Consider subscribing to my blog's RSS feed. It's sticky
Testing your marketing tactics is the only real way to get better. You must try something that you think will work while always trying to prove something else will work better.
Here’s a quick example of some testing of an online tactic. I try my best to get folks to sign-up for my weekly email newsletter. It’s a part of my overall trust building and education process.
I have an email newsletter sign-up form on most of web pages - a pretty standard practice. I tested three sign-up routines to see which pulled the most subscribers.
1) Form simply resides in the left sidebar and promotes the newsletter
2) Form drops in and offers free information for sign-up
3) Sticky note drops in and offers free information for sign-up
I was not surprised that options 2 and 3 outpaced the static option 1, but I was surprised that option 3 produced twice as many sign-up as option 2 with essentially the same offer and mechanism but a more creative delivery tool. (you can see the tactic in action at www.ducttapemarketing.com)
While some people dislike the pop over technology, and it can certainly be abused, there’s no arguing it’s effectiveness in getting attention. The key, however, is that you have something valuable worth getting attention over and you make the offer as simple and unobtrusive as possible.
I use a service called AdImpact for the pop overs and I suspect some of the results are do to the somewhat unique creative, but I will use this for now and keep testing for even better results.
Comments
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at Aug 12, 08 | 7:46 am and is filed under Web Marketing, email marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
John, do you only use the pop-up on your homepage, or do you include it on other pages as well? And have you tested that?
I’m just trying out my first pop-up and I’m not sure where to put it!
@Lisa - putting them on multiple pages can help - you have to balance being a pain - look at your server logs and you may get a sense of pages that are the most frequent entry points for your site other than your home page. Some services also have the ability to hold the pop up from showing multiple times as someone surfs around your site, make sure you use that setting so someone doesn’t get multiple showings.
John,
Thanks for sharing and the results are interesting, but are you at all worried about driving people away? Certainly the setting to not hit people repeatedly will help, but there are sites that I immediately shut down if popups (or sounds…which are worse imo) start happening.
Can you tell if you’ve chased anyone away?
Shawn
Thanks John. I have played around with different locations for my email sign-up and different headlines to see whether there was a change in results.
I have shied away from pop-ups because they can irritate me but yours on your main site is quite tasteful.
Looks like you have persuaded me that it is at least worth spending some time on looking at what you can do.
Testing like this is fantastic. Specific results for you to make future decisions on.
I really struggle with things like this when I go to recommend it to customers. Of course, I know the answer test it. However, when most small business have limited traffic, is it really an effective strategy? I think so many times that on a small business site the people that are there went there for a reason. Now, I can see it announcing an event or a retail store using it as a sales flier but if people are coming there already and only 20% are newbies, I question the merits. I like it, agree with the results, but are the results the same with 50 people a day vs. thousands???
I think the sticky note did so well because it was unexpected. Lots of people are used to (and seriously annoyed by) drop-in windows and too familiar with the normal sidebar subscription (I wonder if it’s going the way of “banner blindness”?) Sticky notes are “new” and a novelty - so they work well for right now!
As a side note, one of my websites experienced three times the number of subscribers when I used a lightbox ad (where the background of the page fades and the ad gradually appears in the middle). Probably for the same reason as your sticky ad works!
Hi John: It would be useful to know if you gather any demographic and geographic information on respondents? For example, age and sex and city/region/country. I’d like to know if pop-ups have a better reach/acceptance with one group or another.