Top 5 Tips For Sign-Up Forms
May 18, 2009 at 10:04 am
Ryan Singer at FOWD in London a few weeks ago. If you haven’t got 10 mins to watch it, here’s what he says:
- Put the easy stuff first. Things people don’t have to think about. That way they’re more invested and have a bit of momentum going when it comes to things they have to think about – like choosing a user name.
- Add Ajax goodness for think about fields, eg. choosing user names. Show people on the spot if that name is taken. It’s much more satisfying than completing the form and having to go back and change.
- Only ask for what you need. If you need to ask more, you can always ask it inside the app.
- Use conversational language – and that includes on error messages. Instead of a bossy command style “you have not completed all the fields”, use “Can you check this? You’ve missed something.”
- Design your form to take numbers in whatever way the user wants to give you - if they want to put brackets around their number prefix – let them!
Plus one more!
- Show them what they’re getting at the end. Similar to how ecommerce sites allows you to review your purchase, similarly you need to show them what they’ve just signed up for.
Tags: FOWD, Ryan Singer, Sign Up Forms
Pace Learning
May 14, 2009 at 12:09 pm
New kid on the block - Wordpress site for Pace Learning.
Love the fact that the site is fresh and clean and doesn’t talk at you like so many other executive coach and training companies do. Home page entry is written for these times, but never once mentions “in these difficult recessionary times.” Instead we talk about getting the best out of what you’ve got, and how to drive productivity – things which are on the top of mind of any Training Manager.
Tags: Pace Learning, Wordpress Site
Email Marketing Results For Ireland
May 13, 2009 at 2:29 pm
I’ve been in this game for quite a long time. And it occurred to me recently that I’m sitting on some pretty interesting data about email marketing results achieved for Irish clients. I’ve decided to share.
A Couple Of Things To Note:
- I’m deliberately keeping them vague so as to protect identities of my clients.
- These are the kind of results you’d expect to achieve with lists of up to 3,000. If you’re using lists with larger numbers than that, that are less cleaned, you might expect to achieve slightly different results.
Email Marketing Results For Ireland
I’ve been managing email campaigns for Irish clients since 2003. The following is a summary of results for campaigns going back to April 2007.
- Two full years of data – I’m no statistician, so didn’t have desire to go back further
- Clients ranging from B2B, B2C, not-for-profit
What is the average open rate?
You’ve got two types of lists here – those who know their list very well and those who know their list not so well. Please note that clients are always asked to confirm that they are legally compliant on the lists they supply.
- Know list well + personalised: 35.6%
- Know list well + non personalised: 28.0%
This proves that people are more likely to open your email if you address it to them.
- Know list vaguely + personalised: 22.1%
- Know list vaguely + non personalised: 22.0%
When people don’t know you that well, it doesn’t matter if you personalise or not. You’re going to get slightly less than 1 in 4 opening.
What is the average click rate?
- Know list well + personalised: 41.6%
- Know list well + non personalised: 30.5%
Conclusion: people are more likely to click links in your email if you’ve engaged them by addressing it to them.
- Know list vaguely + personalised: 26.5%
- Know list vaguely + non personalised: 34.0%
Conclusion: if you’re sending to a list you don’t know well you’re better off sending it without personalisation.
The Initial Buzz
In our experience, there’s often a fall-off in open and click rates for service companies after the initial send. When managing email campaigns, we’re more interested in the average click and open rates from the second send onwards. It’s easier to identify trends when you exclude the initial send. But for ecommerce sites, while open rates stay more or less the same, clicks rise. If you’re an ecommerce site and you’re not actively emailing, you should!
The Importance Of List Cleaning
We’re always banging on about the importance of list cleaning. See here for more info.
It’s worthwhile to look at your bounces every couple of sends and either convert them back to live email addresses or remove them from your list. What’s the point of marketing to people who are ‘dead addresses’? Some clients partake of this service and the results are really positive:
- Open rates on lists that have been cleaned increase by 6.8% from the first send to the second send.
- Click rates on cleaned lists still go down from send 1 to send 2 by 11.2%.
I hope this information is helpful to you if you’re planning to introduce email marketing to your marketing mix. Or if you’re a competitor and you’re having a look, I hope these excellent results sit up and make you take note! I believe that we achieve higher rates than average on our client campaigns because we offer a complete email marketing service:
- Planning – based on what we know works
- List building
- Layouts that work
- Design that begs to be opened
- Copywriting that makes even the dryest content sing
- Template construction that breaks the balls of most email clients
- On time delivery
- Reporting – that comes from an inherently nosy place. I love to get to know your lists through their actions!
When you can have all this for the same price as licensing someone else’s software, it’s a no-brainer to go to Brightspark.
The results above are available to download for the pdf lovers out there. Feel free to pass around.
Tags: Email Marketing Ireland
Better Than The Radio Ads
May 13, 2009 at 11:30 am
I heard the radio ad this week for Ben Dunne’s latest venture – tenderme.ie. Decided to give it a spin on Monday and was very pleasantly surprised!
Mr D’s age and voice doesn’t make him sound like he would really value good web design. In all honesty I was expecting a template joomla looking thing, so was happy to see a nice fresh and vibrant looking home page, and inside pages are even cleaner:
It’s so easy to use, I actually got confused! I was looking for a register button and couldn’t find one. That’s because you simply have to click the create a tender button, select your category, add your email address and you’re away! I like it.
A mild fail is the fact that the email it spits out with the validation link also has a password in it. I didn’t notice that, so keen was I to click the link and get going. When I later went to post a tender and needed to login using my password I was a stumped for a bit. My suggestion would be to simply bold up the password text in the email and add some text saying “YOU WILL NEED THIS LATER”. Or send the password back in a separate email once you’ve validated yourself.
There are a few annoying spelling mistakes, not just from the users of the site offering “electriction availebel”, but in the category listings:
I’m wondering how they plan to police it?
Do they have a community moderator whose job it is to remove cranks? At the moment there are a few abuses showing on the home page – Aussie Slayer required. Someone else is giving away a colour tv (wrong site go to Dublin Waste). And some dumb ass architect who managed to get through 100 years of architect school doesn’t realise that the tenders section isn’t where you advertise your services.
It’s easy to get the community to police itself by adding ‘report abuse’ links. Every time a member spots something that is blatantly wrong, they click the button and it alerts the administrators who can then either take it down or contact the offender and ask them to edit.
If those kind of annoyances persist, the site will fail. But if they are quickly removed, then I think this site could be a winner. I heard Ben Dunne on the radio yesterday and he mentioned that he set up the site to get business moving again and to bring together buyers and sellers. That is to be commended. I think it’s a great idea. And it is so of our time. It wasn’t so long ago that plumbers, carpenters, and electricians didn’t want to know you for less than €500 and even at that you had to wait 8 months! Now there’s a whole load of jobs on from people who are not prepared to be fleeced anymore. If you’re a skilled person and you want to pick up some work, you’d do well to get on there. There’s a small fee (€3) if you wish to respond to a tender, which I expect is there to stop the messers and ensure that responses are genuine. If a new piece of work is worth more than €3 to you, then get on over to tenderme.ie
Tags: Tenderme.ie
How to get your name off Direct Marketing lists
May 7, 2009 at 8:39 am
More businesses are marketing using the junk mail method. In my area, the people who do the depositing of stuff can’t read because they ignore the ‘no junk mail’ sign on my door. Am considering amending it in the run up to the local and European elections to ‘no Fianna Fail junk’, just to be really clear.
But I’m not taking any chances. Which is why I got in touch with the IDMA and got their form for getting my name removed from their lists.
Complete this form and you will save some trees.
I expect it will only stop the more law abiding junk mailers. Expect to continue receiving free bin bags and stickers from private sector companies that claim to be helping the poor.
And you can also get your name removed from email lists.
Tags: IDMA, remove name from lists
Jack & Jill Website
May 6, 2009 at 8:18 am
The Jack & Jill Foundation has a new website. I assisted on the architecture and content writing. The objectives of the new site are:
- To encourage donations
- To share stories
- To disemminate information about all the various events and fund raisers they’ve got on
It’s seldom that I get moved to tears when working on website content. Earlier this year, I was working on the family stories. These are the letters from parents of Jack & Jill babies that thank the foundation for what it has done for them. As I read through tales of tiny babies suffering – and HSE and Government non-intervention – I thought about all the healthy happy little babies my friends and family have been blessed with. It was a particularly gloomy week at the start of the year – SR Technics had just laid off its knowledge based staff – but these stories from the front line made me realise how blessed we really are. I forwarded this page on to my friends as soon as it went into development – if you are a parent, I’d recommend you read it too.
Content writing by yours truly. Read some.
Design and development by Squire.
And welcome to the blog world – Jonathan Irwin – newest blogger on the block!
Tags: Jack & Jill Foundation
One Of Those Things That Can’t Be Ignored
May 1, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Sometimes an email lands in my inbox that makes me sit up.
Somehow the message breaks through the fug of noise in my head.
I read.
Scepticism enters.
What’s the cost? How much are they looking for?
And then the beauty of this one makes me smile and reach for my credit card – it’s only €40.
While in Northern Uganda recently, we came across some young kids between 3 and 5 who were the offspring of girls who had been abducted from their families and subjected to lives of rape and torture in the bush under the rebel leader Joseph Kony and the LRA.
These girls are made pregnant by the “commanders” (themselves kids) and if rescued find it hard to ever go home because of the shame.
The babies are usually the last to ever get any assistance or help.
But ZEST4KIDZ hopes to change that.
We plan to get these wonderful forgotten young kids into primary education and sponsor them for the next first steps of their lives. We will assist their young mums too – but we need your help to look after the babies.
WHAT DO THEY NEED? €40 – this will cover them for the next 12 months
Can you help us help them?
Donate €40 this bank holiday weekend and feel good about yourself. For these kids have had to deal with a very different R word. Now we have a chance to give them a chance.
