Conversion Chain Gain

For us, when we dig deeply into a client’s online marketing, we often find many more opportunities than problems. This whole business is just so immature that most organizations have millions of dollars in untapped ROI potential. Going beyond landing pages is like finding buried treasure—three inches down in the sand on your favorite local beach.

One such buried treasure is what I call the conversion chain. It’s the actual tactics or process employed to execute the conversion. If you think fulfillment is boring or perfunctory, you’re missing this huge opportunity.

When a conversion is a chain of events instead of a single event, it generates a chain of events in return. That chain of events is a booty worth digging for.

Lead-Gen Landing Page Example

We have a significant number of lead-gen clients that use white papers as the carrots for their rabbits. Let’s assume that the persuasive process of honest seduction to get those rabbits from 0-60 so they grab for the carrot is a done deal (and a topic for another blog post (or book)).

Traditional Single-Event Fulfillment

Most of the time, white paper delivery is as simple as:

• Submit the lead-gen form and on the ‘thank you’ page give a link to download the white paper.
• Submit the lead-gen form and receive the white paper via email.

Chained Fulfillment

There are untapped opportunities buried in fulfillment. We’ve found that once people get beyond the high-stress moment of committing to give us data, they actually loosen up. It’s at this crucial time that we’re delivering the carrot to the rabbit. How we deliver it makes all the difference in the world. Consider this real-world fulfillment chain:

• Pre-prep users that the white paper will be emailed (to ensure higher integrity in collected data).
• Provide several tightly targeted resource links into your website from the ‘thank you, check your inbox’ page.
• Send a richly messaged HTML email with a link back to a white paper library to download the white paper (as well as bonus materials). 
• Link into your website to a richly messaged page that includes the white paper library as well as highly attractive cross sells of targeted, engaging content, tools or even products.

Even this simple example multiplies engagement several times over—for free—still building off of the same carrot, the same good will. And before anyone gets user-defensive, please note that our example is actually over delivering on our original promise of a white paper. Now they’re getting access to an entire library of related white papers—not just one.

Consider the opportunity mined from the seemingly mundane task of delivering the white paper:

• A richly branded and messaged impression in their email inbox (that tends to stick around)
• At least one website visit
• Over delivery—exceeding user expectations (great brand props)
• Oh, and the rabbit got the carrot

Comments

[Robert]

I understand the potential benefits of getting into their inbox and getting them to your website, but how many people do you alienate by not immediately fulfilling their request for a white paper?

@robert_brady

[ion]

Robert,

Good question. I'm a huge usability advocate and have been throughout my 15-year web marketing career. It's all about expectations. We let people know early that we're going to email them access to the white paper. We definitely don't get into any bait and switch or missed expectations. We try to exceed expectations and reward them for their effort by giving them more than what they expected when they finally get to their white paper.

When we employ email delivery a couple of things are true:
1. We get far better data integrity (much less asdfghjk or qwertyui)
2. For deliverability, in B2B contexts we try not to email attachments (because of corporate firewalls)

Because of #2 above, it's good for everyone if we email out a link so they actually get the white paper. I'm simply advocating making the absolute most of the additional touch points that are created by this process.

As a point on the curve, and to speak to the overall success of approaches like this, our lead-gen clients are converting at 16.0% over the last 30 days, and we're continuing to trend upward month over month. We also see a high percentage of repeat visitors after they get their white paper, which provides some positive reinforcement for the user experience.

Thanks for participating.

[Jeff Ogden]

As one who has been hired to pen a white paper and has downloaded one of yours, I find this topic of great interest. Certainly, the experts at Marketing Experiment talk about reducing friction. The download I did was certainly friction-free.

Keep up the good work, Justin.

[ion]

Jeff, friction-free is indeed the key to brand enhancement. Every interaction starts as an opportunity. It's unfortunate that most end as problems. If we all focused solely on exceeding user expectations, our businesses would be much more successful. It all comes down to that simple objective. Thanks for reading.