Project Objectives

To design a template for the iContact template library, for customers to use as a design that they could re-purpose for their own holiday emails

Project Objectives

The objective of this project was to engage icontact customers to teach them about a new feature within the IContact app that let users leverage social media with their email marketing effort.

Project Challenges

To help current or potential iContact customers get more actionable information about running small businesses, by delivering articles group into five main categories.

Homepage

Single Post

Project Objectives

To design a set of headers for blog post written for the iContact blog

If you work in my industry, online marketing, and specifically direct response marketing design, there is a mantra and even an acronym for elements being above the fold (ATF).

It is a term that has been carried over from the newspaper print world where the most important piece of information or an enticing image had to be above the line where a newspaper would naturally be folded in a newsstand; the purpose then was that if you enticed them enough, they would buy the whole paper.

This philosophy has carried over to the online world of direct response marketing and landing pages, and the mentality of having your call to action button on your form “Above the Fold.”

The reason given for this is that people have short attention spans and do not like to scroll.

I am not going to spend a lot of time on this but here are the basic facts:  in Jan 2010, 76% of people have screen resolutions higher than 1024×768, and that is up from just 17% in 2006. The reason I am making this point is that we really don’t know where the fold is anyway. People are going to read websites with their browsers fully expanded or ¾ expanded to the height of their screen. My point here is that if you are so worried about something being above the fold, you are focusing on the wrong thing.

Not convinced? Well, how about the information that almost every website scrolls, pages are regularly taller than 3500px and on a popular blog, like TMZ, the most clicked-on link on these pages is the one at the very bottom asking to go the next page. I know what you are going to say about landing pages and yes, they are different then a content/media driven page, but nonetheless, it has made the behavior of scrolling a habit. In a nutshell, people know the world is not flat and that there is probably more content on a webpage to view if they use the scrollbar.

Also, the invention and domination of the blog-type layout for websites makes everyone used to scrolling. If you doubt this, then please look at the two charts below.  Basically, we have no idea of where anyone’s fold is.

“Above the Fold” does have merits; you do not want to bury your lead. In newspaper articles, you usually have enticing copy at the beginning so that the reader wants to continue reading, but I would like to point out that this copy/content not forms or buttons and the same ethos should be used in landing pages.

So, Why is the “Above the Fold” Mentality Like a Bad First Date?

For a successful professional or personal relationship to work, you both have to be happy. As a business, you want to have the right type of client, as in the Goldilocks paradigm (not too hot and not too cold); your client obviously wants to have the best service to fit their needs.

Most people’s objective of a first date is to see if you enjoy the other person’s company. I like to think that good marketing is like the first date of a potentially great relationship.

Instead of ‘ATF,’ this is what you should be focusing on:

Do

Be Charming

Make them want to get to know you. This can be done effectively by a great headline and clear and concise copy. If you do this, they will want to listen to more of what you have to say.
It needs to be right for both of you – make sure you honesty and clearly detail who you are and how you can help before asking your potential client for a commitment.

Be Open

Make it easy for them to ask you out on another date, should you both be inclined. In other words, make it easy for them to sign up – or start along the registration path. Making it easy for them to sign up is not synonymous with having the form or the significant call to action above the fold.

Don’t

Don’t Seem Desperate
Adding the form before you have adequately explained your goods or services, and why you are the right solution for the job, is like asking the person on a first date if they want to be your girlfriend or boyfriend just after you order drinks. While this might work, do you want to date a person who would say yes (if so, awesome, but do not give that person a key to your house).

Don’t Over Promise

Don’t pretend to be something you are not. For example, do not tout yourself as an astronaut fireman. First of all, there are very few of these jobs left. Secondly, your date is eventually going to find out that you just live near a fire station. The fact that you lied will not only result in them not going on another date with you, they will also tell all their friends to stay away. This does not have to be the case. Even if you are not the right solution for this customer but present yourself legitimately, you might find that your potential date knows someone you would be a good fit for another customer.

For example, the purchasing manager at a large retailer might want to buy 90% of your goods. The COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) might mean that it makes sense for you to turn them down as a client, but this person might change jobs or work on the board for a non-profit, and then you could be the perfect fit.

Don’t Get in a Relationship That You Will Regret

Don’t use your best lines and over promise to start a relationship just to be in one. If this relationship turns out to be not very fulfilling (they are always returning your product, or just looking for a sale or the cheapest offer), this means you are a commodity. When that happens, there is no loyalty and the relationship is not mutually fulfilling. You can help weed these types of customers out by being true to your company’s mission and successfully communicating your true value proposition.

Although I used a silly metaphor in this article, the basic message is simple, if your marketing is simple honest and compelling, the right people are going to come to you and build a good business relationship with you.

For more info on the Myth of the Fold please read.

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of

http://blog.clicktale.com/2006/12/23/unfolding-the-fold/

In the Heuristic we are using:

C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) – 2a

Wherein:

C = Probability of conversion
m = Motivation of user (when)
v = Clarity of the value proposition
i = Incentive to take action
f = Friction elements of process
a = Anxiety about entering information

In this second article of the series Best Practices for Direct Online Marketing Design we are going discuss what a value proposition is, and how to use yours effectively.

You might have noticed that I have skipped motivation, even though in this heuristic, it is the most heavily weighted of all the values, the reason for this is that it is also the only value we cannot affect.

Brooks Bell from Brooks Bell Interactive explains this well, by using an example of a chiropractor. No matter how effective his marketing is, if you do not have a bad back or do not believe in it, then you have no motivation to use one.

So, back to Value Propositions…

What is it?

Your Value Proposition should be the core thing that makes your service better or distinguishes your company or offerings from another service offering similar services. It could be price, customer service, product features or variety.

Here are some great examples by well-known brands:

• Walmart — Everyday Low Prices
• Avis — We Try Harder (one of my favorite “old school” Value Propositions)

How to figure yours out?

If you had to give a 20 second elevator pitch about your company or service, what is the first thing you would mention? This seems very simple, and you might have several values that exceed your competition.

For online marketing purposes, define just one Value Proposition for a single campaign. Studies show that for online marketing conversions, a single value proposition is more effective than 3. You only have 7 seconds to make it clear why you are the best choice among your competitors, or why you are needed in the first place. Adding more would only confuse the clarity of your message.

How do you use it for the best effect?

The Value Proposition should be alluded to or explained in the headline (headline is the single most important element on a piece of marketing creative). It is what encourages people to read further, and draws the most attention in terms of eye-path tracking. So, make sure that when you have figured out your Value Proposition — it’s handled with care.

You can back up your core Value Proposition with supporting details, just make sure they are easily read — and bullets never hurt.

Here Are Some Good Examples:

Barron’s Daily Stock Alert




ShareFile CPA




WSJ Political Diary

Small businesses delving into online marketing often take for granted how important design is to an overall online marketing campaign.  If you are going to succeed you’ll need to tackle the sometimes daunting world of online marketing, from email to websites to social media, it is the fastest growing advertising channel.

One of the primary reasons why you should be excited about this relatively new frontier is that not only can you experiment with your own creative with a small budget, but the data you get back through Google Analytics and other similar resources means that you can really start getting a detailed picture of your customers.  With this new-found data, you can begin to have a real conversation with them; targeting them as real people and not just as a rough demographic estimate.

There are many aspects to direct online marketing; the one I am going to focus on in this series is how design can help you advertise more effectively. When I say design, I’m not referring only to a campaign being “pretty” or using nice color palettes. Instead, I’m going to give you tangible elements that are easy to develop and implement, but are often overlooked.

Getting Started

To begin, I am going to throw you in at the “deep end,” but hopefully things will not look so complex when we break them down into individual parts.  An industry leading marketing resource, www.MarketingExperiments.com, has developed a heuristic that helps to determine the effects of a given value on marketing creative.

C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) -2a

Wherein:

C = Probability of conversion

m = Motivation of user (when)

v = Clarity of the value proposition

i = Incentive to take action

f = Friction elements of process

a = Anxiety about entering information

This might seem a little daunting, but when you think about your own experience in signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product online, you have unknowingly been affected by the very same things that this heuristic describes.

Examples of adverse effects of badly designed advertising on customers:

• Anxiety – Have you ever had to pause during a purchase, and ultimately decided not to purchase something from a specific website; due to the fact that weren’t sure you could trust them?
• Friction – Have you ever thought about signing up for an online tool, but the form required too much information and was intrusive – so much so that  you did not end up filling it out?

My hope is that by reducing anxiety and friction, you can increase the impact of your creative which will help to boost your conversion rates and ultimately increase your ROI.

I cannot say enough about how valuable this heuristic insight is, but here is my elevator pitch on why everyone who is thinking about designing a online marketing creative should use it.

1. It is simple to understand, and you yourself have unknowingly been effected by the very emotional variables mentioned.
2. It provides a starting point and a check list for things you need to consider when you start your design; sometimes you just need a little light in the dark to get started, and to feel confident that you at least have a plan.
3. It is robust enough to work for a wide range of brands from AARP  to Nickelodeon.

Feel free to visit the Marketing Experiments Methodology page to find out more about their heuristic. http://www.marketingexperiments.com/methodology-marketingexperiments.html.

I think of it as a project road map and it has helped me from getting lost many times in the past.

Part One: Project Strategy:

Problem:

The easy part of any campaign is defining what we want to happen when we send marketing emails or design banner ads. We want people to purchase our product and click on our creative, in order to start them down the conversion path.

But how we get them to do that is the tricky part.

Solutions to this problem:

1. Identify the messaging hierarchy. What is the most important motivating factor in the campaign that will motivate people to convert or engage? Once that is established, all other direct response tools can be implemented to help bolster this factor. For example it could be as simple as a sale on a new product from a trusted brand.
2. Identify your campaigns demographic. Take for example a campaign centered around women’s clothing. This clearly defined subject matter and audience dictates the direction for design and copy.
3. Identify the direct response tools you can use. What incentives can be used to encourage people to engage in whatever action I am hoping for? Such as a price reduction, or even a FREE trial.

Part Two: Designing Strategically:

Problem:

How to leverage all your direct marketing design tools to create a compelling and consistent campaign that performs.

Solution to the problem: Here is how I ensure that I implement the project goals into the design.

1. Define the visual hierarchy of the email with a quick thumbnail sketch – this will help you look at the big picture and not worry about how thick the border is, which can be a problem when one uses digital design tools.
2. The rule of three – it often works if you define the three major visual details to use in a design. For example: Headline, Header Imagery, Call to Action button design – this helps give the creative a specific structure and helps define the eye path strategy.
3. Positive and negative space – Make sure that the messages you want the viewer to focus on are not overwhelming or confusing by needless creative. A clean, uncluttered design is more effective than one with pretty visual fireworks.
4. Identify the visual elements in the design that help draw attention to important information in the design. This could be a simple as an interesting bullet point design such as an arrow or a relevant icon. Visual elements can also help break up the copy, allowing the reader to scan your design and still understand the salient messages within the design.

Part Three: Proofing the Creative

Problem:

Often at the end of the design process there are little mistakes in the design that involve inconsistencies of one type or another. It might be that the orange you used twice is not the same orange on both elements; all designers have had this happen to them. It is also especially hard to proof a design that you have personally worked on. This is why I developed a check list for myself, so that I can methodically go through the design and not just rest on the “it looks all right to me’ laurels.

This is a check list that anyone can follow and is for consistency purposes only. That being said, consistency is incredibly important in building trust with potential clients. If people find your website to be too messy, this may affect the messaging and value of the actual service or product being sold.

Solutions to this problem:

The check list is broken into three sections:

1. Design Elements (photos, icons, shapes, lines)

• Alignment
• Color
• Size
• Consistency among design elements such as icons and elements.

Do they follow Brand/Campaign guidelines?

2. Fonts Consistency

• Alignment
• Color
• Size
• Font Type (for example: Arial )
• Font Treatment (for example: B /I /U)

2. Copy

• Spelling
• Punctuation
• Grammar
• Capitalization Format
• Spacing

Part Four: Making sure your design delivers strategically on the goals of the project

Solutions to this problem:

At the end of each project I write down a simple bulleted explanation of my design; this seems at first glance to be redundant, but explaining your design ensures that you have delivered on the campaign’s stated strategy.

If you see inconsistency between your design and your campaign’s stated goals, it might mean that you need to rethink your design.

Conclusion

With this Road Map as a guide, I have made my own processes more efficient without losing creativity. I hope that you find it just as useful. Please let me know if you have any feedback, or if you have your own personal design process you’d like to share with us.

In this post, I will use Twitter as a microcosm, or case study, for how to separate your personal and professional identity online, and how this applies to corporate communications and marketing of one’s business.

For the record, I do not want the advice in this post to be seen as taking the fun out of tweeting by setting rules and boundaries — go nuts! If you want to tweet about your cat’s day dreams or link to offensive rants, do so with the knowledge that in the business world, big or small, your external communications are part of you and your company’s brand. 37signals wrote in Rework that a company does not need a marketing or sales department because everyone is part of marketing and sales. While I am not sure I agree with the first point, I do agree strongly that everyone working for a company is part of that company’s brand and identity, for better or worse. Even your hard core developers, who are neck deep in code and barely see sunlight, can affect a company’s identity with one great tweet or one damning blog post.

Ok disclaimer over….

So, I am sure like many people, you started using Twitter as a personal micro blogging platform; you followed your friends, they followed you, you followed your co-workers and then you followed Ashton Kutcher (it’s ok, we all make mistakes).

The Internet and social networking are nothing if not in a constant flux of evolution and change. I spend a lot of my day working in and around online marketing and I dismissed Twitter as a fad. But out of spite, Twitter instead turned into a legitimate form of corporate online communication and evolved into something that has been woven into the fabric of online communication in the corporate world. This then becomes a problem for those of us who started our twitter account as a fun way to communicate informally with friends, or tweet to the world our latest bon mot, since a lot of what we were used to putting out there was not necessarily ready for primetime.

What to do now?

Here is some advice that I have drawn up for myself, informally.

• Create Two Accounts –  One a professional and the other a personal account.
• Separation –  While this seems like doubling the workload of having to tweet something twice if it overlaps to your two audiences, it allows you to be more flexible and more targeted at the same time. Plus, there are a lot of tools out there that can make this process much more simple. For example, Tweet Deck allows you to manage more than one account and tweet through more than one account at a timehttp://www.tweetdeck.com/features/manage-multiple-twitter-accounts-easily/index.html.The two accounts allow you to be all business through one, and the second can be about your business or your industry and allow you to come through as a real person with real insight and a personality. One of the things I encourage clients to consider when coming up with a social networking strategy for a company that has an online presence, is to communicate as a real human to help build trust in your company’s brand. When people feel like they are hearing real thoughts from a real person, they then start to see a online company built by people rather than just code. I am not sure about you, but people are more fun than code (ok most people).

• Be Professional – In both accounts. Unless your stock in trade is being unprofessional, outrageous and funny (and if that is the case can I follow you?), be yourself and be consistent. I will talk about setting expectations for people following you in the next point, but in this instance I am talking about tone in your personal account. Obviously tweet about anything you like: your thoughts on a book, a great photo or something that is going on in your company, but also remember that these tiny posts (or tweets) are going to be in the Library of Congress one day. This leads me to my next point…
• Twitter is Public – And can be read by most people on a whim, so make sure you gut check anything that might be controversial in subject matter or tone. If you really need to rant, send an email out with these feelings to your close friends. Twitter is open to the public, and to your Mother. A good rule of thumb if you run a company and have employees tweeting things about it, you might want to ensure that they have a disclaimer on their personal twitter home page that says not all of the views and opinions reflect those of the company.
• Set Expectations – If you own a retail store and you have a corporate twitter address, be clear about how and what you intend to communicate through this account and be consistent. For example, you might encourage people to follow your corporate twitter account in order to get the latest updates about sales, promotions or new inventory. If that is the case, then only use it to promote your sales, promotions or inventory; do not sneak in adorable kitten photos. This dilutes your corporate identity and trust.

In Conclusion

The Internet is growing up and people, whether they be potential clients, potential customers or potential employers, look at online communications and use them as a way to judge who you and your brand are.  So remember, people are always watching. Make sure you take advantage of this fact whenever possible, to grow and solidify the messaging behind the brand your represent, as well as your own personal brand.

Sidebar: Tweets, Tones and Time Zones

Twitter posts are not sticky (i.e, they are ranked in the twitter feed by time of posting and will be lost in most people’s twitter feed in less than an hour). This does not mean that you should try to combat that by announcing your sale every 20 minutes. That would look like spam and no one wants to look like congealed mystery meat. Instead, try posting about your sale once a day for 5 days and at different times. This might help reach people who check their twitter accounts at different times of the day or are in different time zones. Also, change the wording of the Tweet so while it might link to the same page and be about the same sale, it does so in a non-robotic manner and appears to be coming from a real person. That is the beauty of Twitter; you can be corporate without losing your humanity.

This is a guide that I developed in order to get a stronger sense of the process that is needed to be followed in order to take a project from creative brief to quality deliverables in an efficient manner.

Part One: Project Strategy: Issues

1. How to get to grips with the Creative Brief and Projects Goals, Defining the projects key messages and tone and information hierarchy.

Part One Project Strategy: Solutions

1. Identify what the key motivating factor for the project to be successful (the response is usually pretty obvious but what the motivation for the response is often less so) i.e. low price / new service from a trusted brand.
2. Identify who is going to see this marketing: and what kind of demographic they belong to – example current subscribers / new subscribers / a mailing list – for this will help in understanding the emotions and motivations of a viewer
3. Identify what the type of functionality of this marketing endevour this is – informational / promotional…
4. Identify the Messaging Hierarchy – What is the most important motivating factor in the email. Once that is established, all other Direct response tools can be implemented to help bolster this factor, if there is more then one, then it is important to rank them, to lessen the confusion and anxiety of the viewer as to what the implications of the marketing materials are
5. Identify the Direct Response Tools – That will be used that are available from the creative brief and/or are relevant to helping the goal of the project – i.e. Price Reveal or Personalization these will help with the emotional and motivational state of the viewer

Part Two: Problem How to Implement the Project Goals in the Creative:

Leveraging all the Direct Marketing tools (a compelling CTA, a price reveal etc, etc) – to succeed in your projects objective

Part Two: Solution How to Implement the Project Goals in the Creative

1. Define Visual hierarchy of email with quick thumb nail sketch
2. Rule of Three – it often works if you define the three major visual details i.e. (This is an example only) Headline / Imagery / CTA – this helps give the creative a specific structure and helps define the eye path strategy.
3. Positive and Negative Space – Make sure that the messages you want the viewer to focus on are not over whelmed or confused by needless creative, a clean uncluttered design is more effective than one with pretty visual fireworks.
4. Layout visual elements in the email to give the eye anchor points to important information in the email, this helps break up textual information into bite size pieces, which allows the reader to scan and still understand that salient messages within the design
5. Fresh eyes: Once Creative and been designed – leave it for five minutes and look again to see the design with fresh eyes, does the design meet the objects indentified in Section One
6. Build your design in an organized way – label layers, lay out design in segments using folders this will speed up the work floe process

Part Three: Q&A of Creative

The Checklist feature is broken into four sections:

Work Order

1. Double check against Work order – specifically specs, sizes, mandatory info and any limitations outlined

Creative Brief / Updates / Feedback

1. Double check the meaning of instructions.
2. When instructions are completed and updated, make sure you note this in the creative brief this will help you track your changes and make sure you have not missed anything.

( Mark it so in the form it was given ie Email or word Doc)

Design Elements

• Alignment
• Color
• Size
• Consistency among design elements or across creative versions
• Brand guidelines (ex: Color palette limitations with XM Radio)

Fonts Consistency

• Alignment
• Color
• Size
• Leading
• Font Type (Arial)
• Font Treatment (B /I /U)
• Text Type (System text)
• Brand guidelines (ex: CR links are always a certain blue with no underline)

Copy

• Spelling
• Punctuation
• Grammar
• Capitalization Format
• Spacing

Part Four: Project Hand Off Internal

Understanding what you have created and developing an elevator pitch for your work helps the designer make sure they are being honest with their strategy. When choices have been made with visual elements can they be backed up? Do they follow the strategy developed in Section One. If not then it is important to correct the design in order for it to be inline.

Internal Review should be made in person – verbalizing the work with the Creative director or project manager there will help everyone quickly understand the strategy and allow designers and copy writers some ownership of the work and the involvement in the feedback process.

Part Four: Project Presentation External

Develop a simple Bullet explanation of the design to arm the Account Manager can sell the creative and strategy to the client