Sally Lowery tells us how she started a conversion program at Bronto Software

Sally Lowery is the Director of Demand Generation at Bronto Software. In this last interview in our  Facebook interview series on conversion optimization, Sally shares how she started a conversion program at Bronto, and offers tips and advice for anyone looking to start their own program.

Can you tell us a little about your conversion optimization role?

At Bronto Software, a leading email service provider, my role as Director of Demand www.bronto.com/ is to continue to grow our lead databank with highly targeted prospects while decreasing spend. This probably sounds like the challenge of every marketer, but we’ve been successful due to the tactics we’ve deployed during the conversion process. I oversee the entire conversion optimization strategy from campaign channel to landing experience.

How did you first get into conversion optimization?

Three years ago, we had low conversion rates on our paid search. My challenge was to expand our lead acquisition across channels but was stunted due to the amount of budget we were fueling into paid search with little return. I first began by looking at our keyword return, “email marketing” was one we were putting a great deal of investment in with no return, that’s right, no return. So first things first, tighten up keywords. Next, focus on our ad strategy. We had a lot of message mismatch from textual ad to landing experience. Lastly, it was to focus on the landing pages. We went from a “one size fits all” landing page to a highly dynamic landing experience that engaged prospects pre and post conversion. We now have a 9.3% conversion rate on paid search and continue to optimize our strategy.Fortunately, this process can be repeated across all channels and has proven quite successful. To give a little insight, the traditional B2B model averages 2.57deals for every 1,000 respondents, our demand generation programs yield 3.97. This is due to our optimized strategy from lead acquisition to funnel development.

What team members do you work with on a normal basis?

We are a small organization, so our team consists of an additional campaign manager and a graphic designer. I still do a great deal of the hands on day to day activities with our online marketing. I wouldn’t be able to have the success we’ve had without Liveball. Not to sound like an infomercial, but it really does a lot of the heavy lifting that would take a much larger team to achieve.

If you started the conversion program at your organization, what was the number one challenge you faced and how did you overcome it?

I began the conversion program at Bronto Software. I really consider myself a revenue marketer, and want a fully optimized experience on the marketing side from start to finish. To be honest, I think we have an innovative organization with innovative leaders, they were more than willing to make the investment to see better return, because ultimately it’s a win for the organization. I do have to show results on a quarterly basis and we continue to gain successes along the way.

What is the best thing about being a part of the conversion optimization process?

The marketing landscape is constantly changing, which means we face challenges to be creative and innovative. To me, that’s the most rewarding part of the optimization strategy. How do you get people engaged during a time where there is information overload. Testing is a critical component to our marketing day, and it makes it fun.

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Vincent Ammirato shares how he manages conversion optimization at Alter Imaging

Vincent Ammirato is the Internet Marketing Strategist at Alter Imaging, Inc. In this fourth interview in our on-going Facebook interview series on conversion optimization, Vincent shares how he started a conversion program at Alter Imaging, and offers tips and advice for anyone looking to start their own program.

Can you tell us a little about your conversion optimization role?

I am the Internet Marketing Strategist at Alter Imaging, Inc. We’re a small, talented group who do website/application design and development. I work as a member of the development team to improve site visibility and usability. My main job is to get quality, targeted traffic to the site and make sure they convert. Everything I do is CRO-centric [Conversion Rate Optimization-centric].

How did you first get into conversion optimization?

I guess when I first started building websites 20 years ago. Why build a site if you don’t want conversions? I think everyone involved with commercial web design is at least familiar with CRO’s principles.

But more to the point, I formally started working on CRO 4 years ago at my previous company. Our search marketing took off and we made top rank for several very competitive phrases. Our sales associates were getting flooded with leads…so much so that leads were starting to get neglected.

I stepped up and modified how the system distributed leads and implemented a mandatory training program for agents wishing to receive online leads. I also monitored regularly for compliance and turned off agents that weren’t properly responding to leads. That year we more than doubled on-line sales from 25 to well over 50 million.

Which team members do you work with on a normal basis?

I’m very lucky at Alter Imaging because everyone is in the same room and we all share a common drive to solve other peoples’ problems. We also all speak LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). If I ask the graphic designer a design question, our lead programmer and our interface designer will overhear it and may choose to weigh in.

If you started the conversion program at your organization, what was the number one challenge you faced and how did you overcome it?

In a nut shell: Getting them to trust me enough to put the “Request Proposal” button above the fold. 

But to be more general: Site owners that don’t want to change their site’s “feel”. I understand that appearances are important and I am sensitive about making a website’s calls to action part of a natural flow. But to me: data trumps feelings. A client may not think that a CRO-driven change makes sense but numbers don’t lie. If I can increase conversions then I’m doing right by their customers and the customer is always right. In CRO you have to put your ego away and listen to the visitor data.

What is the best thing about being a part of the conversion optimization process?

The end result. When I present historical ROI data from multiple marketing channels and show them how CRO has increased their bottom line over time I know I’ve got a client for the long term.

I also like the fact that CRO as a field improves the overall web experience for everyone (as opposed to the fake content/link spam generated by SEO).

What is one final piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out in conversion optimization?

I would tell them that they are already doing CRO. They know what it takes for a website to impress them enough to trust it with their vital information and convince them to make a transaction. Go to a site that you have done business with before and list all the features that inspire trust. Put those features in your site. Then, learn web analytics and utilize it to track visitor usage patterns and make site changes based on those patterns.

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Sarah DeAtley shares how she started a conversion optimization program at Cobalt

Sarah DeAtley is a Web & Optimization Analyst at Cobalt. In this second interview in our on-going Facebook interview series on conversion optimization, Sarah shares how she started a conversion program at Cobalt, and offers tips and advice for anyone looking to start their own program.

Can you tell us a little about your conversion optimization role?

I am a web and optimization analyst at Cobalt, a company that provides automotive marketing services for a large number of dealer websites across brands. Within the business intelligence group, I get to work on the entire analytics and optimization cycle and play with data all day. This includes looking at data regularly to measure performance, and using analytics insights and user centered design to directly influence A/B testing. We’re fortunate to have access to a variety of data sources, so I can tie offline actions to online behavior, and do lots of cool segmentation.

How has your conversion optimization process evolved so far?

How is it evolving? Our conversion optimization process has gone from “What is an A/B test?” to people constantly asking if we can help them test new designs. It’s been great to see co-workers and clients get excited about optimizing sites and making data-based design choices. We’re trying to grow our program both from the top down and the bottom up. Meaning we’re working away at the low-hanging fruit (usability, campaign landing pages) while increasing top-level support to implement more complex tests with behavioral targeting. The ultimate goal is to move toward optimizing the consumer journey from brand sites to dealer sites.

Which team members do you work with on a normal basis?

I am a huge believer in collaboration; you never know where good test ideas will come from. Because of that we don’t have some of the issues other organizations have, where developers are the enemy of testing. Usually I work with developers, analysts, statisticians, designers, SEM managers, and account managers.

If you started the conversion program at your organization, what was the number one challenge you faced and how did you overcome it?

I was part of the launch team at Cobalt for conversion and optimization, and helped form our practice here. The #1 challenge we faced educating people within the company on optimization and its value. Overcoming that is an ongoing process, but reaching out to teams with test ideas helped spread the word about optimization. We also helped start a conversion optimization summit, which allowed us to share test successes and emphasize the need to be a data-driven organization. (Having awesome test results didn’t hurt either).

What is the best thing about being a part of the conversion optimization process?

Definitely the best part for me is being able to help the user and the client at the same time. Convincing clients why designs are not usable or in the client’s best interests can be difficult without data to prove it. Through conversion optimization and A/B testing, I can combine user centered design and analytics to make our sites more usable and persuasive; which leads to more conversions and ROI. Win-win.

What is one final piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out in conversion optimization?

I’m going to cheat and list 2 pieces of advice. 1. Come to #CROchat on Thursdays at 1PM EST and talk to other conversion optimization practitioners—they’re great sources of information on how to get started. 2. Start testing. The best way to learn is to just start testing and keep testing. Even if you use a personal site to practice.

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Christoph Cronimund shares how he started a conversion optimization program at Swarovsky

Christoph Cronimund is the director of online marketing at Swarovsky. In this second interview in our on-going Facebook interview series on conversion optimization, Chris shares how he started a conversion program at Swarovsky, and offers tips and advice for anyone looking to start their own program.

Can you tell us a little about your conversion optimization role?

I manage Swarovski’s search engine marketing campaigns in 22 countries where we have online shops. One of my key performance indicators being ROI, naturally I am interested in having both optimized PPC campaigns and landing page experiences. In my organization SEM is currently the most performance oriented channel, so I am the one who pushes conversion rate optimization (CRO).

How did you first get into conversion optimization?

I got into CRO when I realised that I needed better landing pages for our non-branded traffic. ROI was simply not satisfying enough for this type of traffic, but I was denied more budget. 

If I wanted to increase revenue I needed more budget though, so the only way out of this deadlock was to increase the conversion rates of the landing path; the PPC campaigns at this point were already optimized to death.

What team members do you work with on a normal basis?

The company’s retail calender dictates the campaigns I am running, which I have to synchronize with our social media marketer, as well as with the newsletter and affiliate communication managers. I also have a standing line to my own Google representative.

If you started the conversion program at your organization, what was the number one challenge you faced and how did you overcome it?

I knew that I somehow needed to by-pass the regular IT process which would have taken endless time for new landing pages to go online. It took me some time to convince our CEO that I needed to have my own subdomain with FTP access. 

After that was approved, I ordered Dreamweaver and Photoshop, so I didn’t need any external agencies, which speeded up the process even more. This way I have fast testing/learning cycles.

What is the best thing about being a part of the conversion optimization process?

The best part is definitely that everything (well, almost..) can be expressed in numbers. It’s so much easier to convince management with hard facts… not the HiPPO’s (highest payed person’s opinion) counts, but the numbers.

What is one final piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out in conversion optimization?

You need to have short test cycles no matter what it takes. You should be able to test new variations of landing pages (i.e. new texts, layouts and designs) quickly. To get there is probably the biggest hurdle.

Remember, we will be launching a new interview every week. If you haven’t already, click ‘like’ to be the first to see each new interview.

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Tim Eschenauer, SEO Specialist, Austin & Williams

Tim Eschenauer shares how he started a conversion optimization program at Austin & Williams

Tim Eschenauer is a SEO specialist at Austin & Williams. In this first interview in our on-going Facebook interview series on conversion optimization, Tim shares how he started a conversion rate optimization (CRO) program at Austin & Williams, and why SEO and CRO go hand in hand.

Can you tell us a little about your conversion optimization role?

My role at Austin & Williams is more about Search Engine Optimization, rather than Conversion Optimization. However, SEO and CRO are really coming together in way that one shouldn’t really live without the other. Conversions are obviously the ultimate goal of any website, no matter what the goal of the organization is. And studies have shown that SEO converts better than PPC; with CTR and conversions. SEO to me is about creating the best possible website for any brand - from the content to the design to the functionality (and usability) and all those elements come in to play in terms of search ranking, and ultimately converting users into customers.

How did you first get into conversion optimization?

Well, I am very passionate about Search Engine Optimization, and one of the things I hear most is “I want my website to be number one on Google for this keyword.” That’s all well and good, but I believe when it comes to a website and SEO, it should start with the ranking, but end with the Conversion. The client should be saying “I want my website to be number one on Google for this keyword, because I believe it will increase my business by X%.” You can’t assume just because you’re on page one, your site will convert. Any site can be on the first page of Google, but if the call to action for the user isn’t easily present and if your content doesn’t sell what you’re offering, the CTR can be great, but the Conversion Rate will be superseded by the Bounce Rate.

Case in point. We have a client which we increased their organic search traffic by over 135%, but their online appointments remained flat lined. The only way they could reach the appointment page was from the “home page”. We simply added the link on every page, and views to the appointment form have increased over 450% and users completing the form have increased over 550% in just 5 months.

Which team members do you work with on a normal basis?

At Austin & Williams, we are really a team in every sense of the word. Typically I’ll work with the copy writer, designer, programmer and account manager - no big surprise. However, we have several people here who are very web and analytics savvy that could identify opportunities and flaws within a website. Some of us are very addicted to analytics, and also love winning - so typically we’ll do whatever it takes to increase conversions, rankings, and visitors.

If you started the conversion program at your organization, what was the number one challenge you faced and how did you overcome it?

It was a no brainer to branch out into different forms of analytical data to look for new opportunities for our client’s websites. However, any digital marketing activity that includes the word “optimization” seems to have its obstacles - in terms of selling “it” to the client. I believe there is no better investment to make for your website than SEO and Analytics - which has CRO written all over it.

What is the best thing about being a part of the conversion optimization process?

When I meet with a client and report that we increased their conversions several hundred percent. It becomes addicting watching increases in analytics, and all you want to do is find the next thing that will bring the program to the next level.

What is one final piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out in conversion optimization?

To be successful in CRO, you should understand all the elements of website development and love analytics. You need to be able to become the user and identify what opportunities you might be missing, then fix them. I believe it all begins with optimizing your content and your design for users and search engines (you need these users to find your site before they will convert) then accept the fact that the website you worked so hard to launch might not be ideal for your target audience just because you love the design and the language you used. There is always room for improvement.

Do your research. Optimize. Test. Optimize. Test. Optimize. Test some more. 

Never stop testing and optimizing, because things change on a daily basis. Study your analytics, and don’t over look any opportunity to improve. No website is perfect. Make sure you lay a good foundation for your website first focusing on the website itself – Content, SEO, and Usability/Design – then, if the budget allows, invest in PPC and Social Media. And make analytics your priority.

You can follow Tim at @tim_eschenauer on Twitter, and you can check out our Facebook page for a new interview each week.