holiday-marketing | Internet Marketing Driver

The Gift Card – The Lamest, Most Uncreative Holiday Gift in the History of Gifting

November 23, 2011 By Glenn Gabe

Gifts Cards are a Lame Holiday Gift

The holiday season is fast and furious for me as a digital marketer. I have the opportunity to help several companies with a wide range of holiday campaigns, from Search Engine Marketing campaigns to Facebook campaigns to Email Marketing campaigns. It’s an exciting time of year for digital marketers. But, as I’m brainstorming and developing campaigns, I’m often researching top gift ideas as part of the process (across industries). And it’s not long before I come across the dreaded gift card.

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, as gift card buying has hit an alarming rate. I have nothing against the idea of a gift card. Instead, I have a big problem with the idea of giving one to family members and close friends (the people you will be gifting the most during the holidays). In a world where most people are moving at light speed to balance work, kids, friends, etc., I think the gift card has been a byproduct of this madness. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to see gift lists now filled with “Gift Card From {enter company here}.” And that’s downright pathetic.

Sure, it’s easy, it’s fast, and overall, it gets the job done. But if you take a closer look, it’s not hard to find several key problems with giving gift cards to your loved ones. Let’s explore this in greater detail below.

Nothing Says I Love You Like a Piece of Plastic with a Number on It…
I love you honey, and that’s why I bought you a piece of plastic that looks like a credit card with a 30 digit number on it and a dollar amount. :) Think about it, if you know someone really well, have been observing what they do, while listening to them over an entire year, would you really give them a gift card for the holidays? No, you wouldn’t. You would think about what they like, observe what they need, identify things they would love to have, and then create a gift list filled with those items. Then, when the holidays arrive, you would have a great list of presents to buy them, without having to settle for a lousy gift card.

I don’t know anyone that believes a gift card communicates “I love you more than anything”, or “You’ve been a great friend over the years”, or “Thank you for being a great mom or dad!” Come on people, give up the gift cards. And you wonder why the divorce rate is so high! :)

Low Risk, Low Reward
Anyone that knows me understands that I am not risk-averse. Like business, gifting is a high risk, high reward activity. If you take risks gifting-wise, it could pay off huge dividends for you. On the other hand, if you stay conservative and buy something like a gift card, you may very well get a lukewarm response. Hey, can you blame the recipient? You just handed them a piece of plastic!

When you buy a unique gift, you come armed with the element of surprise. This can be incredibly powerful when gifting. If you hit a home run, that gift will be remembered for a long time. It also shows that you went the extra mile, thought about the person, identified their likes and dislikes, and made a decision to buy a gift. That alone will go a long way… And, if your effort fails, the worst thing that could happen is they don’t like the gift. They’ll still remember that you took a risk and bought them an actual gift. That’s right, an original gift idea, versus that flimsy gift card.

By the way, a recent study by Plastic Jungle found that Americans are sitting on $30 billion in unused gift cards. Think about it, someone receives a gift card, doesn’t really care, forgets about it, and the card is left unused. Wow, what a great gift idea…

A Better Approach to Gifting
OK, so you know where I stand with gift cards. But I’m not here just to hammer gift cards. I’m going to provide a bulleted list of recommendations that can help you break out of the gift card cycle. The approach I’m going to list below is relatively simple to follow, and can make a big impact on your gifting results (yes, I always think in terms of marketing) . Sure, you could still fail and choose the wrong gift, but you could also end up looking brilliant. Remember, high risk, high reward.

Try This Approach to Gifting:
* Identify and list all of the top interests someone has.
* Document the various things they do in a typical week or month.
* Identify pain points for that person. For example, if they jog a lot, do they have the right gear, the right sneakers, do they have a treadmill, are they tracking how far they go, etc?
* Listen to them. That’s right. If you actually listen, you can identify several possible gift ideas. The problem is that most people don’t listen…
* Take Risks. As mentioned earlier, don’t fall for the lame gift card. Sure, it’s easy, but so is buying lunch from McDonalds. The former will make you look dull, while the latter can kill you. Both are bad. Try and come up with something that could surprise them gift-wise. Remember, the element of surprise is powerful.

Leave The Gift Cards Behind, Be Unique, Be Creative
If you follow the bullets above, I’m confident you can find several gift ideas per person that have the potential to blow them away. Gifting should be fun, it should not be an afterthought, and it should not take three minutes at Barnes and Noble or Lowes. Instead, you should take the time and effort to come up with unique gift ideas for family and friends.

Remember, you can be successful at this… You’re not lame. You’re not boring. You remember what people say. You’ve noticed what people need. And when you come through like a gifting superstar, they just might remember what you gave them forever. And as they jump for joy after opening your gift, they can throw the wrapping paper on the person next to them. You know, the person that just got a lame gift card. :)

Happy Holidays.

The Continuing Evolution of Online Shopping : My Virtual Model and Beyond

December 4, 2007 By Glenn Gabe

Lands End Virtual Dressing Room This is Part II of my series about e-commerce imaging functionality at LandsEnd.com. In my first post, I explained how the pan, zoom, and view funtionality is some of the best I have seen on the web. This post is about something much more important, at least in the long-term. When you browse LandsEnd.com and view a product detail page, you will find a link labeled “Try it on”. After clicking that link, you will be taken to a virtual dressing room where you can utilize an application called Dressing Room by My Virtual Model. My Virtual Model is a virtual identity company located in Quebec, Canada. Lands’ End has actually been using this functionality for a while, but I wanted to explain more about it since I believe it gives us a glimpse into the future.

So what does this application actually do? In a nutshell, Lands’ End is enabling you (via a third party application) to create your own virtual self, customize your virtual model to match your dimensions, customize the look of your model, and then try on clothes as if you were in the store (without the stress of thousands of holiday shoppers around you!) ;-)

The Future of Online Shopping:

Ever since I developed Heighten (in 2003), I’ve been explaining what the future of online shopping could look like. Heighten is the video-based internet marketing platform I developed (in case you were wondering…) Also, when I refer to the “future”, I’m not talking about the year 2500, I mean in the “not so distant” future… I would explain something like this to prospective clients:

“You’ll be watching your favorite show (probably not on a major network, but on your favorite online channel), and you’ll notice that one of the actors is wearing a shirt that you like. You’ll click that shirt, the show will pause, and options for learning more about that shirt will pop up. You’ll be able to drill into that item to see a hologram of the shirt so you can truly get a better look at the product (right in front of you and in 3 dimensions). You’ll choose your size, color, etc. and click buy. The show will resume, and your shirt will be delivered the next day (and not in 5-10 days!)” Am I crazy to think that? No, that’s where we are heading. Sounds very Minority Report, doesn’t it?

Back to My Virtual Model:

I’ve played around with this functionality extensively over the past week and have provided a breakdown below. It was definitely helpful and very cool, so let’s take a closer look….

Personalize Your Virtual Model:

Clicking “Try This On” while you are on a product detail page brings up a new window with your virtual dressing room. I set up an account so I could customize my model and have Lands’ End save my settings. You can see a screenshot of the interface below. Now let’s set up our virtual Glenn…. OK, that definitely sounds weird. ;-)

Dressing Room Interface from My Virtual Model The Interface for My Virtual Model's Dressing Room Application

My Model and My Fit:

Clicking the “Personalize” tab brings you to a screen where you can customize your model and your specific fit. Let’s start with your model. Here, you can give your model a name, a body shape, a build, height, weight, face, eyes, nose, lips, hair style, hair color, and facial hair. Wow, pretty cool, right? Or scary, I can’t tell yet…

Clicking the “My Fit” button enables you to customize your height, waistband, inseam, chest size, neck size, sleeve length, seat, thigh, and age. Click “Save” and your settings will be retained by My Virtual Model. Side Note: For those of you looking to lose weight, this could be an eye-opening experience… Be prepared to see a virtual you, down to the poundage!

Getting a Good Look at the Clothes That Your Virtual You is Wearing…Or You are Wearing…Oh Heck, You Know What I’m Talking About!

Now that your model is set up, click the “My Virtual Model” tab. Now you can start trying on clothes. There are dropdowns for category, subcategory, and then products within that subcategory. For example, I selected Jeans and then clicked the first pair of jeans that showed up. The virtual model is now wearing the jeans I selected. Then I could select the color of the jeans, which showed up in real-time (real-time processing is an option in your account). Then I selected Dress Shirts and clicked the Hyde Park button down.

Getting a Closer Look : Changing Views:

So far, so good. But what if you want to get a better look at the outfit? No problem, just click the “turn” arrow buttons at the bottom of the screen. You can turn your model either clockwise or counterclockwise to view the outfit at different angles. Very cool. Want a closer look? Click the “Zoom” button on the bottom toolbar and you’ll see a much larger model in a new window. You can turn your model here, as well.

Getting a Better View of Your Model

Turning Your Model to Get a Better View of a Product on LandsEnd.com

Saving Your Selections:

You can click “add to favorites” to save the product you are looking at on the virtual model, or you can click “save outfit” to save the entire outfit in your favorites. In addition, you can click “Buy this Item” to return to LandsEnd.com to select your size, color, and number of items. And, you can click “Buy this Outfit” on the bottom toolbar to buy the entire outfit you selected. More on this later… When you click “Buy this Item”, it would be great if it would reflect the color you were looking at in your virtual dressing room, but it doesn’t. Also, it should default to your size, based on what you entered while setting up your virtual model. I’m assuming they will build this in down the line… For me, saving specific items in my favorites worked well, but saving outfits didn’t… Whenever I tried to view my saved outfits, the application would send me to a screen to register (which I had done already). Again, I’m assuming Lands’ End knows about this and will rectify the issue. Other than that, it worked pretty well. :)

Excellent Opportunity for Cross Selling (and they take advantage of it…)

There are times where you need some help figuring out what matches the selections you’ve made. My Virtual Model enables retailers to provide this functionality in what they call “Great Go Togethers”. If you choose a category and then click “Great Go Togethers” on the right side of the screen, you will find product listings and then other items that match. So, if you don’t have much time and want recommendations for an entire outfit, this is the place for you. For example, I chose a dress shirt, selected the pants, and shoes that LandsEnd.com recommended and I had an outfit built in 10 seconds.

Yes, There Are Some Issues…

1. The clothes look better in photographs and in real life!

When you look at an outfit on your virtual model, the clothes don’t look so hot. I know this is a virtual dressing room, but my fear as a marketer is that the application could backfire for retailers. For example, maybe the shirt looks better on me than it does on Virtual Glenn and maybe I decide not to buy it… That’s just my opinion, though…

2. Saving outfits to your favorites or buying entire outfits didn’t work for me:

Clicking “Buy this Outfit” while in my virtual dressing room took me to a screen where you can select your options for each product in the outfit, but the “add to shopping bag” button wouldn’t work. I tried this a dozen times on multiple systems and it simply wouldn’t work for me. The “Buy this Item” button worked, but if you want to buy the entire outfit, it wouldn’t work…This could be a serious “conversion killer” so if I was in marketing at Lands’ End, I would take a serious look at this.

3. That’s Me?

Hey, that really doesn’t really look like me… Thank you Captain Obvious. ;-) I know it can’t look just like me, but I’ll bet this can be a hangup for some people. I guess the easy way to alleviate the issue is to simply provide more options for customizing your virutal you.

Retailers, Keep Driving Forward…

In closing, I applaud Lands’ End for using My Virtual Model and its Dressing Room application. It’s not easy to utilize innovative functionality on a large site with that much traffic and exposure. After playing with the functionality extensively, I think they are off to a great start, but obviously not there yet. As a marketer, I can deal with some of the growing pains associated with innovation, but one thing I cannot deal with (or won’t deal with) is inhibiting customers from buying. That simply cannot happen…

If you are interested learning more about how this works, then you should try it out on LandsEnd.com. The functionality is definitely a step in the right direction for online shopping, but it needs to work perfectly for it to become mainstream. I know the industry will get there…but it’s just going to take some time.

E-Commerce Imaging Functionality with Lands End – Getting a Killer Look at Products While Shopping Online

November 27, 2007 By Glenn Gabe

Lands End eCommerce Imaging Functionality We’ve all been there. You’re shopping online and find something you’re 95% sure that you want, but you need to get a better look at the product before you click “add to cart”. So you select “Click here for larger photo” but sometimes that yields inadequate images that don’t really build more confidence. Over the past few years, e-commerce imaging technology has greatly advanced (especially on larger retail websites). During my latest Gobble Thursday holiday shopping session, I visited Lands End and checked out some clothes for the upcoming winter season. Let me tell you, their product imaging functionality is some of the best I have seen on the web. Actually, it’s good enough that I decided to write a blog post about it today! Now, what makes it so good? Let’s jump right in:

Browse-By Listings (Category Listings and Image Functionality):

I started my visit to Lands End by clicking Men, Shirts & Sweaters and then Sweaters to get to the browse by listings you see below.

Lands End Category Listings

As I was looking at the listing of sweaters, I rolled over one I liked and the product view changed on rollover to a model wearing the sweater. I found this to be a great way to give potential buyers a second view of the product right from the sweater listings (and not necessarily on the product detail page). The view showed the sweater on a model so you can see it in context (and not just on a white background). Reference photos below. Then, right below the product image, I noticed several swatches. Clicking a swatch changed the product image dynamically, without post-back. Post-back is developer-speak for when your browser completely refreshes the webpage, which takes unnecessary time. I really like this functionality in the browse by listings…it was intuitive, provided value, and enabled me to see a wide array of sweaters in different colors and on a person. I love it. :) OK, let’s click through to the product detail page to get a closer look.

Screenshot of category listing with rollover functionality and swatches:

Lands End Category Listing Change View and Color

Product Detail Page: Pan, Zoom, and View:

Once on the product detail page, Lands End gives you several options for getting up close and personal with the product you are viewing. First, you have a nice product image (full view). Let’s get a closer look.

The Zoom:

Below the image, Lands End provides their pan and zoom functionality, which is one of the best I have seen on the web. You can either click the image to zoom in or click the “zoom in” button below the image. Either one lets you zoom into the product to view more detail. I was able to zoom in at a granular level (actually further in than I really needed to, but some people would want to see the fabric as closely as possible). It was easy to use and the response time was excellent.

Zooming in to get a closer look:

Lands End Zoom Functionality on the Product Detail Page

Now The Pan:

Then, if you click and drag the image once you zoom in, you can scroll around to view a closeup of the product. The image blurs as you drag the product, but refocuses once you choose the desired section of the product. You should try it out to get a good feel for how this works, because it’s some of the best pan and zoom functionality on the web (seriously.) There is a thumbnail in the bottom right corner which shows you a red bounding box that represents which part of the product you are viewing. But Lands End didn’t stop there…you can even drag the red bounding box around, which moves the product image. Great functionality…

Change Your Product View:

Below the pan and zoom controls, there are a few additional thumbnails. For my example, you can see the full sweater, the sweater on a model, and then a fabric swatch. When you click each image, the larger product image above changes to what you selected. Then you can use the pan and zoom functionality on the new image. Outstanding! If you choose the swatch thumbnail, then you can take a closer look at the fabric, which I can guarantee decreases product returns… More on this later.

Switching images to get a different view:

Lands End Category Listings

Colors and Fabrics:

On the right side of the page, you’ll find a list of swatches so you can easily change the color of the product you are looking at. Again, this is completed without post-back, which is fast and seamless. In addition, the thumbnails below the pan and zoom functionality also reflect the change in color (the full product view, the product on a model and the fabric swatch). Nice touch.

Selecting different colors dynamically changes the images:

Lands End Change Color and Fabric With Swatch Selections

What’s The Effect on Your Buying Experience?

Providing e-commerce imaging functionality like this truly enhances the user experience on LandsEnd.com. Lands End exceeds customer expectations with the investment they made in their imaging functionality. As a marketer, when you start to analyze bounce rate, exit rate, and abandonment rates, you start to appreciate functionality like this. When it comes down to it, if you leave doubt in a customer’s mind, you might leave revenue on the table. But it’s much worse than that… The customer you just lost will go somewhere else to buy, may never come back to your website, and then will generate incremental revenue for your competitor. Great, right? Lands End is obviously dedicated to giving visitors every possible option while viewing their products so they can make an informed decision. By the way, they provide some additional functionality that I haven’t listed here…and I plan to review that soon. Consider that a blog teaser! :)

Decrease Product Returns:

In addition, Lands End is making its web operation more profitable by providing functionality like this. I bet their product returns from web purchases are lower than other retailers. How could it not be?? You are getting an incredible view of a product you are interested in…it’s almost like you are in a store for crying out loud! OK, maybe not that good yet…yet.

Lower Your Cart Abandonment Rate and Checkout Abandonment Rate:

I’ll also bet that their cart and checkout abandonment rates are lower than other retailers. Abandonment can happen due to several reasons, one of which is a lack of confidence in the product you just added to your cart. You know, questions like “will it really look like that?”, “what does the fabric actually look like?”, “what does it look like on?”, so on and so forth. Lands End minimizes these doubts, which probably lowers their abandonment rates. As a web analytics nut, I’d love to see their stats! {wait…taking one more Analyticza} ;-)

Ease of Use = Happy Customers:

This one is simple…Lands End makes it so easy and effortless to browse and buy that customers truly enjoy shopping on the website. I can tell you, that’s the way I feel. Being a web marketing consultant, I almost wanted to stay on the website to keep playing around with their imaging functionality… That’s if I didn’t have a gift list to knock out! ;-) Again, I’ll be writing a second review soon…

In Closing…

Well, I think you can tell how much I like the imaging functionality on LandsEnd.com! It was easy to use, robust, and more importantly, it builds customer confidence. I have a new tagline for Lands End:

“No Doubt and Lots of Confidence…Shop LandsEnd.com”

I have a feeling I’ll be back to LandsEnd.com this holiday season….and I’m confident I won’t be the only one! :-)

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Analyzing Your Holiday Email Marketing Campaigns Using Google Analytics

November 6, 2007 By Glenn Gabe

Analyzing Holiday Email Campaigns with Google Analytics As the holidays approach, chances are you will be launching several email marketing campaigns. Busy holiday marketing schedules heavily rely on email to connect with customers, promote holiday sales and offers, and to drive revenue. With the flurry of emails you’ll be sending out, analyzing your campaigns is critical to improving their effectiveness. Utilizing a robust web analytics package is a great way to scientifically determine what works best for your specific customer segments, and maybe more importantly, what doesn’t work. So, I decided to write a post that covers analyzing your email marketing campaigns by properly tagging your email links (for analysis in Google Analytics). Then you can break down and analyze your email creative at a granular level in your analytics reporting.

First let’s define “tagging your online ads”:

Tagging is the process of adding querystring variables to links in your online ads so your analytics package can detect and then associate each link with a campaign. Then you can access reporting based on visitor activity. For example, tagging a banner so you your analytics package knows which website the banner was placed on and which version of the banner led to a click through. The reporting will also provide important metrics for your campaigns such as site activity, sales, conversions, bounce rate, etc. Tagging is critical to understanding how your marketing campaigns are performing.

Breaking Down Your Email Marketing Creative

Let’s start with a wireframe for our sample email marketing creative. As you can see below, we have the following areas that we want to track:

1. header with branding

2. product image

3. headline next to product image with product info

4. special offer

5. footer with company links

Breaking down your email creative and tagging links.

Tag, You’re It! Tagging Your Email Creative:

In Google Analytics, you need to tag your campaigns so you can properly analyze each campaign in your reporting. You achieve this by tagging each link that you want to track. The four variables that you will utilize in Google Analytics for this example are:

1. utm_source

2. utm_campaign

3. utm_medium

4. utm_content

utm_source

This is the source of your marketing campaign, so for our purposes “InternalEmailList” will work just fine. Just remember to keep this consistent for future campaigns to your internal email list so you can easily segment and aggregate your reporting data in Google Analytics. Other examples of Campaign Source are websites you are advertising with, shopping engines, a search engine like Google or Yahoo, PRWeb, etc. It’s basically the source of your campaign traffic.

utm_campaign

This is simply the name of your campaign. Note, you should use a descriptive name here, since it will show up in Google Analytics under the Traffic Sources tab in Campaigns.

utm_medium

Medium identifies the marketing channel you are utilizing for your campaign, such as email, banners, search, pr, etc. Obviously for our example, we’ll use email.

utm_content

I saved this for last, since it’s what we’ll be focusing on for tracking your email marketing creative. You should use a different value for utm_content for each section or specific link in your creative. This enables you to view reporting based on the content breakdown in your email creative (which will help you determine the value of each element in your email). More on this later.

So, for our example, the utm_content values would look like this:

Header: utm_content=HeaderBranding

Product Photo: utm_content=ProductPhoto

Headline: utm_content=Headline

Offer: utm_content=Offer

Footer Links: utm_content= FooterLinks

Note, this is a simplified example, and you may choose to get more granular in your own email creative. For example, you may choose to tag each specific link in the footer versus tagging all of the links in your footer as “FooterLinks”.

The Full Picture (or should I say “The Full URL”)

I just explained how to set the utm_content variable in your link, but I also mentioned 3 other variables that you should set. Here is what your link would look like for the header element in your email creative using all 4 variables:

https://www.gsqi.com/blog/?utm_source=InternalEmailList&utm_medium=Email

&utm_content=HeaderBranding&utm_campaign=PreThanksGiving

Each of the links in your email should contain this querystring using all 4 of the Google Analytics tracking variables I listed above. You can also utilize Google’s URL Builder to help build your links.

Blast Away!

At this point, you should fully test your creative to ensure everything looks the way it should across email clients, ensure all of the links work properly, ensure you tagged each link correctly, etc. Then blast away and wait for data to come in (and revenue!)

Tracking Your Email Campaign in Google Analytics

OK, so you blasted out your email campaign yesterday and you are eager to see how it’s performing. Log into Google Analytics and click the Traffic Sources tab. Then click Campaigns. You should see all of your campaigns listed here for the time period you selected. For our example, you would see a listing for PreThanksGiving, since this is the name we gave our campaign earlier. Simply click this listing to view reporting specific to this campaign.

At this point you can see the summary for your email campaign. You can see the number of visitors, avg time on site, bounce rate, etc. You can click the Goal Conversion tab to view the number of conversions from your campaign, and you can also click the E-Commerce tab to view revenue, number of transactions, etc. But you shouldn’t stop there… You can drill in further to view which elements are performing well in your email creative.

Click the image to view a larger version:

View the Breakdown:

Click the Site Usage tab again in your report. Now, click the Segment dropdown and select Ad Content. You will now see each of the links you tagged in your email creative. Cool, right? Now you can view detailed reporting based on each element in your email. Why is this important? You may find interesting customer behavior that will enable you to drive better performance in future blasts. You might see that 75% of visitors clicked the product photo versus the offer. Based on that piece of data, maybe you expand your imaging in the email to include other views of the product to see if it increases your click through rate and sales. Or, you might find that a headline next to the photo draws more visitors than a headline above the photo. So on and so forth… You get the picture! When you break it down, your customers are unique and you might find that certain elements perform extremely well and others fall flat.

Click the image to view a larger version:

Back to your reporting… A sample analysis:

Now click the E-Commerce tab and view sales data for each element. You might find the product photo generated 70% of the revenue from the campaign. You might also see 10% of the revenue coming from the footer links. Why? Maybe customers aren’t sure who you are! Most people receive dozens of emails per day from companies they have purchased from. If you are a smaller company that is still building your brand, it might take customers a second or two to remember who you are… If you see trending that shows people clicking through your About Us link, you might want to promote your company and/or brand more in the email creative. i.e. Provide an About Us paragraph in the right sidebar of the email. This is obviously just an example, but you might find some important data from reviewing reporting like this… Back to our analysis, if you click the Goal Conversion tab, you can view conversions from each element in your email. Now you can track sales, newsletter signups, RSS subscriptions, etc. for each element in your creative. You might find certain email campaigns generate a lot of newsletter signups but only a few sales. You would obviously want to dig deeper and find out why that is…but you wouldn’t know unless you track it!

In closing…

Using this technique, you can break down your creative and tag each link so you can view detailed reporting for your email campaigns. During and after each campaign, you should check your reporting for trends in customer behavior. Then test out new ideas and drive elements that perform well. Over time, you can refine your campaigns to maximize your email marketing efforts.

So, if I’ve done my job well, your next move is to run down the hall and grab your email marketing coordinator screaming, “Hold That Blast!” so you can tag all of your links! ;-) Then you can enter meetings armed with data versus opinion!