To succeed in online marketing, you have to work
fast and understand what works almost intuitively.
While marketing experts wisely advocate doing
at least an A/B split test on some crucial aspect of
the project, sometimes there isn’t time, a budget or
management support for tests. But luckily, there’s a
lot of research we can deploy in our efforts to drive
customer behavior.
In this article, we try to consolidate the wealth
of available research on building trust and credibility
into websites, e-mail solicitations and landing pages
so you can get the best response rates. Using a case
study and additional examples, we’ll cover design and
marketing best practices and how these apply to both
business-to-business and consumer marketing.
CASE IN POINT: FLIR
FLIR Systems sells infrared cameras and markets
directly to prospects and customers. The target
audience includes individuals, medium-sized businesses,
corporations and large enterprises like utilities.
Sales are both direct and indirect. Leads are
funneled to the sales force.
Last fall, David Francouer, director of Marketing
for FLIR, launched an advertising campaign—with
a six-panel insert in a trade magazine—around the theme “We know infrared. Like nobody else.” The
ad offered free training with purchase of an infrared
camera and a free whitepaper download, “12 Things
to Know Before You Buy an Infrared Camera.” That
platform supported a lead-generation direct-mail and
e-mail campaign. The online campaign went entirely
to outside prospect lists. The campaign’s success has
been phenomenal by the firm’s standards (and anybody
else’s).
On the campaign and how his team gets results,
Francouer says, “Speed to market and sophisticated
online systems are critical to any campaign’s success,
and you have to resist the urge to make it perfect and
overedit. Speed, in and of itself, makes the difference.
Not just in terms of getting it out the door, but in
building a culture that knows how to launch sophisticated
campaigns quickly, over and over again.”
“With the 12 Things campaign, the whitepaper
went from concept to final form in three days, with
the cover design and web landing pages being designed
in parallel. An e-mail blast and home page banner ad
were crafted and launched within two days after the
whitepaper was created. After this, a longer process of
getting the whitepaper placed in various newsletters,
media websites, with strategic partners and customers
began and continues through this day. If you have confidence in your voice and have a team united in
executing best practices, your campaigns will resonate
with your target audience,” notes Francouer.
“One caveat,” continues Francouer. “Prior to
launch, this campaign was tested four different ways
to promote the whitepaper—with one of the four
showing close to a 400 percent better performance
on click-through rates. With this testing in place, our
marketing budget was much better spent.”
12 THINGS
While, as a designer, you usually can’t control the
copy you get to work with or the IT department,
you can influence or determine the creative execution,
graphics and copy emphasis. Let’s take a look
at the successful 12 Things e-mail, landing page and
supporting website home page design and how they
follow online-design best practices.
FLIR’s 12 Things e-mail was all text and very
simple. All-text e-mails
work well in business-to-business, especially mailed
under the imprimatur of a trusted source—e.g., to
the opt-in e-mail list of a trade magazine. In 2006,
Silverpop research (www.silverpop.com)—a provider
of permission-based e-mail marketing software
services—reported that all-text B-to-B messages had
54 percent higher click rates than those with equal
amounts of text and images.
Whatever the e-mail format, the e-mail should
tell three things “above the fold”:
- What the offer is
- Why the reader should care (key benefits)
- How to get it (the call to action)
Both the Pitney Bowes and the FLIR
e-mail examples underscore credibility, because
they sell the offer. FLIR doesn’t make the mistake
of pitching its infrared cameras and itself as a great
company to do business with. The focus in both
e-mails is on how to solve a problem from the prospect’s
perspective.
DON’T WEAR IT OUT
If you use one e-mail format constantly, change it
up. If you use predesigned templates in one format,
develop alternate formats that test well. Go from alltext
to a postcard e-mail format or vice versa. Some
research shows there is “wear out” seen in e-mail
marketing, just like in direct mail. Wear out means
that effectiveness diminishes over time as people
become familiar with a format. FLIR employs formats
with graphics successfully as well.
THE LANDING
During a discussion of a “Landing Page Checklist”
among E-mail Council’s E-mail Design Roundtable
members, Megan Walsh of Williams-Sonoma
is quoted as saying, “E-mail is not just about driving
traffic to the site—it’s about being a gateway
to conversion. Whether the desired outcome is a
purchase, a download or simply creating a consistent
experience that might drive a repeat visit,
optimizing landing pages is an often-forgotten,
yet crucially important step in delivering results
from e-mail.”
The FLIR 12 Things landing page design employs
a number of design best practices for landing pages:
- Action on top—cuts to the chase in the top
300 pixels
- Repeats the e-mail headline
- Uses scannable features such as headlines,
subheads, lists and boldface
- Uses a very light background for body copy
- Highlights the offer and makes it crystal
clear how to get it
- Highlights keywords that triggered the clickthroughs
from the e-mail
- Uses an image of the offered whitepaper
- Keeps the fill-in form relatively short, but
gets enough info to satisfy the needs of the
sales force
- Highlights the call-to-action
- Focuses on the value of the whitepaper (the
offer), not the brand or the product line
- Avoids unnecessary links: no links to “About
Us” or “More Information” or to anywhere
else the responder can get diverted
- No banner ads
- No navigation bars
- Avoids clutter; uses white space and clean
design principles
- Makes it easy—easy to understand, easy
to respond
FLIR’s tests in this campaign underscored the
best practice of optimizing landing pages for a single
offer. The landing page is closely correlated to the
language—and look and feel—of the home page
rotator, insert, trade ads and e-mail. This close correlation
is another best practice.
Marketing Sherpa’s “2008 Landing Page
Handbook” finds that when it comes to landing
pages, even simple changes can make dramatic differences.
You see two of them on the FLIR landing
page: no navigation bar and using design elements
and copy consistent with the ad, insert, e-mail or the
direct mail campaign that the prospect was reading
just seconds earlier.
Since most marketers make the mistake of sending
people directly to a web page from e-mails or ads
where conversions are significantly lower, just having
a landing page puts you ahead of the game.
TRUST US
To close the loop on building credibility and creating
trust, the whitepaper itself or user experience has
to deliver. Regarding whitepapers, Francouer says,
“Aside from trying to write something that is interesting,
engaging, easy to read and even entertaining,
the main goal is to leave the reader looking for more
to read from the author. If that level of respect is
attained, then the details of what you are communicating
will shine through.”
As for user experience, Stanford University
Persuasion Technology Lab compiled 10 guidelines
for building the credibility of a website. The
guidelines are based on three years of research that
included over 4500 people. It notes that consumers
judge website credibility quickly by its design:
“Design your site so it looks professional (or is
appropriate for your purpose). We find that people
quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When
designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography,
images, consistency issues and more. Of course,
not all sites gain credibility by looking like IBM.com.
The visual design should match the site’s purpose.”
“Little” things, such as misspellings, bad grammar,
an annoying Flash presentation, weird fonts,
huge swaths of body copy on a dark background or
broken links, are detrimental to a site’s credibility. But
visually attractive websites have been shown to produce
a positive “halo effect” that persists and can overcome
some negative experiences. This first impression
can be formed in as little as 50 milliseconds.
Forrester Research’s annual Best And Worst Of
B2C Site Design, 2008 report evaluated sites using
Forrester’s 25 criteria. Forrester points out that credible
home pages provide evidence that user goals can
be completed. It turns out the top five failures of the
sites examined were in these areas: text legibility, task
flow, error recovery, privacy policies and information
scent (the cues, or scent, leading visitors to more
information or a resulting action). Weak text legibility,
task flow and poor information scent are three
things designers can fix or influence.
Effectiveness and transparency build credibility
and trust. In the end, trust is measured by the willingness
of visitors to risk time, money and personal
data on your offers and website.
