October 26th, 2008 → 6:00 am @ Admin // No Comments
{Welcome back to the Damn, I Wish I Thought of That Email Newsletter. This is text of the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the left.}
Nothing your marketing team writes is ever going to be as effective as what your customers write for you.
1> Let them write your ads 2> Use best-seller lists 3> Collect customer ideas 4> Check it out: Win Seth Godin's new book!
1> Let them write your ads
You have a ton of testimonials and positive reviews. But they are probably sitting on a random page of your web site or filed away in a drawer. If you put customer reviews in your ads you get a better response. Office Depot tested putting customer's favorites in their ads, and the response was phenomenal. In one test, the results were: Increased Click-Through Rate: 78.5%, Increased Conversion: 23.8%, Increased Revenue: 196.6%, and Increased New Buyers: 183.3%. Why does it work? Because people trust other people more than your own marketing copy.
2> Use best-seller lists
Best-seller lists are an interesting form of word of mouth. They contain the implied recommendations of all your customers. Future customers look at what is selling, and know that past customers endorsed them by buying them. Show off those popular products. Sephora created a "Best of Sephora" section on the web site and in the store that features customer favorites. For "Best of Sephora" they use the slogan "100,000 votes, 30 winners. You the beauty-full people have spoken." You can do the same thing without much work. Create a popularity contest using sales data, customer votes, or product reviews. Feature it prominently in your store.
3> Collect customer ideas
Your customers have more ideas than you do. Ask for their ideas and publish them on your web site. At 1000uses.com, customers can suggest ideas for how to use Glad plastic wrap. Thousands of great product ideas were shared by customers eager to share household tips and for a chance to see their names published. You could build a site like this with a simple blog that accepts comments. The benefits are fantastic: You get thousands of new ideas that encourage purchase. Those ideas build your web site (picture 1,000 new pages of content, written for free by customers). That new content gives you amazing search engine results, because there is so much more content to find.