Surprising test results of email marketing campaign

I don't have a lot of time to get into details on this but I thought it was worth sharing. I've now been working in the email marketing space for over a decade. I continue to be surprised by new test variables that prove to have interesting results. Interesting in that it can be well worth the bit of time involved to test.

In the past month, I've worked with 2 clients who were doing limited launches. Both for products outside of the Internet Marketing circles and in niche areas. Both followed a string of successive emails building up to launch day. Both had a limited number of products available for sale. Price points were almost the same. No affiliates/jv partners used. These were launches done to in-house lists.

Client A followed the normal strategy to almost a T in that everyone received the same emails. At launch - 3 hours, 1/3 of the 28,000 list received one of the following emails:

A. <> opening in 3 hours
B. <> opening at 1 pm
C. <> opening at 1 pm Pacific

A minor difference to most people, but the results and how this translated to sales was significant. Who received which of these 3 emails was entirely randomized. The content of the emails as well as the email that went out at actual launch was exactly the same for everyone. The shocker here is that not only did version C recipients open more than A+B recipients combined, but over 75% of the orders in the first 30 minutes came from version C recipients. In the end, version C recipients ordered only slightly more units than versions A or B. However it did take almost 6 hours to sell out entirely.

Lessons learned: Specificity on the timing side is important if you are shooting for a fast sell-out. If you are promoting as a JV partner or as an affiliate, it could help you to get a bit more sales in.

Client B's launch was the following week and I asked if we could take this testing idea one step further. His database actually contained state/zip/country for more than half of subscribers. For the rest, IP addresses were saved. We broke his database down into 11 segments based on time zone and 1 for ones we were unable to determine. Starting the day before launch, we started to customize emails based on these segments. There was one email sent out the day before launch, one email sent out -3 hours, one email sent at launch and then a final one sent at sold out. Here's where things get really interesting: for all 11 time based segments, between 60 and 75% of orders came in during the first 30 minutes. If we consider the 12th group as a control group - something to compare results against - the overall conversion rate was about the same (it took 4 hours to sell out) however only 18% ordered in the first 30 minutes.

Lesson learned: specificity is even more important than I would have thought. Making it a no-brainer for people to know the time they need to be ready to order can help boost immediate sales.

A few caveats:

1. Because the numbers worked out this way in these tests does not mean that they would necessarily work the same way for you. This is why testing is important. (If you do run a test of this kind and would like to share your own results, I'd love to hear about it.)
2. For time-based launches, it's really important to use a vendor that can actually get your emails out on time. I'm continually baffled by the number of big time Internet Marketers who use third rate mailing systems where their emails go out HOURS after a launch has actually sold out and/or many of their emails end up filtered in spam folder because they are using the same content as other marketers. Reliable email marketing service. (Yes, it's my company.)
3. What about if you don't have data to do geo targetting? If you are using double opt-in, you likely have the IP information associated with a sign-up stored "somewhere". Although that is a laborious process to match back, you can go to Rentacoder or Odesk and get the work done for about $1-2 per 500 addresses.

WII Fit Challenge

A week ago, I got a WII in anticipation of the WII Fit. Fortunately without preordering from anywhere, I was able to get a WII Fit at my local Walmart. It was one of 2 they had left by around 8:30 am.

I want to tell you why I was so excited about it and why I'm posting about it here.

I work from home. I have a fully equipped home gym. Tons of exercise videos. Basically I could be in amazing shape just with what I have right here.

For more of my life than not, I've been on some kind of regular fitness program. The problem for me is that the majority of my day is pretty sedentary. Working out 30-60 minutes a day while sitting on my butt the rest of the day is not an answer. I find myself having too hard a recovery time. I find when I have to do things like travel, go to conferences, or just normal higher activity days, I'm not able to keep up as well as I'd like to. Giving up having a cleaning woman and doing more household chores hasn't helped. (It certainly hasn't helped my house since I have zero motivation when it comes to cleaning!)

I have a theory. No scientific foundation behind this. Just based on what I am seeing in my own life.

For the past couple of decades, fitness experts have all pretty much agreed that to optimize your metabolism you should be eating 5-6 meals a day and not going longer than 2-3 hours without eating. The idea behind this is that one of the best calorie burners is our metabolism. By continually stoking it, we keep the metabolism going. Of course, what you eat is important in the equation as well. In spite of the scientific evidence backing this, many nutritionists, doctors etc still say that you should eat 3 squares a day with 1 or 2 snacks. I know from personal experience that moving to 6 meals a day made me realize that the idea that we simply need a calorie deficit in order to lose weight is entirely wrong. I lost around 70 lbs in 8 months by following a few simple guidelines:

• Have 5-6 meals per day with the first meal being within 90 minutes of waking up;
• Each meal should be between 100 and 400 calories;
• Alternate how much I eat from one day to the next;
• Have one day every week or two where I go over the max calorie count for at least 2 or 3 meals;
• Drink lots of water;
• If I want something, have it - but either in moderation or save it for one of my higher calorie days;
• And try to limit the amount of processed food - especially starchy ones.

I've never had any difficulty with losing weight but keeping it off is proving to be another story. Even if I stayed with the above, eventually my body starts to adjust and the weight gradually creeps up.

I think that a missing part of the equation for me - and many others - is that our lives in general are way too sedentary. Scientific research has shown that we get a boost of calorie burning from physical activity during the hours after. Doesn't it make sense given what we know about the way our metabolisms function with frequent mini-meals that we could see the same boost in our metabolisms from having frequent mini-exercise sessions?

Having longer treadmill/other cardio and weight sessions is not the answer. Been there, done that. It just makes me resent exercise. Adding on extra sessions is not the answer. It's hard enough to find the time to exercise in the first place, nevermind doubling up sessions. Besides, I've already gone through the experience a few years back of setting an aggressive exercise goal (training for a marathon) and dealt with the ramifications of it - blowing a knee out from overtraining.

So this is why I was excited about the WII Fit. I don't expect it to REPLACE a regular exercise program, but to provide me with an easy way to fit in 5-10 minute exercise sessions every 2 hours or so during my work day. Most of us know that some kind of break during our workday is good. It helps keep us our mental motors running smoothly to get a change of pace. I enjoy games so for me, having game/exercise breaks sounds perfect.

I'm hoping that an added benefit will be a bit of reduction in my stress level too. I know that exercise in general helps settle me down and clears my mind. Hopefully during these mini breaks, it will help me deal with daily stresses a little better.

On my first day (Wednesday), I did only 15 minutes on it. I also spent about the same amount of time on Wii Sports on boxing/tennis and baseball. I find that my upper body strength has been declining as I've been getting older and those 3 sports focused on upper body in ways that my normal exercise routine doesn't. Today (Thursday), I did 21 minutes on WII Fit and another 20 minutes on Wii Sports. A little more than I intended to, but I was having fun. :)

My objective is to try and spend somewhere between 30-45 minutes 5-6 days a week between Wii Fit and Wii Sports.

CentralDesktop

I recently decided to investigate different project management/collaboration tools. The last time I did this was a couple of years ago and I was surprised how many different ones are available. After spending countless hours researching which would be the best one for what I needed, I ended up settling on CentralDesktop. Here's why:

• Having read the company's blog and forum, I know the people behind the company are passionate in what they do. That is a huge plus. Having read what I did I know that this is about more than just money but creating a really great product.
• CD differentiates between internal and external users. This is a plus because for many upcoming projects, we'll be bringing people in on a short-term basis and giving limited access to only a specific project they are involved with is crucial. Plus, internal staff can access more (read: confidential info pertaining to a project) than what external service providers can.
• There is version tracking for documents and you can do rollbacks. Although it's not something I am in need of at this minute, it is a feature that will be important as our team is developed.
• Their storage capacity and upgrading it is billed on a reasonable basis. I was amazed how many service providers in this area are charging huge fees for storage.
• You can have private or public workspaces.

CentralDesktop uses slightly different terminology than other services. For example, you set up workspaces rather than projects. Workspaces can include a variety of things such as blogs, discussion areas, documents, wikis and of course project tracking.

They allow for a 30 day free trial of a personal workspace - allowing up to 2 users and 2 workspaces. Their normal billing structure is very reasonable for what is included and the number of users. For example, we opted to start with their Company Plan 3 which costs $99 per month. It allows 25 internal users, 250 external users, 25 workspaces and 5 GB of storage space. Since they allow you to archive/delete old workspaces, this should carry us for quite a while. The average competitive service I looked at charged around $40/month per user - whether internal or external and had half the storage space. This seemed like a steal comparatively speaking.

On the offside, there is very little documentation right now. There is one long video and several short-ones that deal with specific tasks, but I noticed that several items have been changed since the videos were made. From reading the forum it seems that providing better documentation is something they are working on.

The lack of documentation hasn't been a huge problem for 3 reasons: The system is pretty easy to use. Their email support has been very fast. There is also an active and well-supported forum. Most of the questions I had I found the answers to by looking through the forum. It still would be nice if one of their higher level staff could actually sit down for a half a day and make some additional videos on applications of the different features. I'm sure this would increase their client retention rate because I know that most people wouldn't have a clue about what some of the features can be used for.

If/when I have some time I'll share some comments in the future on other tools I looked at.

My list of daily sites to visit has just gotten smaller...

As a 'net entrepreneur, one of the things I like to do is stay on top of new sites. Innovation is getting faster online - much faster. If you run a business, then it may not matter to you what new business models are emerging. You might just be interested in new competitors that pop up. If you are an entrepreneur, however, it's crucial for you to stay on top of trends. Unfortunately, as everything is accelerating, it's become much more difficult to do so. Sure you can find out what 'users' are evangelizing. Check out Alexa's top movers, Digg, De.licio.us, etc. But it's much more useful to be ahead of the ball by knowing about start-ups before they start to be adopted by the masses. A new site has popped up that can let you eyeball new trends... see what others have actually gotten to launch stage. KillerStartups.com

Another free typo tool

I probably go to Domaintools.com more often then I check my email - and that says a lot. They have a number of nifty features especially if you opt for a paid membership.

They now have a free domain typo tool available at their site. Since I do some proactive copyright/tm searches for clients, I'm always on the lookout for more ways to research. I ran a couple of recent searches I did for clients and found a few domains that I hadn't come across through other methods. (Of course, I wouldn't register tm/copyright domains for my own purposes!) It also has a few other capabilities that make it a cut above other typo tools.

Check it out yourself before they start to make it a paid service.

One of the problems with domain parking

Almost all parking programs work the same way: you change your name servers to that of the parking company and then add your domain to your account with that company.

I've been having a bit of a problem lately. When I register/purchase/win an auction for a new domain name, by default depending on the registrar, it will set the name servers to one of the parking services I deal with. This saves me having to manually go in to change the name servers. The problem is I don't always immediately add those domains to my parking account. I try to deal with parking bits just once a day. Seems like that is a more productive use of my time. Unfortunately, it seems that some unscrupulous people are tracking name server domain gains and adding gained domains to their accounts with the same parking companies. Essentially they are trying to steal the revenue from the domains. The normal procedure with the companies I deal with is that you need to submit a ticket to get ownership of the domain verified.

I've mentioned this to a few active domains who basically gave a virtual shrug of their shoulders as if to say there's nothing wrong with it.

Come on. These same people have to be doing it to more than just my domains. Aren't parking companies noticing this? Unless of course they are the ones responsible.

I have no problem with the parking company receiving any revenue generated because of my own delay in adding domains. But I do have a problem with people that are essentially stealing. I also have a problem with parking companies that sit back while people do this and put the onus on the legitimate owner. Meanwhile, while I wait a day or two or three for ownership to be verified, the thief continues to make money.

I'm not a Sedo fan by any means, but I do have to say at least this is one thing they have right: if the email address associated with a domain does not match the email address they have on file for you, they will verify ownership. Granted their reasoning is more likely tied into concerns about sales than about parking revenue... and this also poses problems for those of us that use multiple email addresses on our domain ownership records... but how much work would it be for parking companies to implement such a practice? Or at least to take action on people stealing the traffic/revenue of others.

Why you should be investing in domain names regardless of what your online business does

It's funny..... I started working on a post a couple of days ago about the value of generic domain names and then I came across an article by Matt Bentley "Don't Buy the Keyword - Buy the Domain" that covered a lot of what I wanted to.

I'll give you a personal example. For one of my businesses - email newsletter publishing, a typical click on Adwords runs close to $2. Several years back, I started picking up some generic keywords/phrases related to that business. These domains individually get anywhere from 5 to 200 unique visitors a month. Let's figure that I have a dozen domains that are generic and averaging 1000 unique visitors a month overall. Renewal costs run a whopping $84 a year. If I were to spend that money on PPC advertising @ $2/click, that would work out to 42 clicks a year. Instead, I'm getting around 12,000 visitors a year. If I were paying for that traffic, I'd be spending $24,000 a year. A bit of a difference wouldn't you say?

The best part is, even at the $2 per visitor, I am still making money. All this does is increase my profits even further.

Right now, it's almost impossible to find good generics that will get type-in traffic like this just for registration costs in the .com extension (pretty much any other extension is useless for generics as far as type-in traffic goes). Many of these domains suitable for your business might already be held by your competitors. But it's more than likely a good chunk of them are being held by domain speculators. Basically people that thought enough ahead of time to register these domains.

Most domainers will "park" their domains. I'm sure you've come across a fair share of parking pages in your time using the net. Basically these look like search pages - often with ads. Domainers make money when someone clicks on one of these ads.

The bulk of generic domains are sold based on the revenue generated by them or revenue combined with traffic. This isn't always the case. There are many domains that go for much more just because they are simply great domains for branding purposes.

A couple of years ago, if buying a domain based on revenue/traffic, you could expect to pay between 2-5 years revenue. Now solid generics are getting anywhere from 3-100 years revenue. Even at 100 years revenue or more they can still be an incredible bargain. Let me explain why....

When a domain is parked, the owner of the domain is getting a small cut of the CPC paid by an advertiser. There is the company selling the advertising and the parking company that also have to make money.

To see what the discepancy is between what advertisers are paying versus what domainers are getting paid... I parked a few domains that I use for traffic redirecting. I used the same keywords for parking that I did when advertising on PPC. I found that, on average, I was getting about 1/10th of what the going rate was for a click. So let's say for example, I would normally pay $3 for a click advertising, that means I would get around $0.30 for a click parked.

Now let's apply this to your business. Let's say there's a generic domain that applies to your business. That domain gets an average of 10 visits a day. The person that owns the domain is getting 3 clicks a day @ $0.20 each or $0.60 a day total. One year of revenue would be $219 and 3650 visitors. Let's say they are asking for 5 years revenue for that domain - $1100.

Let's say you have been doing PPC advertising on that same phrase. You are paying $2 a click on average. (And hopefully making money at that rate!) Let's say that 30% of the visitors that type in that generic domain in their browser are as qualified prospects as those that click on your PPC ads. So you'd be getting approximately 1200 qualified visitors in the first year after purchasing the domain. If you got these same 1200 visitors by PPC advertising, you'd be spending about $2400. In year one alone, you are ahead of the game by 1300. ($2400 less the 1100 you paid for the domain.) Everything after that is gravy.

Going back a step here... let's say the owner of the domain wanted 10 years revenue or $2200. Even at that asking price, it would still be a bargain, don't you think? From time to time, those of us active in the domain industry will hear of domains selling for 100 years revenue. Seeing this one example, can you understand why? In this case, 100 years revenue would be 220,000. Let's say that your $2 per click on PPC advertising represents a huge ROI for you and that for every $1 you spend on PPC, you are making back $100 in pure profit. 2400 (what you would have spent on PPC advertising) x 100 (the profit per $1 spent) = 240,000. At that level, you are in the black in your first year.

Spending $110,000 for a domain doesn't seem like a bad investment now does it?

If you are a careful shopper when it comes to domains, there's another advantage to it. Let's say you are a true entrepreneur and you build up businesses/websites with the intent of selling them off eventually. Perhaps you move onto a new business every 2-3 years. Sometimes a business may not work out. Well, guess what? Getting generic domains with natural type-in traffic can represent an additional asset for your business. Even if your existing business doesn't work out, you can always turn around and sell the domain - and the way the market is going, likely for much more than you paid for it.

There's been so much hooplah in the past year or so about PPC/CPA arbitrage. Before that it was PPC arbitrage between the different PPC sites. The problem with methods like this is that they are truly opportunitistic. As more people find out about them and as you perfect the system yourself, the opportunity to make money dimishes to the point where you stand a much better chance of losing money than you do of profiting.

Domains represent a different arbitrage situation. Since there are a finite number of generic domains, there are only so many opportunities. As long as the cost paid for a domain can be recouped at SOME time in the near future (ie the next 10 years), the potential risk is nominal.

I was recently explaining this to an entrepreneur that didn't understand why people would pay so much for domains. His reasoning is that when it comes to technology a lot can happen in 10 years. True. But I know I have had several domains now for 10 years myself. There are countless billions invested in the current Internet structure so the odds are pretty good that it won't be changing dramatically within the next 10 years. There's just too many players at this point that would lose too much money for this to happen.

But I gotta tell you, the window of opportunity is getting smaller with each passing day. If you want to take advantage of this for your business, the time to act is now and not in a year or two years from now. Not even months if you can avoid it. It can take time to learn the ropes.

There's three ways I can help you: I handle acquisitions (brokering) for a small number of clients. If you have a budget of at least $20,000, we can work through your needs and I can handle the acquisitions for you. If you are a do-it-yourselfer, each month, I offer a workshop to work with clients via teleconference calls and emails. If you can't make the teleconference calls, you can listen to recordings after the fact. This is a fairly intensive program where we work on your overall marketing strategy combined with domains. I also have a very limited circulation predrop subscription service. This deals with expiring domains that can be backordered via services like Snapnames and Pool. This service can make research for you essentially hands-off. If you're interested in any of these services, please leave a comment on my blog with your contact info. (I have comments set to approval so no one will see it.)

Time management

I came across a neat tool called AllNetic for tracking time. It can handle two levels of tracking - by projects and by tasks. I've only started to mess around with it, so it's too early to pass judgment one way or another. The author of the software needs some grammatical help though!

I also found a neat egg timer that can act as either a stopwatch or timer.

Why was I looking for timers? Well, to put it mildly, after taking a 'vacation' from serious business, I need to focus on spending time on a regular basis on some core areas instead of wasting so much time with distractions or non-priority work. If I were to list all of the areas, you'd probably wonder where I AM spending time, so I won't waste space here. Suffice to say, my time management skills have been sucking lately.

Web-based typo generator for domains

If you don't want to shell out money on a program to check for typos, TypoGen is a free web-based one.