Posted by randfish
The beginning of the year marks the traditional week for bloggers to prognosticate about the 12 months ahead, and, over the last decade I’ve created a tradition of joining in this festive custom to predict the bi… Continue reading →
Posted by danielburstein
Editor’s Note: This subject line contest is no longer accepting entries. In the next few weeks, we will read all of the entries, select the best ones, and then run the test. Then, check the MarketingExperiments blog in a few weeks to see which entry won, why it won, and what you can learn from that to further improve your own marketing.
This blog post ends with an opportunity for you to win a stay at the ARIA in Vegas and a ticket to Email Summit, but it begins with an essential question for marketers…
How can you improve already successful marketing, advertising, websites and copywriting?
Today’s Moz blog post is unique. Not only are we going to teach you how to address this challenge, we’re going to offer an example that you can dig into to help drive home the lesson.
Some copy and design is so bad, the fixes are obvious. Maybe you shouldn’t insult the customer in the headline. Maybe you should update the website that still uses a dot matrix font.
I don’t have the answer for you, but I’ll tell you who does – your customers.
There are many tricks, gimmicks and technology you can use in marketing, but when you strip away all the hype and rhetoric, successful marketing is pretty straightforward – clearly communicate the value your offer provides to people who will pay you for that value.
Easier said than done, of course.
Well, there are many ways to learn from customers, such as focus groups, surveys and social listening. While there is value in asking people what they want, there is also a major challenge in it. “People’s ability to understand the factors that affect their behavior is surprisingly poor,” according to research from Dr. Noah J. Goldstein, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations, UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Or, as Malcolm Gladwell more glibly puts it when referring to coffee choices, “The mind knows not what the tongue wants.”
Not to say that opinion-based customer preference research is bad. It can be helpful. However, it should be the beginning and not the end of your quest.
You can use what you learn from opinion-based research to create a hypothesis about what customers want, and then run an experiment to see how they actually behave in real-world customer interactions with your product, marketing messages, and website.
The technique that powers this kind of research is often known as A/B testing, split testing, landing page optimization, and/or website optimization. If you are testing more than one thing at a time, it may also be referred to as multi-variate testing.
To offer a simple example, you might assume that customers buy your product because it tastes great. Or because it’s less filling. So you could create two landing pages – one with a headline that promotes that taste (treatment A) and another that mentions the low carbs (treatment B). You then send half the traffic that visits that URL to each version and see which performs better.
Here is a simple visual that Joey Taravella, Content Writer, MECLABS create to illustrate the concept…
That’s just one test. To really learn about your customers, you must continue the process and create a testing-optimization cycle in your organization – continue to run A/B tests, record the findings, learn from them, create more hypotheses, and test again based on these hypotheses.
This is true marketing experimentation, and helps you build your theory of the customer.
But you probably know all that already. So here’s your chance to practice while helping us shape an A/B test. You might even win a prize in the process.
The Moz Blog and MarketingExperiments Blog have joined forces to run a unique marketing experimentation contest. We’re presenting you with a real challenge from a real organization (VolunteerMatch) and asking you to write a subject line to test (it’s simple, just leave your subject line as a comment in this blog post).
We’re going to pick three subject lines suggested by readers of The Moz Blog and three from the MarketingExperiments Blog and run a test with this organization’s customers. Whoever writes the best performing subject line will win a stay at the ARIA Resort in Las Vegas as well as a two-day ticket to MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015 to help them gain lessons to further improve their marketing.
Sound good? OK, let’s dive in and tell you more about your “client”…
Every year at Email Summit, we run a live A/B test where the audience helps craft the experiment. We then run, validate, close the experiment, and share the results during Summit as a way to teach about marketing experimentation. We have typically run the experiment using MarketingSherpa as the “client” website to test (MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa are sister publications, both owned by MECLABS Institute).
However, this year we wanted to try something different and interviewed three national non-profits to find a new “client” for our tests.
We chose VolunteerMatch – a nonprofit organization that uses the power of technology to make it easier for good people and good causes to connect. One of the key reasons we chose VolunteerMatch is because it is an already successful organization looking to further improve. (Here is a case study explaining one of its successful implementations – Lead Management: How a B2B SaaS nonprofit decreased its sales cycle 99%).
Another reason we chose VolunteerMatch for this opportunity is that it has three types of customers, so the lessons from the content we create can help marketers across a wide range of sales models. VolunteerMatch’s customers are:
After we took VolunteerMatch on as the Research Partner “client,” Jon Powell, Senior Executive Research and Development Manager, MECLABS, worked with Shari Tishman, Director of Engagement and Lauren Wagner, Senior Manager of Engagement, VolunteerMatch, to understand their challenges, take a look at their current assets and performance, and craft a design of experiments to determine what further knowledge about its customers would help VolunteerMatch improve performance.
That design of experiments includes a series of split tests – including the live test we’re going to run at Email Summit, as well as the one you have an opportunity to take part in by writing a subject line in the comments section of this blog post. Let’s take a look at that experiment…
VolunteerMatch wants to increase the response rate of the corporate email list (B2B) by discovering the best possible messaging to use. In order to find out, MarketingExperiments wants to run an A/B split test to determine the best messaging.
However the B2B list is relatively smaller than the volunteer/cause list (B2C) which makes it harder to test in (and gain statistical significance) and determine which messaging is most effective.
So we’re going to run a messaging test to the B2C list. This isn’t without its challenges though, because most individuals on the B2C list are not likely to immediately connect with B2B corporate solutions messaging.
So the question is…
How do we create an email that is relevant (to the B2C list), which doesn’t ask too much, that simultaneously helps us discover the most relevant aspect of the solutions (B2B) product (if any)?
This is where the Moz and MarketingExperiments community comes in to help.
We would like you to craft subject lines relevant to the B2C list, which highlight various benefits of the corporate solutions tool.
We have broken down the corporate solutions tool into three main categories of benefit for the SaaS product. In the comments section below, include which category you are writing a subject line for along with what you think is an effective subject line.
The crew at Moz and MarketingExperiments will then choose the top subject line in each category to test. Below you will find the emails that will be sent as part of the test. They are identical, except for the subject lines (which you will write) and the bolded line in the third paragraph (that ties into that category of value).
Since we’re asking you to try your hand at crafting messaging for this example “client,” here is some more information about the brand to inform your messaging…
Ten things VolunteerMatch believes:
To participate, you must leave your comment with your idea for a subject line before midnight on Tuesday, January 13, 2015. The contest is open to all residents of the 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older. If you want more info, here are the official rules.
When you enter your subject line in the comments section, also include which category you’re entering for (and if you have an idea outside these categories, let us know…we just might drop it in the test).
Next, the Moz marketing team will pick the subject lines they think will perform best in each category from all the comments on The Moz Blog, and the MarketingExperiments team will pick the subject lines we think will perform the best in each category from all the comments on the MarketingExperiments Blog.
We’ll give the VolunteerMatch team a chance to approve the subject lines based on their brand standards, then test all six to eight subject lines and report back to you through the Moz and MarketingExperiments blogs which subject lines won and why they won to help you improve your already successful marketing.
So, what have you got? Write your best subject lines in the comments section below. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
If you’re interested in learning more about marketing experimentation and A/B testing, you might find these links helpful…
And here’s a look at a previous subject line writing contest we’ve run to give you some ideas for your entry…
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!
Continue reading → It’s that time of the year, renewing the New Year resolutions. Starting by reflecting on what I said last year I can note: I indeed got rid of Facebook and Twitter. Getting rid of Google was harder, honestly I did not even try, kind of forgot as I got rid of the first two very early […] Continue reading → Posted by josh_bachynski
Editor’s note: Whew! This one generated a fair bit of controversy in the SEO community. Be sure to check out the comments below the post for a holistic picture of the debate at hand. Carry on!
Penguin is back at the forefr… Continue reading →
Posted by Isla_McKetta
Oh no, another year-end roundup! But before you click away, let me sell you a little on why this is the roundup you actually want to read.
You see, to compile the Moz Top 10 over the last year, we probably read 50 or more articles EACH WEEK, that’s around 100 articles for every issue. We then spent innumerable hours curating and culling until we could share with you the very best of those articles in the bi-weekly Top 10.
So this is not just another listicle. This article is in fact the distillation of the very best content from all over the interwebs for the past year that has anything to do with digital marketing. Basically, we read 2,600 (or so) articles so you don’t have to.
There’s no formula for what makes an article Top-10 worthy. We look for the best content of each two week period and then try and winnow and fit it until each newsletter contains just the right balance of digital marketing tips, tricks, analysis, and inspiration.
We work to reach beyond SEO and find articles that will help people who specialize in content, social, design, UX, and more broaden their skill set and understand the work their marketing compatriots engage in. The mix and style changes as the author of this newsletter changes. I’m biased toward content marketing, Cyrus loves SEO. Trevor’s a sucker for a journalistic slant.
But whoever is writing the latest edition is trying to find that perfect balance so you come away from the newsletter having found at least one article that teaches you something new, changes the way you think about marketing, or makes your job a little easier.
We look for articles by authors new and old that are well written, well illustrated, and comprehensive. Sometimes we publish something because it’s a really good resource or because it says the thing that needs to be said.
Some pieces make the Top 10 because they are heart-achingly eloquent. And sometimes we include a little something fun, playful, or easy on the eyes (but still educational) at the end to finish your day off right.
Then news breaks (ahem, Google) and we reconfigure it all.
For the Top 10 of the Moz Top 10, we could have gone with the most newsworthy content—articles that claim some tactic is dead or some era is over, but Search Engine Land already did that, so I wanted to take a different approach.
Instead, I chose the articles from 2014 that endure. Below you’ll find articles that continue to inspire, how-tos and guides so comprehensive they deserve a revisit, and, yes, even a few tips and tricks that you should really get to. Without further ado, here are the best of the best…
If you can master life, all that marketing stuff is a cake walk. Level up in your day-to-day with this thoughtful, comprehensive, and gorgeous guide from Oliver Emberton.
Paddy Moogan knows a thing or two about link building, and here he’s teamed up with some folks at Moz to turn all of that information into an easy-to-follow yet comprehensive guide. I had no part in this project, so I can safely tell you I <3 the Zelda references.
From getting customer interviews right to nailing content promotion, this massive guide from Distilled covers everything you need to know about content strategy. I learn something new (or rediscover something I should never have forgotten) every time I read it.
If you don’t know what micro data are and you haven’t figured out what to do with Schema.org, your content marketing is missing a crucial element for SERP success. BuiltVisible to the rescue with this amazing and easy-to-follow guide.
If you suspect there’s a blockage in your sales funnel, it’s time to think about CRO. This guide from Qualaroo will tell you everything you need to know to start pinpointing (and fixing) your barriers to conversion.
A survey so big we can only do it once every two years. Peek at salaries, tools, and trends to compare where the digital marketing industry was at the beginning of 2014 to where you are now for a peek at what the future may hold.
Composed of 31 lessons, this online “course” will help you understand user motivation and how you can use psychology to massively improve your user experience.
Sometimes looking at information from a slightly different angle makes it easier to digest. In this delightful piece, Ian Lurie teaches us when it’s okay to game the algorithms at the same time as he’s spelling out, in plain language, what each algorithm update was really about.
Favorite part of this amazingly detailed post from SEER? The fact that it starts from a user’s perspective. So whether you want to “stalk your competitors’ stocks” or “keep track of industry meetups,” there’s an answer (in the form of an IFTTT recipe) here for you.
So much changed in the realm of rich snippets last year. AJ Kohn delves into the relationship between those rich snippets and knowledge graph results. It’s a heady post that just might offer some interesting insight into the future of SERPs.
Like what you see? Want us to read all the articles while you peruse a summary of the most important things you need to know?
After you click that big red button, you’ll be taken to the Moz Top 10 page and asked to enter your email and hit “subscribe.” At that moment we’ll put you on the list for the very next edition, currently scheduled for January 13.
And if you’re someone who’s writing Top-10-worthy content and we just haven’t found you yet, we want to read what you’ve got. So please send us your suggestions. Each edition of the Moz Top 10 only covers content from the most recent two-week period, so send that link while the content is still fresh.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!
Continue reading →