A summary of Ofcom International report comparing consumer use of the Internet in 17 countries
Value: [rating=5]
Recommended link: New Ofcom International Internet usage statistics
Ofcom’s seventh International Communications Market Report was published on 13th December 2012, this examines take-up, availability, price and use of broadband, landlines, mobiles, TV, radio and post across 17 major countries.
If you’re involved in reviewing changes in consumer and business demand for online services as part of planning for 2013 it’s worth a look - some statistics will be useful for presentations to convince colleagues or clients...
While the focus is on the UK since the research is produced by Ofcom, its purpose is to compare with other countries particularly Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United States. So it also has data if you're based in these countries and I have…
Checkout abandonment statistics show where you should focus your site improvements
I'm often asked about average ecommerce rates by site owners looking to boost their sales. It's a year-round concern with this compilation showing that even for established brands during sale periods, the average add to basket conversion rate is around 12% during a visit with convert to order around half that at 5.6%.
If this sounds poor compared to the conversion rate a physical retail outlet would achieve, that's a fair improvement on ten years ago when we used to speak of a "rule-of-thumb" for average Ecommerce conversion rates of around 2%. The improvement in averages since then suggests the value in conversion rate optimisation. That said, it's inevitable that online conversion rates will be lower than offline with price transparency available through comparison sites and many still researching online and purchasing offline (the ROPO effect).
Reasons for shopping cart abandonment?
To encourage…
5 cases-in-point show why you need other metrics to review email marketing effectiveness
There have been a couple of heated debates I've been part of in the email community just recently, one about open rates and another about subject line length. In this post I'm reflecting on the open rate debate. I've added an update to the original post showing more proof that open rate fixation can be misleading.
It may surprise you that the community is very split on the value of the open rate metric, seemingly, a cornerstone metric since the dawn of email marketing. It's a metric cited in every email marketing book and on every mail marketing course... So why is its value in doubt? Ken Magill reported on some of the open rate debate.
Let me summarise some of the reasons…
New survey shows that clicks are only one part of the story
Email marketing enjoys a solid reputation as a direct response channel. Which is one reason email marketing metrics tend to focus on just that: the direct response questions:
"Did they open? Did they click?"
We congratulate ourselves when we go "beyond the click" and measure conversions, revenues and profits. And we're understandably excited about new metrics like read and print rates.
All these numbers have important roles to play. But their availability seduces us into forgetting they do not capture all the important responses to email.
The UK DMA, fast.MAP and Alchemy Worx just released the 2012 Email Tracking Study, which looks at the self-reported inbox and social habits of just over 1,000 UK consumers.
New update: Infographic released:
"In this post I share some survey data and explore the implications of email marketing “beyond the open”...showing how consumers really…
Find out how a recovery email campaign can boost your sales by up to 8%
SaleCycle have produced an Infographic to summarise the findings about shopping abandonment, from their September 2012 survey. 200 well-known brands were surveyed in the US and UK, including Retailers and Fashion brands such as Sony, Ralph Lauren, the Body Shop and The Office.
The aim of the survey was to discover how to send out an engaging, optimized email to shoppers abandoning the on-line sites at the point of purchase or engagement (ie. shopping cart, booking or application form). It centered around the following three questions:
Timing: How long to wait to email your warm customers?
Tone: Should we be direct or use a customer service tone?
Content/Message: What should we say in our email to convert our customers to buy?
Over 74% of shoppers abandon their shopping cart, booking or application form, so how do we get them…
Getting campaign timing right to boost your email open and clickthrough rates
GetResponse analysed over 21 million email messages sent by US companies in the 1st quarter of 2012, and the results clearly demonstrated the optimum times for open and click-through rates for email campaigns. The infographic below provides clear evidence of when to schedule your email campaigns to improve engagement:
One of the most important conclusions is that sending newsletters during readers’ top engagement times of 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. can increase their average open rates and CTR by 6%
Be careful! You also need to consider time zone differences, subscribers daily routines and other best practices for email marketing.
Highlights of the research:
Emails have the best results within the 1st hour after delivery. This…
Which media give the best clickthrough rates?
I shared this engaging call-to-action on our Pinterest last week. Since size of a call-to-action has an impact on response rates, you would certainly expect this to perform well, although other factors may be at work here...
There was an interesting discussion on Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter about this, thanks if you took part or shared. This tweet was my favourite summary:
HUGE call-to-action, no reason to scan, no brand message = Epic Marketing FAIL (who drives & scans?) ow.ly/ed7U6 via @smartinsights
— Linsay Duncan (@LinsayDuncan) October 4, 2012
Most labelled it “dumb” since lone drivers aren’t going to scan while driving and even passengers would need to be quick on the draw with their scanners.
In terms of communications effectiveness, while you can’t miss the call-to-action, there…
How does your Facebook engagement compare and how can you improve it?
For Facebook company pages, Tabs or Views have always been one of the most important ways to engage an audience more deeply. This can be through a Gated Like page (example); competitions encouraging Email or loyalty club opt-in (example) or games to name but three.
New data from Facebook analytics company Pagelever has shown the impact of the time line since it was introduced on 30th March this year. It also gives a useful benchmark for the level of engagement you should be getting:
The analysis is based on data across 500+ pages that had over 10,000+ fans.
The key insights from this report are:
Average tab views per visit are relatively low (now 0.06/6%). This gives a benchmark to compare with and a conversion rate within Facebook marketing to work…
Bing Updates Webmaster Tools & Brings Back Site Explorer
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing have made a huge number of updates to their webmaster platform in an update they have called Phoenix (original). The changes cover the following areas of their platform:
New : Link Explorer
New: User Experience
New: SEO Reports
New: SEO Analyzer
New: Fetch as Bingbot
New: Canonical Alerts
Updated: URL Removal Tool
Updated: Keyword Research Tool
Updated: URL Normalization
Safe to say the Bing Search team have been busy. The highlights for me, from an SEO perspective are the SEO Analyser & Link Explorer which I look into more below.
The new look interface, displayed below makes using the platform much easier and makes great use of simple data to create the powerful dashboards.
Marketing implications
Great insights at no cost
A lot of SEO…
New infographic shows what your email must deliver to keep subscribers
All email marketers are keen to keep their unsubscribe rate a minimum, although it will never be zero.
Here's interesting new data on the reasons why unsubscribes happen in this infographic from Litmus. It's down to Relevance and Frequency as you'd expect. The main learning for me, is suggesting how you should go beyond the email broadcast stats and finding what your audience want from your content and their preferred frequency. That means asking them through focus groups or additional
I always think "spam is in the eye of the beholder (ouch)" - if you're not relevant, then a subscriber will think you're a spammer, even if you're an established brand.
The infographic also takes a look at engagement filtering behaviors for Gmail and Hotmail which is increasingly an issue for getting your emails in front of your audience…
