#Webdu 2012 presentation, The Unsubscribed - designing for conversion. Do's and don't for email marketing and getting subscribers to your website.

1. The Unsubscribed – Designing
for Conversion
Mia Horrigan
Partner ICT Strategy & Advisory Services
Zen Ex Machina

2. 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

3. Online Brand Relationships
We expend a lot of time and energy to get users to our sites

4. The Social Media Break Up
……and yet with a click of a button, they can be gone

5. 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

6. Top Reasons Consumers Unsubscribe
Top Reasons Why Consumers Unsubscribe Via E-Mail, Facebook & Twitter - February 09, 2011 by Erica Swallow

7. 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

8. Content Overload

9. Consumers Break Up Behaviour
Top Reasons Why Consumers Unsubscribe Via E-Mail, Facebook & Twitter - February 09, 2011 by Erica Swallow

10. 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

11. Designing to Attract and Retain
• How do we design for conversion ?
• How can we retain subscribers?
• How do we turn “likes” into “lovers”?

12. 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

13. 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?

14. The ZXM Social Media Framework

15. 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

16. Changing Consumers Behaviour
pre-contemplation contemplation preparation action maintenance
A D K A R
Awareness Desire Knowledge Action Reinforcement
• Awareness • Desire and • Knowledge • Satisfy • Encouragement
of need motivation to to make the needs and to keep the
(pain point) participate change to participate desired behaviour
satisfy needs
enablement zone engagement zone

17. A D K A R
AWARENESS

18. 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

19. 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

20. Understanding our Target Audience
Who
Government “Technology moves too
quickly”
Andy Smith
Deputy Secretary Andy is a veteran public servant. He
Department of Media 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
AGE: 53 (Older baby boomer)  Communication to be responsive
GENDER: male
ETHNICITY: Anglo-Saxon
OCCUPATION: Public servant
 Communication to be convenient
Behavioural
stats
 Communication to be brief and straight
to the point
 To keep the Minister advised
Trusted
Demographics Values Motivations Pain-points
Expertise sources
Motivations Value of the ACMA Frustrations & Pain Points
 Public Service  Career advancement  Negotiable  Getting the ACMA to deliver
 Television Industry  Slow response times
 Project management  Political naivety
 Policy  Being told “it can’t be done”
 Ministerial relations
Source: Nielsen/NetRating 04-06. Forrester,2008/9. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008/9

21. How Do They Like to Be Engaged?
Gen Y Gen X Boomers Seniors

22. Web 2.0 Behaviour
• Publish blog
Creators 24% • Create video/music
• Write articles or stories and post them
• Update status on social networking sites
Conversationalists 36%
• Post updates on twitter
• Post ranting/reviews of products and services
Critics 36% • Comment on someone else’s blog
• Contribute to online forums
• Use RSS feeds
Collectors 23% • Votes for websites online
• Add tags to web pages or photos
• Maintain profile
Joiners 68%
• Visit social networking sites
• Read blogs
Spectators 73% • Listen to podcasts
• Read articles, reviews and online forums
In-actives 14% • None of the above
Source: Forrester, 2008.

23. 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.

24. 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

25. 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?

26. Channel and Age
Gen-Y Gen-X Boomer Senior
Facebook 99% 96% 97% 99%
Telephone 9% 30% 30% 27%
Face-to- 21% 27% 24% 43%
face
LinkedIn 2% 14% 17% 14%
Twitter 8% 9% 4% 0%
Myspace 3% 5% 4% 0%
Paper 4% 8% 6% 13%
Sensis Research 2010

27. Choice of Channels?

28. Where to Focus?
• Old mantra of “be everywhere” replaced by
need to
“be where it matters”
• Focus on where we could see results

29. A D K A R
DESIRE

30. 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

31. 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

32. 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

33. Which Publishing Strategy?
This is where Initial plan to
we were move to here
The Mass Publisher The Problem Solver
• Make consumers aware of a solution
• Create content of broad interest to their
• Seek to help consumers in a market
customers
solve a problem
• Post articles on topics related to product
• As these customers search for answers,
or service and have copious links to
find opportunities to engage and suggest
product pages
where to find what they want
Becoming a social May get there
organisation one day
The Personal Concierge
The Social Engager • Personalisedcontent to move customer
• Not just a vehicle for promotions and through a decision journey from
gathering followers, but a place to considering to evaluating, experiencing,
engage advocating and, bonding
• Feed the channel - respond to customer • Build content guided by insights into
posts, design experiences that encourage customer behaviour (where have they
sharing to get others involved come from, what are they looking at,
what have others Like her bought)

34. A D K A R
KNOWLEDGE

35. 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

36. 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

37. 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

38. 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

39. Relevant Content is a Top Priority
Top Reasons Why Consumers Unsubscribe Via E-Mail, Facebook & Twitter - February 09, 2011 by Erica Swallow

40. 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

41. 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

42. 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

43. Responsive Design
Mobile App
changed to
responsive design
(CSS3, HTML5)

44. A D K A R
ACTION

45. 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

46. 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

47. 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

48. Be Clear and Make it Easy to Act
Follow Us
Share
This
Sign
Petition
Subscribe
Calculate what
it will cost you
Register
Result – over 130,000 signed our petition

49. 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.

50. Integrated Our Social Media

51. 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

52. Simple BI Mechanisms
Channel Behaviour Outcome Important for what Measurable?
segment
Facebook / Joiner, Critic People are • Primary • Yes
Twitter (Likes) listening • Secondary
Twitter / G+ Critic (Retweets/ People trust the • Secondary • Yes
shares) information and • Tertiary
feel it worthy
enough for
others to know
about
Blogs Creator, Critic People feel the • Secondary • Yes
information is • Tertiary
worth discussing
Email Joiner, The information • Secondary • Yes*
Spectator, is worth keeping • Tertiary
Collector
Paper Collector, The information • Secondary • No
Shares is worth keeping • Tertiary
& giving to
others
*If the email newsletter has Campaign Monitor-like functionality

53. Ways to Measure Campaign Activity

54. Understanding the Analytics
• Don't expect to be
getting 80% open rates
• 20% to 40% is about
average

55. 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)

56. 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)

57. 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

58. Site Analytics – Post Implementation
First Month – soft launch “skinny solution”
Second Month – fully integrated campaign 3 x more visitors and page views in 1
month than what was achieved over
12 months

59. A D K A R
REINFORCEMENT

60. 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

61. 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

62. Summary
pre-contemplation contemplation preparation action maintenance
A D K A R
Awareness Desire Knowledge Action Reinforcement
• Content delivered • Communicate • Enable • Deliver on wants • Good user-experience –
into search engine capability to deliver identification with • Deliver on Needs virtual or physical
results thru SEO Wants brand and Authors • Satisfy ‘Desire’ regardless
strategy • Speak w/ • Assure knowledge of channel
• Brand consistency consistent & of delivery thru • Capability to share with
• Word-of-mouth via appropriate voice channels of community thru physical
physical and • Low-barrier to preference or
virtual participation • Knowledge that virtual social mechanisms
mechanisms • Potential to deliver action will result in
enabled thru social on power removal of pain-
media motivators points

63. Designing for Conversions Do’s & Don’ts
Do’s
• 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

64. Designing for Conversions Do’s & Don’ts
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

65. Thank you
Mia Horrigan
@miahorri
zenexmachina.wordpress.com
Mia Horrigan
Mia.Horrigan@zenexmachina.com
http://www.slideshare.net/miahorri