Solid design is the key to growing your business. Period. Point Blank. Fin. We could (and probably will) talk until we’re blue in the face on this subject, but we thought it might be helpful to hear it from others as well. This guest post is part of a new series on the crowdSPRING blog highlighting the importance of investing in good design. Why design? The real question is: why not?
Even though the numbers vary across different industries, according to Smart Insights, the average website conversion rate is definitely somewhere between 2% and 4%. In other words, a large majority of people who visit your site for the first time leave quickly, without some form of the desired action. And that is why some many companies have turned to remarketing.
So what is remarketing exactly? Basically, the term is used to describe the process of re-engaging prospects with email messages, in an effort to bring them back to your website. In other words, remarketing gives you a second chance to make a good impression. And this is why, according to statistics gathered by the Digital Information World, almost 70% of marketing agencies are moving from dollars from traditional marketing, and investing it into remarketing.
How Does It Work?
The term remarketing often gets confused with the term retargeting, partially because it works in a similar way. Just like with traditional retargeting, your remarketing process starts when a user opens your email, and a cookie is dropped into his browser. When the same user visits other sites on the Internet, your ad will be displayed prominently, and your brand will stay top of mind. This is also great for promotional purposes, because according to Exact Target, almost 80% of consumer prefer to receive promotional material through email than any other channel.
Email remarketing has become a top priority for marketers around the world mainly because shopping cart abandonment rates have increased significantly in the last couple of years. According to Sale Cycle’s most recent remarketing report, nearly 75% of consumers abandon eCommerce sites mid-purchase and leave their carts behind. This means that around three-quarters of people who visit your website and initiate an order will not complete it at all. So if you want to increase conversions, sending an immediate email to a person who left your shopping cart can be an extremely effective tactic.
Email Design and Optimization
The first thing you need to do is get consumers’ attention by sending them ads specifically made for them, which basically means showing them same and/or similar items they were looking at. As Experian Marketing Services data shows, personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates. Now, seeing our attention span is getting shorter and shorter, you have to assume that people aren’t actually reading your emails, but scanning through them. So avoid sending overlong, text-heavy messages, and instead use something like the inverted pyramid model.
Also, you have to keep in mind that mobile optimization is a must in today’s day and age. According to a recent Litmus report, almost 50% of emails are now opened on mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets. The report has also shown that if your email isn’t optimized for mobile, around 70% of users will delete it immediately. This means that you have to make sure that your images fit every screen size, that CTA buttons are tall and wide enough and that any text links are far enough from each other, to avoid any accidental clicking.
Landing Page Design
So why does your remarketing campaign need a well-designed landing page? For the same reason, your pay-per-click campaigns need them – t maintain message match. A landing page will allow you to completely eliminate any distractions from your offer. So when a consumer finally decides to reconnect with your company, he will see exactly what he looked for, and will not get lost in the lack of message match. We will not go into detail about the basics of landing optimization, but here some things you should pay special attention to.
For starters, even the smallest changes in your landing’s headline can go a long way. A recent study conducted by the Conductor Blog revealed that 64% of users prefer the first letter in every word of a headline to be capitalized. Next, if you plan on using pictures, make sure that they are real photos, taken by a photographer and not some stock pictures, you bought for $20. A few months ago, 160 Driving Academy tested a stock photo of the truck driver against a photo they took themselves. The real one got more than 160% more visits and increased registration by 38%.
Work On your First Impression
People need just a few short seconds to form an opinion. As a matter of fact, it takes only a tenth of second to form a first impression about another person, and emails, pages, and sites are no different. According to a study published in the Journal of Behaviour and Information Technology, an average person needs about 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about your site, and sequentially – your brand. Therefore, if you want your business to stand out in today’s overcrowded market, you have to be creative with your design.
Nate Vickery is a business technology expert mostly focused on future trends applicable to SMB and startup marketing and management processes. He has also been blogging in the past few years about before mentioned topics on various leading sites and communities. In the little free time left, Nate edits a business oriented website – Bizzmarkblog.com.
