This month we are delighted to share a case study on how to leverage A/B Testing to create a data driven mobile campaign. As marketers struggle to enhance the conversion of digital site while curtailing budgets, let’s see how A/B Testing can bring the value to your business.

Real life retail case will be discussed therefore make sure you reserve your ticket in advance and don’t miss out this great opportunity.

We are also going to update you with the latest changes of Google Analytics!

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

There is limited availability so sign up early to guarantee your place. The program starts on February 19th.

Non-DAA-members can save $200 on the package.

For further information and to register for this limited time offer, please visit the UBC Continuing Studies website.

Web Analytics Wednesday #27 will be cancelled on this Wednesday (Dec 5) due to business engagement. New date for the event will be announced later. We apologize to disappoint you!

This month we are delighted to share a case study on how to leverage A/B Testing to create a data driven mobile campaign. As marketers struggle to enhance the conversion of digital site while curtailing budgets, let’s see how A/B Testing can bring the value to your business.

Real life retail case will be discussed therefore make sure you reserve your ticket in advance and don’t miss out this great opportunity.

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

Product Lifecycle Email Campaign

Taking product lifecycle (PLC) as advantage is one of the strategies in operating e-business, especially those within FMCG industry such as healthcare products or providing automobile maintenance services. Routine consumption is a must; marketers can send customers who purchase contact lens today replenishment email two weeks from now. This triggers two percent much higher in increasing repeat sales, which is the conversion afterwards.

Product Life Cycle

Shaping Sense of Urgency

In Hong Kong, Groupon business grows steadily without doubts because of the sense of urgency concept. By sending subscribers the coupon code to redeem limited stocks within limited consumption time, this technique leads to impulse buying. Besides, it is a great way to bring customers back to online store while driving sales at any given time. In fact, those campaigns that only last for twenty-four hours greatly stimulate human impulse while relatively less time for consideration.

Sense of Urgency

Maximize Consumers Profit by Segmentation

Online business record consumers details once they transact. Every customer is unique; by rewarding them the same benefits have no values, particular to those making large transactions with anticipate consumption pattern. When evaluating the LTV, profit margin is the consideration. Instead of giving them same benefits, segmenting customers into several groups according to past purchase frequency, past purchase value, acquisition channel, location, and demographic data. Afterwards, marketers can undergo A/B testing of the offer for each group when doing email campaign.

Be reminded that high open rate of email doesn’t represent the whole picture and without giving you a lot insights. Instead, focus on end-to-end conversion. For instance, number of email receivers really downloads the coupon through the email campaign.

A/B Testing

Additional Suggestion

Continuous monitoring your e-business with analytical tool such as Google Analytics is key to success. Pay attention to consumer behavior on the online shopping platform, product preferences, purchasing pattern (e.g. Have a transaction every month). Whenever launching email campaign, undergoes A/B Testing including subject line, offers, etc. Customizing email is necessary to make customers fall in love to not only your product but also services. Every email campaign is trial and error, identify the optimistic sending time may enhance the effectiveness of your campaign.

Opt-In If Relevant Content
To motivate people to opt-in to sign up the website, deliver credible content is necessary. For example, never direct the visitors to pages that are irrelevant from searches. Assure the site navigation is user-friendly; at least people won’t feel stuck when surfing. Constant traffics can then be maintained once audience confidence has built towards the website.

Opt-In If Splash Page Instead of Popup
According to a survey conducted by Jakob Nielsen, altogether 18,808 respondents were interviewed. 95% of respondents said their online experience was affected “negatively or very negatively” by design elements that popped up in front of their windows while 93% of the batch reported the same for elements that covered what they were trying to see. Over 50% reported that Popup affected their opinion of the advertiser very negatively. Almost 40% said it affected their opinion of the website very negatively.

Opt-In If High Opportunity Cost
In rational, you will never subscribe something not necessary or low opportunity cost in trading off. Thus, there are several questions marketers should ask themselves before asking people to sign up the page. First, are the resources you provide can really benefit the subscribers? If the subscribed content in your site can be found somewhere else without putting significant efforts, then why it worth for signing up especially for those payment is required? Second, before new comers subscribe the page, can they already able to view the content such as documents, video instantly? If the answer is yes, it sounds abnormal and no sense to give you the email in subscribing the page.

Splash Page

Opt-In if Incentives Given
There are different ways to motivate people to perform an action. Incentives are one of the cases. Monetary rewards include discount, coupons, etc can generate the lead effectively but it is not encouraged. If website offers educational videos or credible document, then it is possible to allow audience to view them partly to stimulate the motives. By emphasizing sorts of materials subscribers can actually get help raising their perceived values. If the content matches with their expectation, it’s easy to enhance the opt-in rate.

Do you have any other solutions can share with us to enhance the opt-in subscriptions of the website? It’s appreciated if you can share your point of view too!

Criteria of Effective QR Code Campaign

In fact, there are some criteria in evaluating if the QR Code campaign is effective. First of all, the size of the QR Code is large enough for viewers to spot and scan. Second, marketers should give audience a reason to take out the phone and spend time on scanning the code. Incentives such as coupons redemption are for instance. Third, landing page with mobile support is essential in motivating audience to continue reading the message. Otherwise, visitors leave the page immediately once the expected message cannot be found within seconds.

Failure of QR Code Campaigns Case Studies

QR Code Escalator Crown

Advertising with QR Code in public transport would like to target mass market, but believing that nobody else can spot a tiny QR Code next to the bus wheel. Besides, it sounds stupid and danger as passengers or pedestrians won’t chase buses to scan the code. Thus, remember not to put QR Code in mobile object such as sticking on the balustrade or the escalator crown in train station.

Bus QR Code

If QR Code appear in highway or billboard hang over the skyscraper, that’s will be difficult to reach the audience as people even cannot spot and scan it. People may have to take the helicopter to thousands feet to scan the code, that’s inconvenience and meaningless! Besides, drivers won’t stop the car for a while because of your QR Code or otherwise serious traffic accidents will be resulted.

QR Code Highway

In shopping mall, it is not difficult to find a QR Code such as boutique windows, on sales flyers. These are relatively effective as compared with the one below. People have to break their necks in order to scan the code. Besides, the code is so tiny that the scanner is impossible to detect the code. Thus, marketers should test whether they can scan the code easily before implementations.

QR Code Shopping Mall

The failure examples above highlight common mistakes from marketers, hope these give you some ideas in leveraging QR Code in doing digital marketing campaigns.

Email Marketing Return on Investment

Viewing Email Preferences – By Mobile Devices

To engage e-newsletters subscribers, marketers must cope with the lifestyle of current database, viewing email behavior for instance. Reported by Nielsen in May 2011, there was 38 percent of mobile users own a smartphone while 55 percent of all new phones purchased were smartphones. This indicates there has been a shift in how people view emails from desktop computers to mobile devices. To enhance the readership of the email, designing the email for mobile platform is necessary.

Effective Testing Elements – Not Subject Line

A/B Testing is crucial to optimize email performance, however, the most popular testing elements were not always the most effective. In the past, subject line and messages are major elements to be evaluated in driving audience to open the email before mass mailing approach. However, according to the chart below, both landing page and target audience are relatively effective in doing so.

Although A/B Testing is undergone to optimize the email performance, only 15 percent of e-Marketers from MarketingSherpa research will define key metrics and brainstorm new testing ideas. Unfortunately, there are less than 20 percent of e-Marketers will review the testing results and continue to follow up the investigated details. If email data doesn’t integrate, then it is meaningless in doing the testing. These affect segmentation and afterwards lower the conversion.

A/B Testing Preference for eDM

Future of Email Marketing

With reference from the report, 67 percent of marketers surveyed intended on growing their email-marketing budget. To wisely utilizing the budget, e-Marketers are necessary to tidy up the database and spend efforts in segmenting the database according to the most updated preferences. Be reminded to deliver the right message to right targets at the right time.

Email Marketing Budget

Let’s give a basic introduction of bounce rate. Defined by Google Analytics, “Bounce Rate” is the number of people entering a page and exiting from that same page. Kindly speaking, incurring a high bounce rate is in fact refers as risk to the website because visitors are unable to search for solutions to satisfy their wants. This maybe contributed by numerous reasons, non-user friendly navigation and usability; low loading speed of the page, pop-up windows, auto play multimedia and of course not mobile support are for instance.

Whenever developing a website, think from visitors’ perspectives. Try to understand their navigation behaviors in order to offer a customized navigation experience and thus they feel confidence in using the website. Actually, users usually take no longer than 15 to 30 seconds in searching for a query within the site or otherwise visitors properly will not visit your page anymore. Next, please be reminded that web users only wait for maximum 4 seconds to load your page before they leave or bounce, unrelated content no matter photos, videos or flash are not recommended to put into the page, especially the landing page.

Mobile Marketing

Website supporting mobile platform is key to reduce bounce rate. As the dramatically growth of mobile usage to browse the sites according to Microsoft research recently, a responsive design for mobile platform is necessary to be designed by 2014. One half of all local searches are mainly from mobile devices and nearly 90% of mobile Internet users are using the devices while watching TV. These indicate the potential in developing a mobile platform for the website. However, currently a high percentage of websites are still immature in supporting mobile platform, poor navigation experience such as poor layout and thumbnail cannot be loaded accordingly. These drive high bounce rate to the website. To minimize the problem, if you are using WordPress to build the site, try install plug-ins as if WP Mobile Detector, WordPress Mobile Pack and Mobile Press to adjust the website.

WordPress Mobile Detector

WeChat Web Analytics

To briefly introduce the function of WeChat, it’s similar to social app likes Whatsapp or Viber with the position of “The New Way To Connect”, having an instant text and audio messaging, able to share photo among friends. However, location based friend finder and unique QR Code to connect friends are the highlights. Shaking the mobile and users can find new friends easily. Although the app is originated in China, Russian, Indian, Vietnams, Thai, Malaysian, etc can freely download WeChat and compatible with their languages. Thus, that’s an opportunity for Tencent to expand its presence internationally.

WeChat QR Code Tracking

Although WeChat is quite novel in digital marketing, analytical methodologies to tackle the measurement issues is necessary. Marketers most often would advertise in outdoor attached with WeChat QR Code can only drive subscriptions while data and path analysis couldn’t be tracked and implemented. Then, what should be the solutions?

Firstly, marketers can attach a tagged URL during in-app browsing, visitors behaviors in WeChat can then be tracked whenever they click it to direct to another page, from WeChat to business website for instance. Similar to previous action in URL Builder, marketers can replace the medium and source as mobile and WeChat respectively.

Secondly, by generating a QR Code embedded a tag and html to open the WeChat app directly after scanning, audience can view the advertised messages such as discounts afterwards. Representatives from company can communicate with the customers directly once they opt in to subscribe afterwards. In terms of tracking in Google Analytics, there will be an indication showing users are referred from that specific QR Code.

Hope the sharing this week helps you in tackling the analytics in WeChat. To know more about digital analytics, please keep in touch with us.

With reference to Hubspot’s Dan Zarella, the optimistic sharing time on Facebook should be on Saturday noon (Eastern Time) and at 7pm (Eastern Time), which is midnight 12am and 7am in the morning in Hong Kong time zone respectively. However, different industries have various ideals posting time. For example, retail industries have the highest engagement on Sundays and the lowest on Fridays whereas business and finance industries get their peak around midweek. If marketers plan to grab fans attention through posting major news such as announcing promotional message, they are suggested to do so between 11am and 4pm because audiences have the behaviors to login facebook before, during and after lunch or tea.

Facebook Engagement

Besides, to enhance the likelihood of the post stands at the top of feeds, words such as “Limited Time”, “Today” and “Exclusive” help drawing audiences’ attentions. Moreover, try to tag people (Up to 30) whenever images or videos are posted, especially post related to public figure, this raises people awareness to leave comments and even share the word-of-mouth in the social media channels. Last but not the least, e-Marketers are advised to launch one to two posts in maximum per day in order to retain the engagement level while not classified as spamming from fans’ perspectives.

To measure the effectiveness of post in driving engagement and in advanced to increase number of fans; social media analytics tools such as SocialBakers and PageLever are useful by comparing the impressions and engagement.

Impression and Engagement

Remember there are “no single size fits” all business industries, marketers are recommended to do homework by testing different posting periods in order to work out the ideal posting period for your own brand and business. Hope this week sharing gives you a thoughtful insights.