Download - Unsubscribed designing for conversion
The Unsubscribed – Designing for Conversion
Mia Horrigan
Partner ICT Strategy & Advisory Services
Zen Ex Machina
The Dreaded Txt Social Break Up
If these is how we treat our friends, how do we treat brands and organisations we have come to
Online Brand Relationships
We expend a lot of time and energy to get users to our sites
The Social Media Break Up
……and yet with a click of a button, they can be gone
Consumers Break Up Behaviour
• 91% have unsubscribed from opt-in e-mails
• 77% more cautious about providing their e-mail vs. last year
• 81% have “unliked” a company’s posts from their Facebook
• 71% more selective about “liking” a company vs. last year
• 51% expect a “like” will result in communications from the company, 40% believe it should not
• 41% have “unfollowed” a company on Twitter
Top Reasons Why Consumers Unsubscribe Via E-Mail, Facebook & Twitter - February 09, 2011 by Erica Swallow
Top Reasons Consumers Unsubscribe
Not just Technology Driving Change
• It not just because technology makes it easy to break up
• Users are getting more discerning due to content overload
Content Overload
Consumers Break Up Behaviour
Top Reasons Why Consumers Unsubscribe Via E-Mail, Facebook & Twitter - February 09, 2011 by Erica Swallow
Designing to Stop Break Ups?
• Many businesses focus exclusively on creating amazing graphics, beautiful imagery and classic typography
• The visual aesthetic is only one of many factors in conversion
• Surface design on 1 of 5 elements in User Experience
• Need to be aware of what design elements encourage subscription
• And avoid those that will result in a break up
Designing to Attract and Retain
• How do we design for conversion ?
• How can we retain subscribers?
• How do we turn “likes” into “lovers”?
We turned to Social Media as a Strategy
• Customers embracing social media
• Take the conversation to the forums where our customer were
• Embarked on a digital strategy
• Social media complimentary to existing marketing and communications
• Engage in two-way communication
Social Media Strategy
• What do we want to achieve?
• Who are our customers?
• What are the messages to these Customers?
• How do our Consumers want to be engaged?
• What are our competitors doing?
• Which media channels should we use?
The ZXM Social Media Framework
Social Media Engagement Strategy
• More than just the look and feel of website and email campaign
• More than just creating awareness and providing information
• Needed customers to move along the spectrum from awareness to produce desired behaviour and actions
Changing Consumers Behaviour
A D K A R
Awareness Desire Knowledge Action Reinforcement
• Awareness of need (pain point)
• Desire and motivation to participate
• Knowledge to make the change to satisfy needs
• Satisfy needs and participate
• Encouragement to keep the desired behaviour
engagement zone enablement zone
maintenance action preparation contemplation pre-contemplation
AWARENESS
A D K A R
Awareness
• Create an awareness in our target
audience about our activities
• Understand their pain points and how our
services will help to solve that problem
• The objective was to build a trust
relationship in order to move our audience
to the next stage of behavioural change
Understand your Audience
• Before we could decide on:
– What content to write
– What channels to use
– How to run our campaign
• We needed to know who we were targeting and what would grab their attention
Understanding our Target Audience
Government
Andy Smith Deputy Secretary Department of Media
AGE: 53 (Older baby boomer) GENDER: male ETHNICITY: Anglo-Saxon OCCUPATION: Public servant
“Technology moves too quickly”
Andy is a veteran public servant. He officially took up this role with the Department on 7 September 2009 and has been working to establish an understanding of the key policy issues, particularly with respect to convergence of technology, since that time.
Andy wants:
To get the right (sanitised) answer that he can provide to the Minster in the quickest possible time
Communication to be responsive
Communication to be convenient
Communication to be brief and straight to the point
To keep the Minister advised
Expertise Motivations Value of the ACMA Frustrations & Pain Points Public Service
Television Industry
Project management
Policy
Ministerial relations
Career advancement Negotiable Getting the ACMA to deliver
Slow response times
Political naivety
Being told “it can’t be done”
Source: Nielsen/NetRating 04-06. Forrester,2008/9. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008/9
Who
Demographics
Behavioural
stats
Pain-points Motivations Trusted
sources Values
How Do They Like to Be Engaged? Gen Y Gen X Boomers Seniors
Web 2.0 Behaviour
• Publish blog
• Create video/music
• Write articles or stories and post them
Creators 24%
• Update status on social networking sites
• Post updates on twitter Conversationalists 36%
• Post ranting/reviews of products and services
• Comment on someone else’s blog
• Contribute to online forums Critics 36%
• Use RSS feeds
• Votes for websites online
• Add tags to web pages or photos
Collectors 23%
• Maintain profile
• Visit social networking sites Joiners 68%
• Read blogs
• Listen to podcasts
• Read articles, reviews and online forums Spectators 73%
• None of the above In-actives 14%
Source: Forrester, 2008.
Behaviour and Age
Gen-Y Gen-X Boomer Senior
Creator 21% 13% 8% 5%
Critic 23% 16% 10% 7%
Collector 16% 10% 7% 5%
Joiner 37% 18% 10% 4%
Spectator 58% 45% 36% 26%
Do nothing 23% 48% 58% 70%
Source: Forrester, 2008.
Where are They Spending Time Online?
Channel Users in Feb 2012
1. Facebook 10, 703, 160
2. YouTube 11, 000, 000
3. Blogspot 3, 500, 000
4. LinkedIn 2, 200, 000
5. Twitter 1, 800, 000
6. Wordpress.com 1, 600, 000
7. Google Plus 1, 200, 000
8. Tumblr 1, 100, 000
9. Flickr 920, 000
10. MySpace 520, 000
Sensis Research 2010
What Channels to Use for Our Audience?
• Where are conversations about our types of services taking place
• Can these forums help us to build awareness?
• Is the channel just one-way?
• Does the channel support collaboration and discussion?
Channel and Age
Gen-Y Gen-X Boomer Senior
Facebook 99% 96% 97% 99%
Telephone 9% 30% 30% 27%
Face-to-face
21% 27% 24% 43%
LinkedIn 2% 14% 17% 14%
Twitter 8% 9% 4% 0%
Myspace 3% 5% 4% 0%
Paper 4% 8% 6% 13%
Sensis Research 2010
Choice of Channels?
Where to Focus?
• Old mantra of “be everywhere” replaced by need to
“be where it matters”
• Focus on where we could see results
DESIRE
A D K A R
Desire
• Awareness and Desire go hand-in-hand
• Build a relationship and nurture that relationship to change their behaviour to want to participate
• More effective if the customers are engaged and “like” what you are offering
Persuasion
• We wanted to persuade customers so we needed to speak to their pain points
• Grudge purchase so need to articulate “what’s in it for me?” and how our services could help them?
• Appeal to their personal needs and wants
Appeal to Our Customers
• “Too often business send the emails they want to send rather than the emails that their customers want to receive”
• Needed to understand our publishing strategy and where we wanted to go to appeal to our customers
Which Publishing Strategy?
The Mass Publisher • Create content of broad interest to their customers • Post articles on topics related to product or service and have copious links to product pages
The Problem Solver • Make consumers aware of a solution • Seek to help consumers in a market solve a problem • As these customers search for answers, find opportunities to engage and suggest where to find what they want
The Social Engager • Not just a vehicle for promotions and gathering followers, but a place to engage • Feed the channel - respond to customer posts, design experiences that encourage sharing to get others involved
The Personal Concierge • Personalised content to move customer through a decision journey from considering to evaluating, experiencing, advocating and, bonding • Build content guided by insights into customer behaviour (where have they come from, what are they looking at, what have others Like her bought)
This is where we were
Initial plan to move to here
Becoming a social organisation
May get there one day
KNOWLEDGE
A D K A R
Knowledge
• Education and building knowledge of our service and its value proposition
• Very Infocentric and wanted to move towards providing solutions
• Started by sharing content, providing useful and interesting information, and links
• Required good, unique and interesting content
Designing Content
• Limited time to spend on social media so Content and Relevance will drive Reputation, Relationships and Results
• Strategies involving marketing, social media, and SEO, will only work if you fuel them with good content
• If audience find what we have to say useful, they’ll be more inclined to subscribe/share
How to make marketing content Posted on October 21, 2011 by Luke Telford
Content is King
“If your campaigns aren't engaging, you can be sure that consumers have plenty of ideas on how to get rid of them”
Top Reasons Why Consumers Unsubscribe Via E-Mail, Facebook & Twitter - February 09, 2011 by Erica Swallow
Entertain, Engage and Educate
• Needed to ensure our audience derived some value out of their interactions with us
• Asked the question:
‘that’s really interesting for us , but how can we make it interesting to our target audience? What do they want to hear?”
• Add value don’t just promote service
Relevant Content is a Top Priority
Top Reasons Why Consumers Unsubscribe Via E-Mail, Facebook & Twitter - February 09, 2011 by Erica Swallow
Irrelevant Content will be Filtered Out
• ISPs consider graymail to be anything from newsletters to daily deals and social network updates • What might be “spam” to one person may be very important to another person
Delivery based on user engagement
Outlook Moving towards using behavior to determine whether an email will end up in your inbox or your junk folder :
• Message read, then deleted • Message deleted without reading it • Message answered • Frequency of receiving and reading of messages of a certain sender
Design Challenge - Portable inboxes
• People using social media “on the go” have very different behaviour from people sitting at a desktop • Level of activity, attention and amount of time shortens considerably - direct impact on mobile content
Responsive Design
Mobile App changed to
responsive design (CSS3, HTML5)
ACTION
A D K A R
Action
• Effective message design will help get customers to your website
• Leverage that momentum to turn them into customers
• Once we had customers engaged and they liked what they saw, then we were more likely to get them to act
How to turn “Likes” into “Lovers”
• This step is all about taking advantage of the engaged state our “Likers” are in
• If they liked our page, they are far more likely to perform another type of action
How to turn your Facebook “Likes” into Sales December 1st, 2011 by Verity Meagher
Be Clear about How to Participate
• Be clear about what you are asking them to do, what you are offering and how they can engage
• Get them to sign up to your newsletter, subscribe to our blog and tell their friends about us and become fans
Be Clear and Make it Easy to Act
Follow Us
Share
This
Calculate what
it will cost you
Sign
Petition
Register
Subscribe
Result – over 130,000 signed our petition
Encourage Sharing of Content
• The higher social engagement, the more likely followers will share your content and help build awareness of your service
• Make it easy for them to share – integrating social media sharing tools such as Facebook Like, Google +1, and Tweet badges on our website to increase content sharing.
Integrated Our Social Media
How to Measure Actions?
• What are we measuring?
• Why are we measuring it?
• Did we know what the measure means?
• How can we influence the outcome (subscribe or unsubscribe, up or down)?
52
Simple BI Mechanisms
Channel Behaviour Outcome Important for what
segment
Measurable?
Facebook /
Joiner, Critic
(Likes)
People are
listening
• Primary
• Secondary
• Yes
Twitter / G+ Critic (Retweets/
shares)
People trust the
information and
feel it worthy
enough for
others to know
about
• Secondary
• Tertiary
• Yes
Blogs Creator, Critic People feel the
information is
worth discussing
• Secondary
• Tertiary
• Yes
Email Joiner,
Spectator,
Collector
The information
is worth keeping
• Secondary
• Tertiary
• Yes*
Paper Collector,
Shares
The information
is worth keeping
& giving to
others
• Secondary
• Tertiary
• No
*If the email newsletter has Campaign Monitor-like functionality
Ways to Measure Campaign Activity
Understanding the Analytics
• Don't expect to be getting 80% open rates • 20% to 40% is about average
How to Increase Open Rates
• Experiment with subject lines • Send on a different day • Get the important content up the top (they will preview before deciding to open it or ignore it) • Make sure your email is recognizable (want to be a trusted source of useful content)
Monitored our “Unsubscribed” rates
• Industry norm is <2% unsubscribe rate • The exception is when you send to new lists (tend to generate higher unsubscribe rate)
Site Analytics – Prior to Digital Strategy
1 Jan to 30 Dec 2010
• 4535 people visited our site
• 8,597 page views
• 3.1 average pages viewed
• Time on site 1.21 mins
Site Analytics – Post Implementation
3 x more visitors and page views in 1 month than what was achieved over
12 months
First Month – soft launch “skinny solution”
Second Month – fully integrated campaign
REINFORCEMENT
A D K A R
Reinforcement
• A good experience will ensure they:
– Engage again
– Share their experience with others
– Which will in-turn increase their likelihood of
engaging as well
• As well as ensuring the interaction is a
positive one, need to satisfy their desires
and/or address their pain point
Reinforcement
• Let customers know the benefits of their
action to reinforce their behaviour
• Keep the two-way conversation going
• Moving to collaboration rather than just
pushing out info of interest
• Social Engager vs Mass publisher
Summary
A D K A R
Awareness Desire Knowledge Action Reinforcement
• Content delivered
into search engine
results thru SEO
strategy
• Brand consistency
• Word-of-mouth via
physical and
virtual
mechanisms
enabled thru social
media
• Communicate
capability to deliver
Wants
• Speak w/
consistent &
appropriate voice
• Low-barrier to
participation
• Potential to deliver
on power
motivators
• Enable
identification with
brand and Authors
• Assure knowledge
of delivery thru
channels of
preference
• Knowledge that
action will result in
removal of pain-
points
• Deliver on wants
• Deliver on Needs
• Satisfy ‘Desire’
• Good user-experience –
virtual or physical
regardless
of channel
• Capability to share with
community thru physical
or
virtual social mechanisms
maintenance action preparation contemplation pre-contemplation
• Provide value - Interesting and Relevant content
• Be consistent - Have the same look and feel so all you need to do is drop in the content. Makes it easy for you and reader
• Include links – Link to longer articles on your website and track what readers are clicking
• Be personal - Drop in the reader’s first name
• Target - Identify segments to make it relevant and effective
• Include call to action - Be clear in what you want your readers to do. Make it easy to sign up or participate
• Be concise - Put important things at the top, include summary with links, keep it short and sweet
Source: E-Newsletter Do’s and Don’ts December 16th, 2011 by Clancy Clarke
Do’s
Designing for Conversions Do’s & Don’ts
• Get carried away with animation - Visual elements need to support image and make navigation to key message easier
• Too much flash – Inhibits loading times and formatting for accessing internet on the move
• Send too often- Plan out what you want to highlight and when. Don’t clutter inboxes. Send a newsletter rather than ad hoc emails
• Forget to proof it first - Nothing turns off readers more than mistakes. Check spelling, grammar and offers
• Send without an unsubscribe- If readers are no longer interested in your content, it is best to let them unsubscribe quickly and easily
Source: E-Newsletter Do’s and Don’ts December 16th, 2011 by Clancy Clarke
Designing for Conversions Do’s & Don’ts
Don’ts
Thank you
@miahorri
zenexmachina.wordpress.com
Mia Horrigan
Mia Horrigan
http://www.slideshare.net/miahorri