he says “We try not to be floppy, we try not to be sloppy, and we try to be extraordinarily up to speed.” Staying up to date on your industry, presenting yourself in a sharp and genuine way, and not making careless mistakes is crucial advice for both indie bookstores and website start-ups.

Make Passion Your Profit

The truth is, a lot of these bookstores aren’t in the black every year. But every single one of them has stayed in business for ten plus years. The same can be said for many internet marketing companies. That rocks! The world needs more quaint, quirky creative spaces, from bookstores to crafty blogs, and I think it’s amazing when this big-picture principle sustains people through financial rough patches. So choose Etsy.com over Overstock, choose Abebooks over Amazon, and choose my quirky, creative internet marketing firm Portent Interactive (it’s not a plug unless it’s shameless) over big name internet marketing firms who specialize in one-flash-intro-fits-all. When independent businesses flourish, everyone benefits-and the world becomes more interesting.

Some Information Taken From: Washington CEO April 2008 Edition

Portent recently won an award for something I initially thought sounded very counter-intuitive, maybe even a little shady. But it turned out to be one of our most successful email opt-in campaigns to date. Below are the marketing insights I believe made all the difference.

The idea was to add an email subscription page between the free printables offer and the actual free printables download on a client’s site. My fear was, once people got in the free printables mindset, they would not appreciate being derailed by a page popping up and asking for their email address to receive a newsletter. But as it turned out, people actually did like it. A lot.

By adding this new sign-up page, Portent was able to increase this client’s subscriber list by 6,626 subscribers, an average of 828 per month since the campaign started last May.

Obviously adding just any page isn’t going to guarantee this sort of success, and including unnecessary steps or diversions can often result in high bail-out rates. That said, there are a few ways to make the bait-and-sweetly suggest marketing technique work for you:

1. Meets the same overall marketing objective. People may be clicking through the site to download the free printable, but that is not their overall goal. Their goal is to learn more about the product with minimal commitment. While the newsletter and the download printable differ in content, they both move the customer towards this overall goal. For this reason, offering a newsletter sign-up before the free download page isn’t spammy. It’s helpful! Case in point: The email subscription page is the equivalent of the waitress giving you the specials of the day at a restaurant. While it does momentarily deter you from your initial goal of opening the menu and ordering, it can propel you to your real goal (eating) in an appealing way you might not have thought of. So, when deciding whether to bait-and-sweetly-suggest, figure out your customer’s overall goal and make sure whatever ad or offer you include caters to that goal.
2. Makes eyes happy. When creating this page, we added one of our prettiest, nicest email newsletters to the page to reassure viewers that they wouldn’t be on the receiving end of some red-bulleted, free free free, frightening missive once they signed on the subscriber line. An attractive visual example comes across as genuine and enticing. Most importantly, it negates any suspicion that accompanies being diverted from one’s initial online objective.
3. Make it a choice, not a condition. A page like this is about providing an option, not holding a customer hostage until you have all their personal details. Forcing people to register and receive your emails for life in exchange for a one-time printable is definitely below-the-belt,and will ensure many customers bail from your site-especially if the initial ad they clicked through makes no mention of this registration. By making it totally clear that they can click right past this option and go to the printables, customers view this email page sign-up as a thoughtful offer, not a nose-wrinkling prerequisite.