Learn To Trust Your Instincts

Recent personal and professsional experiences have inspired this post, which may slightly resemble a rant.

One of my dogs underwent knee surgery a couple of weeks ago to repair a torn cruciate ligament; when my husband and I picked him up, we knew right away something wasn't right and he shouldn't have been released from the vet's. But it was a weekend, and we were told that everything we were concerned about could also be normal in a recovering pooch. Our guts kept telling us something was wrong, and sure enough when we finally saw the surgeon again several days later, he took one look at our dog and agreed with us. Our poor guy had to have a second surgery and ended up suffering needlessly for several days.

On the professional front, I've been comparing some advertising results for a client for several different sites. While I've previously discussed the difference between clicks and click-throughs and why you will see discrepancies, sometimes the discrepancies jump out at you enough to question them.

This is the case with one particular site. The client's tracking system and the vendor's show very different numbers for clicks and click-throughs, as high as 150% or more when you start to break down the data week by week. A discrepancy of this size immediately set off alarm bells in my head... and my client's.

We've been back and forth with the vendor numerous times, and after iniitally discounting us, they are now taking us seriously. Given this is the only site of many we're on showing this discrepancy, it's clear that something isn't working. Whether it's the client's or vendor's tracking system remains to be seen, but both parties now agree that this must get resolved because something is amiss.

The moral of this story? Trust your judgment. You have good instincts when it comes to things you know - like your website. If something doesn't feel right, question it. Keep on doing so until you feel satisfied with the answers you're receiving. My husband and I should have pushed more (and sooner) with our dog, but we were out of our element - we didn't know enough about the subject, so just trusted what others said. At the end of the day, he's our dog, we know him best, and while we may not have known what exactly was wrong, we knew something was, and it turns out we were right.

The same can be said for my client who knows the number of click-throughs they normally get from advertising campaigns, and the types of discrepancies they normally see between their tracking system and a vendor one. They aren't giving up until this is sorted out because the discrepancy is large enough to make or break this campaign (on this one site) for them. It will determine whether or not they advertise with them again in the future. So until we know for sure, we're going to keep digging and keep questioning.

As G.I. Joe says.. "Knowing is half the battle."

Photo Credit: Stuant63; Flickr

Posted by Rebecca at 7:48 AM 2 comments Links to this post  

Why Shorter Newsletters are a Win-Win for Everyone

Skimming a new site that launched today - Association Jam - which basically is a niche Digg-style website for associations and non-profits (a brilliant idea from the folks at Wild Apricot!) - I found a favourited post discussing three trends that beg for shorter emails.

While the post is geared towards non-profits, the points raised really are transferrable across almost every industry.

In this age of information overload, microblogging (i.e Twitter) and other social media tools, email newsletters need to be freshened up. Gone are the days of creating long-winded newsletters with all the articles and information right there in the body.

Newsletters should be short and provide clear direction for what action you want people to take. They should also provide options; while you can segment your audience and send targeted newsletters to certain groups (clients vs. prospects, etc.), it doesn't mean everyone is still interested in the same articles or information.

Writing your newsletter topics like Twitter posts or Facebook statuses - giving a description in small chunks with a link to view more for those interested - is a way to not overwhelm your audience.

As Kivi pointed out in her post, "everyone has a desire to achieve inbox 0 these days," so the less overwhelming you can make an email, the better. The easier it is for people to click through on a link and then take some sort of action (like bookmarking or sharing the story) brings your newsletter in the social media age and provides valuable insight.

If you're tracking your newsletters, links, word of mouth mentions (using alerts and searches and so on) you'll be able to see how far and wide some of your newsletter articles go. This will help you get a better sense of what kinds of articles you should be including in your newsletter and ultimately make your newsletter even more attuned to your subscribers.

Posted by Rebecca at 10:38 AM 0 comments Links to this post  

How to Optimize Your Online Ad Campaign On a Budget

Often when the topic of optimizing your online advertising campaign comes up, you might think of it in terms of changing or tweaking the actual ad creative which can sometimes be costly.

Here's three tips for campaign optimization that don't involve creative changes to help keep things fresh and your budget in check.

Using your Analytics systems, check click and conversion metrics for:

1. Best performing sizes
Sometimes certin sizes or types of ads may perform differently than you expect. For example, box ads may be placed at the top, middle or bottom of the page on the site. If you know your ads are on the bottom, there's a chance that the box ad may not perform as well for you as another ad unit (or vice versa). Shift impressions to the ad unit that performs the best from a combined click-through and conversion standpoint. Keep in mind not all ads units will cost the same price, so you will need to weigh that in your decision but if you notice a signficant enough difference in response rates, fewer impressions with more conversions wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.


2. Best performing placement
While Run of Site or homepage placements may be cheaper, perhaps they get lost in the noise and don't get the kind of click-through (or conversion) rates you're seeing for more targeted placements (on the same site). Really review each placement to see if there is a difference. The more targeted the placement, the more it often costs. Maybe your ad gets great response rates without the targeting - shifting those impressions to ROS would end up stretching your dollar and your campaign as you could potentially run your ad longer. But you'll never know unless you're tracking individual placement responses for both click and conversion rates.

3. Frequency caps
Unless you're sponsoring a placement, running a roadblock or have 100% share of voice, you may want to consider capping the number of times a user can see your ads. This can be particularly effective when you have ROS placements or are running on sites that get a lot of repeat visitors. Working with your agency or the site, get them to place a cap between 3-5 views per user on your ads. Over time, compare the click-through rates and see if they increase, you might be surprised at what you find. I've had clients who have suddenly seen their click-through rates jump enough to continue running advertisements with the site in question. You'll want to use your analytics system to review results and you may need to play with that 3-5 range to find the number that works best for you. Frequency capping shouldn't cost any extra money and it's a way to improve the life span of your campaign, and potentially reach more unique eyeballs.


Some of the above mentioned optimizations are difficult to do if you have just sent one creative tag for tracking purposes. It's important to think about all the different ad placements and sizes on each site up front and to create separate ad tags for each one before the ads are trafficked to the website.

While this creates more work up front, it will allow you to track your campaign accurtely and really learn which site, placement, size or execution is working for you. Relying only on site reporting may not give you the most accurate results as every site and ad server may track things differently. You'll want to make sure you're using one tool to benchmark and compare the data equally.

You'll often notice that when looking at the data, the results vary by site. This is to be expected and as a result of minute differences in visitor profiles and behaviour. You should make sure that before making any blanket decisions you have looked at the data by site as well to make sure any performance generalizing statements you make aren't the result of one or two sites in particular.

Understanding what works well for each site will help you run the right kind of ads to the right kind of audiences, thus increasing your clicks and your conversions, without spending huge sums of money.

Photo Credit: Woodsy Stock.Xchng

Posted by Rebecca at 12:09 PM 2 comments Links to this post