Have you ever thought about all the potential hidden in a single click-through? Too often clicks are tallied after a drop and quickly forgotten as the marketer moves on to the next project.
That’s a pity because each click-through carries real buying signals from the audience. That’s clearly the case when someone clicks and converts. But there’s much more to it than that.
A click-through suggests where the recipient is in the buying cycle. (We’re using the term buying here to refer to whatever it is you are trying to sell, whether it’s lead sign-ups, white papers or books.) It also suggests what to do next.
By listening to these signals and sending the right messages in response, you can achieve more conversions from your campaign - and higher ROI to boot. This article will present a proven way to do this.
Click Crunching
Start with that single click. What does it convey? What information can a marketer glean from it about the recipient? And what does it say about the marketer?
A great deal as it turns out.
First it says that the message definitely resonated with the recipient. She may have real buying interest, or perhaps she is just curious. But she saw something that motivated her. She acted.
There’s more. With open rates so problematic, that click-through is positive proof that: 1.) the email actually reached her successfully; and 2.) she had enough interest to read it, at least down to the point where she clicked. In other words, she was receptive (on this occasion) to the marketer and the marketer’s message. That’s a good start.
What about her interest level? Buying interest develops in stages. Some people buy the first time they see something (the impulse buy), while others require much longer to reach a decision point.
The people who clicked and bought obviously reached that decision point. However, only a very small percentage of people actually convert when they receive an email (typically about 3%). What about the much larger group that clicked but did not convert? It’s pure upside opportunity for the marketer.
How does the marketer capture that business? By using their click response pattern to determine where they are in the buying process and then pursuing the right strategy to move them to buy.
The hypothetical respondent above may have click multiple times on that link. She may have come back and clicked several times on different days. She may have even gone shopping on the site, only to abandon her shopping cart just before checking out.
By including all the data to build a click response profile, we can better gauge her level of interest. Now we ready to identify her interest stage.
If That’s Your Empty Cart, This Must Be Stage 3
The next step is using click response profiles to place each respondent at the proper place within the four-stage buying continuum.
Each stage has specific strategies and tactics designed to move her interest up to the next level, ultimately resulting in a purchase. Doing this across all respondents maximizes the potential revenue payoff for the marketer.
Here are the four buying stages and how they might apply to someone who clicks on one of your links.
| Stage 1. Possible interest | ||
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Indicator: Clicked once (the vast majority of recipients who responded). | |
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What it means: You have piqued her curiosity. There may or may not be real buying interest (perhaps your copy was just very clever and interesting!) | |
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Next step: Qualify her interest. | |
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How to do it: Send her an email to find out whether she is really interested. Try a different angle on the same product or service. If she responds again, you’ve got real interest. We can do this for you. | |
| Stage 2. Confirmed interest | ||
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Indicator: A significant click response pattern, e.g., clicking on the primary link and related links in the email, or multiple views/clicks over time. | |
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What it means: Good news. You have a potential buyer. | |
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Next step: Build her interest. | |
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How to do it: Send her a series of email messages featuring benefits, customer testimonials, etc. to excite her interest to buy and move her forward. (And yes, we can do this for you too.) | |
| Stage 3. On the verge | ||
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Indicator: Higher stage of interest. She did more than click several times. She nearly took the plunge, e.g., after she clicked to your site, she added items to the shopping cart and but didn’t check out. | |
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What it means: She has a strong level of buying interest but something interfered with the purchase, e.g., her child may have interrupted her, or she may have wanted to do some comparison shopping before buying. (Incidentally, if you are interested in the best ways to market to women, be sure to read the excellent article by Krista Paul on that subject in this newsletter.) | |
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Next steps: This is a hot prospect and you must move immediately to re-engage her before she goes somewhere else to buy. In this example, the abandoned shopping cart should trigger a stop-her-in-her-tracks message - ideally before she leaves your site.
Otherwise trigger a a highly personalized email with a targeted offer to get her back to the site to buy. |
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How to do it: Your web analytics engine can pop up a message to her if she stays on your site. It can also notify us automatically to send her an email with the come-back-and-buy offer. | |
| Stage 4. In the bag | ||
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Indicator: Clicked through and purchased. | |
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What this means: You made the sale! | |
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Next steps: Now’s the time to reinforce her decision to buy and really build your relationship with her. Send her a nice thank-you note. Impress her with flawless order fulfillment. Delight her with your personalized purchase and shipping messages. (For heaven’s sake, don’t rely on dull text messages to do this important job for you. Put some marketing pizzazz into your messages and offer her opportunities to buy complementary products or services, e.g., "Other customers who bought Product A also bought Product B.") |
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How to do it: Again we can do it for you. For more about adding marketing pizzazz to your text messages, see the article on Smart Delivery in this newsletter. | |
This Is Where We Come In
Okay. So the click analysis and four stages make perfect sense to you and you’d love — absolutely love — to do what we’re suggesting, but you have ten thousand other things to do today. Sorry.
Call us. We have special applications that can do it for you. Everything is automated so you can work on your ten thousand things while we take care of all your clicks. So you’ll get all the business (and ROI) you deserve. And no good click will ever be wasted.
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