Selling Online Subscriptions - First Post

Amazing location - the Museum of Jewish Heritage on the southern tip of Manhattan right on the river and with a view of the skyline and the Statue of Liberty. My hotel is about 15 minutes walk away - close to the 9/11 site. This is the conference site.

There are 9 sessions timetabled for today with the first one being

Title: New Paid Content  Marketing Research: Stats on What Works

Detail: MarketingSherpa's research director reveals paid content data from their updated studies. Gain actionable and up–to–the–minute information on search and email marketing, as well the influence of web design, pricing and payment plans on conversion.

Stefan Tornquist,  Research Director, MarketingSherpa

My notes: 

Predicted revenue sources 2012:(top two)

• Advertising 79%
• Subscriptions 72%

Adverts in email newsletters - from 80% first time it cut 50% each time over 3 viewings. How do you get over this - advert rotation and advert position. Possibly move from graphic advert to text based.

How is economy affecting you?

• B2C - 40% of businesses do not expect any difference. For these the downturn opens up new opportunities if you have a flexible pricing or product model
• B2B economic effects being felt: Lengthening sales cycles, lower new customers each month, lower average purchase.

Sources of traffic (B2B)

• Search engine optimisation
• Paid search marketing
• Viral marketing
• Online sponsorship
• PR
• Offline advertising

There are large differences in the range of effectiveness in some of these - Viral marketing being one of them.

B2C

• SEO
• Viral marketing
• PR
• Offline Advertising
• Paid search marketing

Point made that the SEO dominance may point to success of other channels driving traffic to your business via search

B2B - Web2 activities question

Very interesting in that the majority of the sample who are participating in the various activities do not know if it makes any difference at all.

If they know the effects they are:

• Increased engagement - 74%
• Increased awareness in potential customers - 44%
• Improved customer retention - 21%
• Customers spending more - 18%

Prediction of 50% growth in video advertising through to 2010 - $2.9B by then (PWC figures)

Slide on the testing done over the last year by conference participants with high impact figures after each:

• Homepage redesign - 10%
• Email list cleansing - 25%
• Redefining site architecture for SEO - 29%
• Implementing high end web analytics - 17%
• Redefining internal search - 13%
• Usability testing of registration and/or shopping cart - 19%

Information potentially wanted by a user before making purchase (may reflect a more complex purchasing decision):

• Pricing
• Information
• Comparisons
• Customer Service
• Company information

keith

PS - all 12 of my posts from this conference can be seen here:
http://bohanna.typepad.com/pureplay/selling_online_subscriptions_2008.html

Comments

[Robin Blandford]

Hi Keith - have enjoyed all your notes so far, very relevant. Esp the "Signup" page A/B stuff.

[keith bohanna]

Glad you are finding the notes useful Robin. These are the best way for me to capture the stuff that is relevant to me.

Looking forward to seeing your first business :-)

keith