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Hola,

hope you’re having a great Sunday!

I’m a “Strohwitwer” meaning Fiona and the kids are in Ireland with the inlaws, so it’s just me the pizza delivery service and the definitely not the 4h workweek at the computer…. 😉

See, in the absence of wife I’m obviously not supposed to enjoy myself …

… yes, I do read between the lines …

“you enjoy yourself whilst we’re away” does NOT mean that I’m to enjoy myself…

(as Raul says: PHP we can master, we can have a good stab at figuring out what exactly happened before the big bang, but understanding women….)

anyway, here’s one for charity: (which also happens to be a great case-study of getting s*** done)
You see, that’s Walt Bayliss’ latest offering, which is an SEO plugin, which does unspeakable things to your blog.

Unspeakable in the sense of ‘must not speak them here or Google are going to be all over you like the Prism program over me mentioning leather trousers and Heidi in the same sentence)

(on a little side-note: as the good folk of the NSA have data on everything and everyone, I was wondering if I could rent their database for a little bit of market-research … it’s one thing knowing what people tell you, but to know what they’re really up to, man, just a few hours with that Prism database and I could write the best sales-letters in the world….)

Now Walt did ask me if I wanted to review his plugin and recommend it to my list if it was a good fit.

I didn’t have the time to go through it and test it properly (yeah, I don’t outsource reviewing stuff;-), so I had to decline.

But, somehow we got talking again and Walt asked me one simple question about his sales-page: did I like one particular feature?

I had a look, and expressed my opinion.

And then – although Walt didn’t ask for it – got into full-on review mode and gave Walt a list as long as my arm as to what he could change.

(and yes, I do admit, it’s soooooo much easier to tear into something when it’s not your’s….;-)

anyway, I thought, that’s cool of him to ask, so maybe he’ll take one or two of the things I said and *maybe* do something about it.

An hour later I get another JV email from Walt, reporting on a great increase in the conversion rate.

So, obviously, I’m curious to see if that *one* change he possibly made has made any difference.

Boom.

This guy has taken EVERY SINGLE thing I told him and implemented it.

In an hour.

Most people would’ve just sat there and gone “and now what”.

Not Walt.

Just hit it, and hit it hard.

And the reward is greatly increased conversions.

Le voila!

So, although I still haven’t had time to review it, (and I now have even less as I spent time writing this;-), I do believe this deserves a reward.

In the form of a shout-out:

http://jvz8.com/c/1648/54371

in a nutshell: it does rather cool SEO stuff that helps with rankings, reduced bounce-rates, visitor engagement and you can do cool spying on the competition.

But, as I haven’t actually run it on my own sites, here’s what I’m going to do:

any commissions I earn from this promotion, I’ll give to charity.

The last donation bought our local Kindergarten 2 new ‘Bobby cars’ – much to the delight of the teachers – the new versions no longer have rock-solid plastic wheels that make an aweful rattling noise (all day long…), but instead have ‘whisperlight’ rubberized wheels.

(big shout-out to a very generous contributor who wishes to remain anonymous for his contribution! Unfortunately I can’t upload images of the happy kids due to privacy laws, sorry about that)

So, overall:

have a look at Walt’s sales-letter, then make sure to get on his list, because he’s one of the guys who gets stuff done … and by being on his list you’ll get a great insight into a great mind!

and hey, if in the process you pick up a copy of Walt’s plugin, you’ll be doing something nice for charity!

Cheers

Veit

PS: as a follow-up to my previous anti gmail tabs rant, so yes, 2 things at play:

1. probably THE biggest form of leverage you have these days is to get your prospects into super-targeted sublists where you talk about the ONE specific problem they came to have solved. Until it’s solved. And no longer. Then move to the next problem. The days of the ‘general list’ are pretty much numbered. Slicin’ ‘n dicin’ is the name of the game.
2. and it looks like Google is sending ‘promotional’ messages based on the IP of the sender (I would’ve thought they’re going by ‘duplicate’ content….), meaning if you can get your emails sent from IPs which are NOT on their black(well, ‘promotional tab’)list (and apparently most of the big email providers are on that list), then you’re apparently golden. Looks like self-hosted email sending may just make a come-back (combined with the previous point not as problematic as the mass-mailing of the yesteryears btw…).

so Google are all about doing no evil and providing a great user experience.

And as part of that, they’ve introduced the lovely tabs in gmail:

your really important emails go into the Primary tab, all the social stuff into the ‘social’ and of course, all that pesky advertising and pitching goes into the ‘promotional’ tab.

Great isn’t it?

well, no, it isn’t!

Yes, on the one hand it’s convenient that it’s now grouped into ‘logical’ subgroups, (then again: all of that was easily possibly previously in gmail anyway, just no using ‘tabs’), …

… but on the other hand there are real-life implications of this new arrangement:

initial feedback from lots of marketers is that open rates and hence click-through rates are down by about a third.

33% fewer clicks, just because your advertising is now hidden in a tab that noone is looking at.

“oh, poor lil’ marketer” you might be thinking (sarcastically;-), but here are the real implications:

1. if you’re a marketer yourself (which should be a pretty good guess as you’re on a blog about marketing), then your initial reaction should be “oh f***” (a sudden 33% drop in revenue I think deserves an ‘oh f***’)
2. just because gmail is messing with our advertising doesn’t mean that we stop advertising. Meaning: marketers will focus more on other channels. Meaning more noise elsewhere.  Expect MORE advertising on Facebook, MORE advertising on pretty much any website you can think of, MORE advertising outside email. Meaning the good folk at Google look like the knight in shining armor, but really the only thing they’ve done is that they’ve moved the problem elsewhere.

3. here’s the one that’s going to affect you most: effectively, our advertising costs (for the email channel) have gone up … 33% fewer clicks means I’m getting 33% less results for my advertising dollar. And that loss of revenue needs to be compensated for. By, hey, look at this: higher prices! For you, the consumer.

“oh f***”

Veit

PS: turns out, there’s a way to get your prospects crawling across broken glass, er head on over to the ‘Promotions’ tab, actively scrambling to find your emails (more on that over the next few days), secondly, noticed how I said “moved the problem” in point #2 above:

it really is a problem, all this interruptive advertising. It’s highly ineffective (estimates are that we’re being bombarded with several thousand marketing messages every day, yet less than a handful stick), yet most marketers attempt to ‘fix’ that by sending out even more marketing messages.

The solution is of course to do something else … which ties in nicely with the approach to getting people to scramble to find YOUR emails … and hence: more on that in over the next few days;-)

For now: how is this change affecting YOU and YOUR plans? Leave a comment below!