If you are attending the show, please stop by and see us at booth 564.

I will be down in Chicago with the few of our team members over the next few days meeting with clients and partners. So, if you are in the area and would like to talk about conversion optimization make sure to stop by our booth at the IRCE.

If you can’t make it to the show, we will most likely be holding a small dinner this coming Wednesday, so if you would like to join us, please email me: khalid at invesp.com.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

First off, I must apologize to our contestants as well as our judges for the huge delay in announcing the winners of the 2nd twitter contest. I promised Ayat to say that I am fully responsible for it

Our top entries (in particular order)

And now, for our first place winner. The entry comes from @jackmo who wins a free iPod touch:

our 2nd place winner is @TeronFontaine who wins a one month free subscription to the SEOBook training program:

our 3rd place winner is @southplatte who wins a free copy of “Landing page optimization: the complete guide”

Congrats to all of our winners and thank you to all of those who participated!

© 2006-20010 Invesp

Marketing folk often say your past customers are your best leads for the future. Then there is countless advice on warming up prospects, qualifying leads, and farming your market. You can very quickly get to the point where you have lists overflowing with names .

This is all very well, but what happens when you collect all this data and don’t know what to do with it?

After you collect your data, you need to start mining it.

A very simple technique that all CRM tools, and even an access database or spreadsheet, can perform is an RFM analysis. RFM stands for Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value.

• Recency – How long ago did they last buy/interact?
• Frequency – How often do they buy/interact?
• Money – How much do they spend? What is their budget?

Take your list and sort by each, giving a score from 1-5. When you have sorted and got three scores, add them together. This will give you a ranking from best (15), to worst (3).

For example,

Mr Big Co buys every week to the value of $1,000.
He is a much better prospect than Mr Flint who bought one $10 product last year.

If you take your top 20% from the list they are your gold customers or prospects. Now you know who to target with your most lavish attention!

© 2006-20010 Invesp

Banks and financial institutions in general are late starters when it comes to utilizing the internet as a means to generate new revenue and sales. The major role that most bank websites play is a supportive means to their existing clients.

Let’s look at Chase’s website for example:

As you can see here, Chase’s site focuses more on supporting its existing clients than trying to gain new ones. On the top left of the homepage you can log into your account or create a user ID for your already existing account. But as a customer, I may be interested in opening an account online. So I clicked on “checking” under “Personal Banking” and am led to this page:

Great, the options they have for a opening a free checking account look good, let’s see if I can really open it online. I click on the “open a Chase Free” on the right and am navigated to this page:

This makes sense, so I enter my zip code and land on a page that asks for personal information to open the account. After spending about 15 minutes entering all of my information and submit the request, I’m disappointed once more after I get a message that notifies me that my “best option is to visit a local banking center.” Why is it an option if it is not possible? And how difficult is it to make opening a free checking account a possibility?

When checking information on an already existing account however, Chase provides all of the services that you can imagine online and without the inconvenience of going to a physical location.

Another bank I explored was Citibank. They, on other hand, have minimized physical locations and are looking for ways of maximize opportunities of gaining new clients online. For instance, the first navigation option on their home page is to open a new account:

There are many navigational options for existing and new users.

Citibank also immediately lists the requirements of being able to open an online account so that you don’t waste your time if you don’t meet the requirements (qualifying leads):

They also do an excellent job at ensuring that you are entering information in a secure server and ease any anxieties that you may have while opening an account online.

Financial institutions still have a long way to go in terms of increasing their online conversion rates. The first step would be to shift the roles of their websites from a merely supportive one to one that is geared towards reaching out and gaining new customers and clients.. As Citibank has proven, it is possible and the benefits can be extremely fruitful.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

I always think it is dangerous when people promote one tactic to the exclusion of others. Trying to use the same old approach each and every time is setting yourself up to fail.

It brings to mind that scene in Indiana Jones where the guy does all these fancy moves and Indy just shoots him. Yes, you might have style and flair, but effective wins out every time.

A sure sign of a sophisticated marketer is that they use the appropriate tactics for each project. You might see similarities between two projects, but they are not saying “blogs are the answer”, or “only a list will do!” each and every time.

How many times do you see the advice of even gurus being the latest-greatest-cutting-edge technique? Even the best of these tactics will pale into comparison against a prepared competitor using a well thought out battle plan.

To add one more metaphor, this is like playing chess with just one piece. A grandmaster can do it, but the rest of us are unlikely to win.

Answer these questions:

1. What is your attraction approach? Which tactics will you use to create awareness and attention?
2. How will you retain attention? How are you going to create community and stickiness?
3. Where and how will you convert? What are you going to do to pre-sell and sell?
4. Have you got a follow up planned? Up-sell? How will you maximize lifetime value?

SEO does not create stickiness and it does not convert, but it is great for targeted traffic. Blogs need promotion, they do not create visitors magically out of thin air.

Combining tactics into a campaign is the best approach, perhaps SEO along with an opt-in email list, advertising (on and offline), and yes a blog. Not just one tool, the right tools combined is the way forward.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

Mother’s Day is here! So as a tribute to all those wonderful mothers (thank you very much) who put their time, sweat, tears, and passion into bringing up the next generations of entrepreneurs, CEO’s, professionals, teachers, doctors, engineers, mothers, fathers, etc. here are some cool blogs that have been dedicated to you.

Are you a last minute shopper? You have until 5 pm to enter this Sephora competition to win a free gift for your mother!

Don’t know the origin’s of mother’s day? Well our friends at How Stuff Works can clue you in with this nifty video presentation.

For design gurus out there Linda Bustos pointed out this neat gallery to mother’s day homepages for ecommerce sites.

Andy Beal gives parents tips on how to avoid getting your teenagers to hate you.

John McCain’s mom gives the details of his debut into the world 60…err…70+ years ago!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO ALL!!!!

© 2006-20010 Invesp

Two of our friends made some changes in the last few weeks:

My friend Steven Bradley, AKA Vangogh, moved his blog and site to a new domain with a lot more focus on the great skill set he brings to the table. Yellow house hosting is now Van SEO Design. If there is one post you should not miss in April, it is Steven’s SEO monthly wrap up.

My friend Steven Snell from Vandelay Website Design started a new website, Traffikd, that focuses on marketing and social media. I read anywhere between 100 to 150 blogs every day. Every now and I then I find a blog that is packed with useful and “new” information. But that is exactly what Steven delivers in Traffikd.  From Traffikd comes, Long Term Results of Social Media Success: Increased Search Engine Traffic

My favorite post for the month of April: Ruud from Search engine people started an excellent series titled “The Algorithm is Human” explaining search engine behavior from a plain and simple human point of view. Changing Everything Changes Everything is probably one of the better posts.

Linda Bustos knows “the innovation, design, and usability improvement” Amazon has to offer the public. As we are well aware, Amazon is “the place” for reviews, but as we know all too well, not all reviews are created equal. So Linda has a great post on a feature they offer that filters for your purposes the unnecessary and useless reviews.

So what’s the MacAir all about. Brad posts a twist on the Mac commercial that may keep you wondering.

Finally, are you one of the top SEO RSS subscribers blogs? Find out if you made the list.

Remember, review Breaking the Digg Code and get a chance to win a free copy of Landing Page Optimization: the complete guide. Get all the details from here.

As always, follow me on twitter.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

There are some rules for optimization that should not be ignored, like having a meaningful, clean URL. But some companies take this a bit too far. In an effort to stick to their company name or offerings, these URL’s are explicit in more than one way.

Caution: Material is “graphic”

These are the top 3 that I found “interesting”:

1. The designers at Speed Of Art have made an effort to have a great looking site, too bad for them that the scent is stronger than I can bare! www.speedofart.com/

2. Having issues? Well you can find a therapist that will help you resolve some of the struggles you have suffered throughout your life (or suffer more issues) at www.therapistfinder.com/ .

3. A great place to find all your software questions, needs and errr…urges is www.ipanywhere.com/

Just please practice caution when coming up with URL’s because as you can see, they can be misinterpreted and misrepresent what you’re all about! Any wacky URL’s you have seen lately?

© 2006-20010 Invesp

Just a few weeks ago we published our Landing Page Optimization Book, over 120 pages filled with tips and techniques to optimize your landing pages. The book retails for $95. Since its release, the book has sold close to 500 copies.

This Monday, we released the report Breaking the Digg Code, a step-by-step instructional program to get on the first page of Digg in 4 weeks or less.

The feedback on both the book and the report has been great. But we want to get more feedback from you, the subscribers and readers so we are offering a special deal: Write a review of Breaking the Digg Code and your name will be included in a chance to win one of 5 free $95 copies of Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide.

If you write a review of the Breaking the Digg Code report on your blog you will get

• A link back from our blog to your review
• A possible quote on our testimonial page along with another link
• A chance to win one out of 5 free copies of Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide

To be part of this, please contact us [or email khalid at invesp dot come] to let us know that you have completed the review.

Ideas for what you might want to write about

• What did you expect from the report before reading it?
• Did you hesitate to subscribe or download the book?
• Did you find the instructional report useful?
• Did you mention the report to anyone else?
• Do you think it would be easy to follow the program?

Looking forward to reading your reviews.

© 2006-20010 Invesp

If you just subscribed to our RSS feed, we would like to thank you by taking a quick moment to introduce you to our most popular blogs:

Online conversion 101: The bottom line to every online activity is converting the casual visitor to a customer, a lead, or even a subscriber. Learn how you can increase your online conversion rates in this 8series tutorial

Personas 101: The problem with the traditional approach of knowing your customers is how generic it is. This series will take through the process of creating personas for your specific site, product or service. Persona development will help you see significant increases in conversion rates as well.

Viral Marketing 101: The web revolutionized marketing as we know it. It is no longer enough to create a marketing message and hope that people will respond. Consumers are talking about your products, services and company. It’s up to you to engage the power of consumers based marketing if you want to gain an advantage over the competition. It is the age of consumer to consumer and the evolution of word-of-mouth.

10 Most expensive mistakes of consulting companies: This is a must read if you run a consulting company, deal with clients and team members.

9 Clueless manager stories from hell: This is our most visited page. If you work long enough in consulting, I am sure you have your own list to share.

9 sure ways to increase your website traffic: One of the most commented upon blogs has created a buzz amongst our readers who offer plenty of additional ways to increase traffic.

Hooking the Headline: Six ways to Catch a Reader: One of the first elements a reader will see is the headline whether it’s on your blog, homepage, product pages, or landing page. If crafted and written correctly, your headline can be the hook to gauge your site visitor.

You can always follow me on Twitter or connect to me on Linkedin.

© 2006-20010 Invesp