Where to land?

Product launch was official on this past Monday, May 23rd. The impact is still being monitored. The PR piece went on wire and we are seeing a number of outlets picking up the story. And, in addition to the reporter/analyst mentioned last time, we also got some coverage in other trade rags without having to brief them. For a few hours we were quite concerned with a reporter because she misquoted a technical spec which makes our product look stupid. Anyway, with a bit of pleading and arm twisting, we got it fixed. Just got off the phone with our PR agency and it sounds like we will have a more in-depth coverage in the print edition of a trade rag that mentioned us on their website.

On the launch day, Monday, I got an e-mail from a customer saying that our regular contact is no longer with the firm. Life happens and, usually, this is a non-event. But, it just so happen that this regular contact has agreed and been prepped to talk with reporters about the launch. And, it just so happen that a reporter wanted to talk with a user/customer for a quote to file a story on the product launch in two hours. So, for a few hours, I was in a seriously scrambling mode - calling and begging. It was not a pretty sight. Long story short, we manage to secure a pinch hitter in about two hours but it moved beyond the reporter's deadline so she filed talking only with an analyst with no customer quote. Thinking back, I do not know if there is anything I could have done differently. Usually, I would love to have several customers that reporters can call in, but our install base is just starting and there are very few people who have production usage experiences and be willing to talk...

I think the verdict is still out on how successful this launch is. First week does not give you a good sense of how everything will play out and fit in the bigger scheme of things. We still have two analyst briefings to do later in the week. We will see how that one goes.

The experiment with landing page continues. Now that we have a bit more data point and it does indeed look like converting the paid-ad link to a landing page where the user cannot go anywhere else is the trick to force a conversion event. The number is approximately double of the usual rate. So, the latest for me is that I have converted all the url's for all of the paid-ad's Google and Yahoo to the landing page. With a bit of luck, we will see an avalanche of conversions. (Dreaming is free.)

I think I have mentioned that I am running a $25 promo through Google paid-ad's where if you search for specific key words and click on the promo link, you become eligible to receive $25 if the conversation goes as far as a demo. This promo has run for three days now and it has been an unqualified failure to date. I saw no conversion event. The number of click-through increase just a little bit so maybe the paid-ad made a bit of difference. But, the key thing is that nobody has signed up for the promotion. I have a few theories about this. Looking at the chain of events for this promotion to work: 1. the key word selection need to be board enough to get enough impression but narrow enough that the eye balls are self/pre-selected in terms of likely customer. On that count, the campaign gets nearly 150 impressions with a 4% click-through rate for the past three days. These numbers are comparable to the numbers generated from prior period. 2. The text of the paid-ad: I have created a 2x2 matrix with headline and text alternating between the most attention grabbing line from existing campaign (a known winner) and some flavor of "Get $25". The idea is to find out if we get more click through via the known winner or with $25. So far, on an individual ad level, one of the "Get $25" ad is slightly ahead of #2 which is the known winner. On a combined level (remember it is a 2x2 matrix), the "Get $25" is ahead a lot more. But, the number of data point is simply too small to be particularly meaningful right now. So, I have even thrown into the mix today a new ad that has similar language but instead of showing "$25" it just mentions that you will get a prize. Will see what happens. 3. Landing page. My personal feeling is that this may be a major contributing factor for the low conversion rate. The landing page is serviceable in all technical dimensions. But, it is definitely not inviting and, I suppose, could even be considered a bit scary given the number of fields that are asked. On the other hand, unlike the super-duper landing page mentioned above, this landing page actually provides a bit more details about what the product is and how it works. So, maybe it is a matter of people being even more self/pre-selecting and decide that this product is not a fit. I do not know. Not yet. I will try a few things to see if we can rectify this situation.

Yahoo has good customer service. After I filed my complaint about not getting a decent bang for the buck with Yahoo, I got two phone calls for a bit of hand-holding the follow day. That gets extra point from me. Unfortunately, they were not able to solve a good deal of my issues at their level. The limitations are technical in nature and I basically have to live with it for now. So, the unfortunate truth is that Yahoo pad-ad still sucks. Sorry to say.

Did I mention that we are working with Harte Hanks to do telemarketing calls? Last week, we spent quite a bit of time going back and forth to finalize a script for the caller. This week is for test calls and final adjustment before commencing the program next week. Today, I got a phone call saying that as part of the test call, we got a person interested in the product and wants us to call him at 11:30, a lead. So, that was exciting. Unfortunately, the information came to me after 11:30. So, I do not know if our sales people were able to connect. But, let us think of it as a good omen. We are scheduled to hear the testing calls tomorrow. This should be an interesting exercise.

Not sure if you have to deal with the billing side of things. I do, for marketing related activities. Harte Hanks drive a hard bargain. The invoice indicated that the payment term is net 30 (you have up to 30 days from receipt to pay, for those of you so luck as to not have to deal with billing). However, I got a call from the account manager that they must receive one half of the payment before they can continue with the test calling and program launch. Man! That was unpleasant.

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My Yahoo soap box

So, the latest scoop is that if you limit where a click-through can go, there is a higher chance of conversion.

Cryptic ‘nuff for ya?

On the subject of web click-through conversion, the question is how to improve the conversion rate when the person who clicks through to your ad (an act that costs money) will do what you want him to do which is to conduct a conversion event (leave their contact info and indicate product interests in our case). So far, limiting where the click-through goes seems to make the biggest difference. If you think about it rationally, it does not make a lot of sense; he could use the “back” button on the browser, he can just wondering onto somewhere else through “home” button, and there is even a "escape hatch" if he is willing to click amongst objects on the the conversion page to break out of the navigation limit. On the other hand, we are mostly animal of habits. So, as long as it does not look wrong/bad, when asked (or, more likely, given no obvious alternative), people will just do what they are told to do. The data is still a bit too early to be conclusive. But, the early report is quite positive on the change. The irony is that I am running this experiment on a crappy conversion page which does not even pretend to be nice by giving product info and/or images. Once you get there, you either leave your contact or else. The plan is that we will now set up better conversion pages that would do the same thing but in a less blatant manner. And, hopefully, that would improve the conversion rate still.

My question, a follow-up really, is that how does this setup of forcing people to convert impact the actual closing rate? After all, people may feel obligated to leave their info since there is no other way out. But, that is quite different from whether they will fork out the money to buy. At a purely ego-centric level, this is nothing more than idle speculation since, as the marketing guy, I am measured on the number of conversion rather than the closing rate which is much further down the chain of events. Something to monitor though.

Yahoo/Overture sucks so far. I have spent some time going over the account and poking at all the options and trying to figure out how to read the information. It is hard. As much as I hate to say this, since I do not own Google stocks, Google’s AdWords is much more intuitive and helpful for advertisers like me. So, here is my current laundry list of issues. 1. The impression rate seems to be quite low relative to what we are getting in Google. I accept the notion that Google remains the preferred search engine for techies thus the lower impression rate. However, there is no tool, that I have found, in Yahoo that would help you optimize the keywords in an existing listing. There is an option to provide estimates for a new listing, but it is not integrated with existing listings. 2. Duplications. I understand why they will screen out duplications. However, the duplication flag made no sense since the keywords that I am trying to get does not appear anywhere else. How is that duplication? 3. Conversion. Yahoo provides conversion tool like Google. But, Google now offers cross-channel conversion so that I can track both Google and Yahoo conversion from my Google account. How cool (and convenient) is that! Well, I have fired up a few inquiries to Yahoo support on the questions above. Who know, maybe I am just a lazy user who did not read the documentation closely. On that account, I can only say that is true of everyone user I know. Finally, still on my Yahoo/Overture Suckth soap box, what is the story with the log-off button on the Yahoo account? I won’t bore you with the details but it took me a few minutes to find the first time I used it. And, even now, I still go into a very transitory panic mode every so often because I cannot find the log-off button.

Oh, the reporter/analyst round is still on for the product launch. One reporter at 9am and one analyst at 11:30am. It is always interesting to be part of the call and observe. On one hand, there is a bit of adversarial relationship between the vendor and the reporter/analyst because the vendor thinks whatever product that he is selling is the cure-all for the world’s ills while the report/analyst need to be objective and put things in perspective. On the other hand, without those vendors with snake oils to sell, there is no news to cover for the reporter and no customers to buy the analysts' reports. Anyway, the 9am call was a bit on the testy side. She kept pushing for the question of “what’s new.” We danced around the issue a bit since it was more of a new target market than a brand new product. On the other hand, we could have been bold and assert, with quite a bit of confidence, that what is new is that there is nobody in this marketplace that does what we do. It may not be very “new” if you were an existing customer using our solution for a different reason, but for the new market place/users, this is a heck of a new thing. Hmm… So easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. The 11:30am call went better. She got our pitch and, fingers crossed, we will get mentioned in her blog.

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Hartey Hanky

Wow! It has been a while. I guess I have been busy. Honestly, I meant to write more frequently.

Life in Google land is going well. The Conversion matrix is yielding some interesting numbers. One of the things that I did not think of, but should have, is the fact that as we test new web pages that lead to conversion events, sometimes the conversion number can be overstated. Hmm.. A statistical details that I need to think about.

Life on the ranking side is going well too. We have now become the number one site for the two terms that I really wanted on Google. I have not checked our Yahoo ranking, but it should not be too bad either.

The LL Bean promotion idea is coming along. We will be offering a $25 gift certificate if you take our product for a spin (demo). Different pieces are getting ready and I hope to have it rolled out next week. What is particularly interesting is that I had a good discussion with an on-line marketing guru who company generates several hundreds million in revenue by helping corporations run their on-line marketing campaigns. Long story short, he gave me some very specific pointers on how to make it better and I have asked our web guru to implement like changes. It will be interesting to see if our promotion page will perform better than our current standard design.

Actually, I was inspired by the on-line marketing guru’s examples and thought that I should come up with a small quiz that people can take to find out how they are doing in the Ace product areas. This could be a fun way to spread our names around, even if it is self-serving.

Oh, also signed up for Yahoo/Overture. Still in the early stage of figuring out how everything fits together at Yahoo. You know, maybe I am just too in-grained in the way Google AdWords work, but the Yahoo interface and flow does not make a lot of sense so far. But, this is probably too early for me to say any6thing until I have all of my lists approved and running.

Product Launch is stalling a bit. Quotes. For a miserable quote, I have been begging in different parts of the world asking customers to take pity on me. Not a lot of luck so far. But, come rain or shine, we will do a product launch the week after next. Fortunately, this is a marketing launch so the stake is not as serious.

Have you heard of Harte Hanks? It is the 800 pound gorilla of the telemarketing/direct-sales space. So, we will be hiring Harte Hanks to run a 30 day telemarketing campaign to generate some warm leads. Harte Hanks has been very easy to work with, it is obvious that the systems are in place. But, they can be pretty rigid on what they can do and how they can do it. For example, we want to get a list of non-leads from the campaign so that we can also gage what did not work. It took a few back and forth to get the intent across and we still have to pay an additional $1,500 to get the data so we can run the correlation internally. This could have been much easier done automatically inside Harte Hanks. But, that is a just a small pet peeve. Will start the wheel going with Harte Hanks starting tomorrow. This should be another interesting learning experience.

Finally, how long do you or your sales people get back to a lead? One minutes? One hour? One day? The expectation varies and the actual performance varies wider still. So, I was looking for an alternative source to Harte Hanks and there is an outfit that comes highly recommended by a trusted source. An introductory e-mail was sent. Nothing. I called the second day to get to a sales person and got the CEO instead. We chatted and he told me that one of the sales people will get back with me. Nothing. I called the third day and got to talk with the CEO again, and he promised that the sales person will call and gave me the person’s name. An hour of so after the call, I call again and asked the receptionist to put me through to the sales person, now that I have the name. Turns out that this person is a consultant to the firm and only the CEO has the contact info. Nothing. Day four, I talked with the CEO again, and the receptionist and I are pretty much on first name basis now, he was most apologetic and gave me the sales person’s contact info. I call and left a message on both the office and cell numbers. A few hours later, I got a call from the sales person. Now, call me crazy, but it ain’t a good idea to make your potential customers run around like that. It does not engender good karma and does not make you look too good either. Like I said about Harte Hanks above, HH makes it easy to work with them and we will go with HH this time.

Well, time to go.

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