To shave off a few minutes and avoid the line-out-the-door lunch crowd at the burrito place, I went online that morning to place my order for a speedy pick-up. Their website was easy to navigate, and actually fun to use. Plus it was quick. Overall great experience (kudos to them). It’s also worth mentioning that my son usually orders from their app and has similar praise. In fact, he likes the app so much that we end up eating there much more often. For their ecommerce team, it doesn’t get much better than that, right?

Actually, it gets worse. I was ahead of schedule when I arrived to pick up my order. It was great to move past the long line and go straight to the cashier – a true reward for ordering online. I just needed to grab by order and race home to spend lunch with my son.

“Oh, an online order? You’re gonna have to wait a minute.” Not the response I wanted to hear. Pickup time for me was 12:10pm. I arrived at 12:09 (scheduled to the minute, right?). No problem, so I back up to the wall to wait with the others – no less than six other people camped out, waiting for their orders. Chatting with them, I discovered five placed orders via Web, fax, or app, and one had won free lunch for her office and was there to pick up.

There we waited… five minutes, 10 minutes, 15… 20…
A steady flow of people who stood in the out-the-door line placed, waited and received their orders – all while we clever “order ahead” folks waited in burrito purgatory.

Finally, at 12:45 – I received my food. And an apology. And a refund. And another free meal for the next time I order. And a personal call from the manager later that day to apologize. They really did try to make things right. Of course, you can’t do much for the time I lost. The people were great – but the system was flawed.

If you offer an online order option and you want it to grow, some advice:

• Be sure a systemized order fulfillment process is in place and clearly understood down to the lowest level of the organization.
• If you can’t handle online/app orders during peak times, don’t offer peak times as an option for pickup.
• Test the process at all steps, not just those digital. Online experiences are one thing (and were great in this case), but the real test is in-store at the personal-contact moment.

It just shows that even the best online and app experience can be sabotaged by an in-store experience that’s not properly designed to support it – especially when things get busy or when employees are unclear of the process. Digital orders need to be smoothly integrated into order processing or it negates the trouble of the slick website/app to begin with.

I may be out of the running for Mommy of the Year for missing quality time with my son yesterday; but hey, at least we got a free lunch out if it.

Dutch: “1) Marketers should resolve to commit to effective SMS programs (not just talk about them) that support a rich mobile Web experience. 2) Marketers should resolve to think mobile Web first and “app” second.”

Dave: “I would just encourage marketers in 2011 to constantly reevaluate where their programs are on a holistic level. Too often I meet with smart marketers who, instead of having a synergistic combination of elements, they have essentially a ‘marketing attic,’ piled high with trinkets, boxes, and once-hot marketing initiatives now gathering dust. This accumulation of seldom-used or out-of-date tactics can be recycled and exchanged for a better model that takes a stronger, user-friendly approach. The end result will likely be greater efficiency and better growth in the future.”

Bryce: “For more brands to start understanding their customers and prospects as a cross-channel entities. This starts with better insights gained from consolidating disparate data sources and outputs, creating a single view of the customer and their interactions across channels. What are they reading, where and what are they buying, how do they look for help when they have a question? Then using this insight to tailor the marketing outreach, optimizing channel strategies, content, frequency and spend to create more relevant and valuable experiences for researching, buying, or getting customer support.”

So, what are your resolutions for 2011? Add to the discussion by leaving a comment below.

Yes, that’s right… I said “mobileness.” I coined the term to refer to the emerging consumer mobile trend: Consumers are adopting mobile devices as a bridge between traditional online channels, between offline or in-store experiences. People are using their mobile devices for a multitude of reasons, whether it’s to get on-demand information such as product availability, buying products through an m-commerce site, or to get product information while they’re still in-store.

It’s worth noting that currently these mobile-device activities may not necessarily fit into a traditional online or in-store marketing channel. You’ll need a unique approach.

Based on the feedback from folks who joined us for the webinar, it’s obvious that marketing and communications professionals from both digital and traditional media backgrounds want to know more about mobile marketing. Perhaps it is because mobile, in reality, is a type of hybrid. It’s not viewed as an “online” channel. Mobile can support “offline” tactics very well. For example, retail marketers often develop in-store strategies where shoppers can access content from their mobile devices.

Mobile impacts every aspect of our daily lives in so many ways. It keeps us connected to the digital world, but also seems to enhance our “non-digital” lives tremendously. The trend of mobileness continues to envelop consumers in the way we manage our day-to-day. Reaching out and engaging with customers in the process is an essential part of the mix.

So, (as promised) here are three elements of achieving “mobileness”:

• SMS
• Mobile Web
• Email

Recent Lunch Pail posts have focused on SMS and Mobile Web. But let’s take a quick look at our old friend, email, as an essential part of mobile strategy.

Marketers seem to be surprised every time I talk about email being one of the core aspects of mobile marketing. But it’s true… just look at the data! Some of the most-used technologies – the things people spend most time with while on their smartphones – are the activities already established in our daily lives. Specifically, people use their phones to check email and access the Web. If you are not optimizing both email and the Web for your audience when they’re using a mobile device, you’re missing the lowest of the low-hanging fruit there is for effective mobile marketing strategy.

In this informative video, Lesley provides easy instructions for how to make landing page optimization practical and flexible. She also outlines the role test pages and live zones play in optimizing a landing page, and provides real, actionable examples of testing and targeting using test pages and live zones, and the dramatic impact on results when it is done right.

The second landing page optimization resource comes from highly regarded research lab MarketingExperiments. In a recent blog post on MarketingExperiments’ blog editor Daniel Burstein features advice from Knotice on how to optimize landing pages. In his post, Daniel notes that “it is essential for marketers to obtain a thorough understanding of the Offer/Response-Optimization process and the testing-optimization cycle to improve their overall campaigns and advance their career, sometimes you just need a few basic ideas to gain a quick boost right now.”

Knotice was tapped to provide advice on the best tips, techniques, and approaches for landing page optimization. Check out what we had to say here. Also, be sure to check out MarketingExperiments’ free web clinic on landing page optimization, Wednesday.

What questions do you have about landing page optimization? Post them below, and we’ll answer!

There are a lot of good studies that use eye tracking from the biggest names in usability. And there are a bunch that reveal what shape is made when the heat map is complete – an “F,” a “Z,” something that looks like the “solution” without the maze, etc. But there are also a few places where all the different studies tend to be in agreement. Most of these studies are centered on how we all read text.

Usually we scan. Customers are very adept at reading email and making quick decisions on it. A longer publication like a newsletter may get less than a minute’s attention from the most engaged readers. Email, unsurprisingly, competes for a limited – usually fixed – amount of time with everyone else’s email. Readers do not add to their email time budget for each new subscription.

So what can be done? Here are a few standards I always strive for when reviewing email copy and layout:

• Clearly all the shapes created by these heat maps put emphasis on the top left. That is how we in the West read, left to right and top to bottom, so this comes naturally. Put the goods there.
• Some studies will show that the best length for a text link is 7-10 words. Often eye trackers guide us to make the first few words count. That may be all that is read (or scanned) before a decision is made to click or move on.
• The same principles apply with headlines. The first few words matter the most.
• Text links are best and buttons are second for getting clicks. Anything that looks like an “ad” in the content, regardless of how well it actually supports the content, will likely be ignored.

It may not be possible to get the budget, time, or desire to do an eye track study, but it does not mean improving the content is impossible. Besides taking my word for what works, do some A/B testing. Conduct a focus group with a few customers. If something new and different is learned, let us all know.

What does the widespread availability of marketing measurability mean? It means there are no excuses.

According to one recent survey, 75 percent of marketers are still changing the subject. The joint survey, conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey and CMG Partners, discovered that only 25 percent of marketers believe they are managing their marketing effectively.

That number – like all numbers – is subject to interpretation. Perhaps some marketers are measuring their effectiveness but believe the measurability can get better. Regardless of the reasons behind the statistic, it is alarming and perhaps an indication that marketing is still executed and analyzed more on its art than its science.

Perhaps one reason marketing measurement lags in adoption is the “double” cost. There is the cost of purchasing and maintaining the necessary tools for effective measurement and the opportunity cost of time and resources spent discovering the right approach and convincing all of the stakeholders involved that measurability is mandatory.

More likely is a scenario where most marketers are unconvinced of measurement’s value. The survey discovered that 75 percent of the over 400 companies surveyed are interested in better measuring the performance of various marketing efforts, but a comparatively tiny 24 percent believe using insights from measurement improve results.

This “effectiveness gap” is closed for any addressable direct digital marketing tactics. A foundational principle of direct digital marketing is applied measurability – the capacity to seamlessly execute, analyze, and improve any direct digital marketing efforts – whether the campaign is executed on a website, through email, or over mobile – without heavy lifting on the part of the marketer. If marketers believe measurement efforts hamstring the ROI figures they are ultimately accountable for – rather than enhance them – it is easy to understand why measurement adoption is slow. But, once the buy-in comes from bosses and clients – and it is only a matter of time – measurability becomes mandatory.

2007 and 2008 data indicate Cyber Monday is the #1 online shopping day two years running. It's so dominant that, like "Black Friday" before it, "Cyber Monday" has been adopted into the common consumer lexicon (unlike Mobile Tuesday). Online retailers can now confidently call their Cyber Monday sales "Cyber Monday Sale." Subject line copywriters throughout North America are jubilant.

Cyber Monday’s Long Tail

Data from 2007 and 2008 (though early) also indicates an emerging carryover from Cyber Monday into Tuesday and even Wednesday. The distinctive spike seen on Cyber Monday is now a gently sloping plateau.

One of Knotice’s clients has seen online order activity through Tuesday and Wednesday that meets or exceeds Monday’s activity.

In recent years there has been a fairly significant online “aftershock” seen on the Monday following Cyber Monday. Combine Cyber Monday’s weeklong carryover with the Cyber Monday #2 aftershock effect and the argument doesn’t seem absurd:

Cyber Monday is quickly emerging as a week-long online shopping event. Consumer behavior is changing before our eyes.

Call it “BlackCyberFridayMonday”

In the last 30 years the retail holiday shopping season has become a 4-holiday, 3-month mashup from Halloween through the New Year. In the last decade consumers have been conditioned by aggressive Black Friday marketing, creating a consumer population that instinctively opens their wallets with the same uncanny regularity that takes the swallows to Capistrano. In the last three years, similar behavioral convergence has created a new shopping micro-season. This micro-season is defined less by the two milestone shopping days – Black Friday and Cyber Monday – as by the 5-day mashup, beginning in earnest with early online shopping on Thanksgiving Day and continuing as a hybrid retail-online event through Monday… and now beyond. The swallows are flocking to Capistrano – and settling down for a stay.

How to Leverage the Trend

Here are some quick tips to help leverage the trend:

• There is time to build anticipation for a sales event.
• There is time to “extend” a sale event to capture shoppers who were previously undecided, and those who just can’t quite keep their wallet closed.
• There is time to re-send email campaigns to prospects who did not respond to the first offer. There is time to send a new offer to the ones who responded before, but did not buy.
• There is time to test different offers and different messaging angles.

Online marketers can use this emerging behavior to their advantage. The consumer attention span has been expanded to what can be a 10-day shopping micro season. Consumers are researching, comparing and couponing. They know they have time to shop without risk of truly missing any “one day only” offers. This gives marketers a lot more flexibility – and time – to test and optimize their campaigns.

Our CEO, Brian, once again had his thoughts published, this time by DM News. He talks about the importance of unifying all online marketing data in one spot (whether it’s known customer attributes or behavioral data), and how it empowers better targeted online marketing programs that increase sales.

Also, it was mentioned in another post, but it’s worth re-posting that our email delivery assurance partner, ReturnPath, mentioned our software in a recent blog post from Stephanie Miller. Specifically, she talked about the advantages to recognizing a website visitor as an email subscriber, and how that can positively impact the buy-flow and the conversion process.

Two more quick mentions. One is from Nation’s Restaurant News where Brian spoke to the benefits of email marketing for restaurants, and that relevance is king over frequency. And, our local paper (the Akron Beacon Journal) did a story on businesses with unique cost cutting ideas – Brian gave a very interesting answer.

Here’s what to look forward to in December: We’ll post some online shopping tales that will include some pointers on how to improve the stuff that wasn’t so good, or why the good stuff was good. Stay tuned for this Monday’s post, too. Our systems administrator, Joe Minadeo (and another Knotice musician) will be posting on some super-cool email delivery assurance trends.

As usual, there is no rest for the weary here at the Lunch Pail. In fact, it would be decidedly UN-Lunch Pail to take time off, so, we refuse to do it. That means you can still count on posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, regardless of the holidays. I know you’re all excited to wake up one morning during the holidays, grab your coffee, and then check for the new post on the Lunch Pail. Enjoy!

Neither approach is wrong here, but neither is an informed, defensible approach, either. Like many things in life these are both valid solutions for particular jobs. Sometimes you need a 3-wood, sometimes a putter. Sometimes a claw hammer will do, sometimes you need a sledge. So here are some brief scenarios and tips to help you pick the right tool.

When you want to test a single variable: A/B or A/B-N testing is excellent at testing one particular aspect of your creative – email subject lines, for example. In fact, A/B-N testing is valid only when you are testing exactly one variable of your creative. When you test more than one variable of the creative, you are creating an invalid test with unreliable results, despite the fact that it may “feel” exactly the same in process.

When you need speed to market: With the caveat above, A/B or A/B-N tests can be very quick and easy to setup. Test design is simple. Create 1, 2 or “N” versions and test each over equally distributed, random sets of your total population. For web content you may want to consider the statistical significance of the differences you see before declaring a winner, while email decisions are more often driven by time constraints.

When you want to test multiple variables: As mentioned above, A/B testing is invalid over multiple variables. However, this is what multivariate testing is designed to handle. So test your model photography, and the color scheme, and the headline, and the offer…all at once. Multivariate testing allows you to get smarter about several factors at the same time.

When you want to know the interaction effects: This is another situation where multivariate testing shines. Not only can you test multiple variables with one effort, but you can gauge the effects the variables have on each other. Even with multiple A/B tests for multiple variables you’ll never get to see the interaction effects that are caused by changing multiple factors at the same time. Additionally, with the right software and test design, you can avoid testing all variations equally while concentrating on those combinations that are most likely to yield results.

Happy testing.

The other impressive commercial was from Nike and featured the USA Men’s Basketball team. What was compelling about this commercial was not just the slow-motion action shots of our basketball stars, but also the audio and intercutting video shots of the recently-deceased Isaac Hayes singing our National Anthem. It was done tastefully, and regardless of your feelings about using the images of the deceased to market athletic equipment, it is a powerful spot…especially less than three days after Hayes’ death.

What struck me about these two spots is that they were both extremely well-timed and very well produced. Having worked in production for ESPN, I know it’s hard to achieve those elements in television. Sure these are big budget companies, but it is impressive. And, they are setting your audiences’ expectations.

If this timeliness is a benchmark expectation for TV, it begs questions about how timely your email and SMS messages should be, especially when you consider they are so much easier to produce. What about your web content?

Good marketing means reaching the right audience at the right time. Make sure you have a content platform that has the ability to test and change both messaging and creative on the fly, allowing you, the marketer, to move as quickly as our times are changing. Whether by serendipity (Phelps grabbing gold), tragedy (the passing of Isaac Hayes) or by intent (good online marketing software), a well-timed marketing message is more powerful and memorable.