Are you paying more for licensing on your platforms even though more than half of your visitors don’t engage?
In the past five to 10 years, many content management solutions have shifted to pricing based on site visits/views. While views may be a fair metric for a commercial enterprise focused on quick conversions, it is not a fair metric for associations that are the foremost authorities on their subject area and have the most density around keywords associated with everything from illnesses and medical specialties to licensing for construction contractors.
While you don’t want to turn those visitors away in all cases, they are not the bread and butter of the association and offer little opportunity for a return on investment of your content management solutions. For that reason, consider whether this type of view-based pricing works for you. Some software providers offer options that may have pricing more in line with your goals.
It’s still common to hear “more visits” as a goal for website projects. While more visits can be a great way to promote your organization, your mission, and your members, it can also be a drain on resources – financial and otherwise. Guiding leaders to better metrics is one of the best examples of full-circle marketing we have found.
Dig deep. Instead of overall volume, consider the percentage of views that demonstrate engagement. Look at bounce rate, and time-on-page, and build out conversion funnels across the systems that lead users to your site (e.g., email) and the systems where your users go when they leave (e.g., third-party solutions or microsites.)
While paying for unengaged contacts in your platform is costly, the longer-term impact of unengaged customers is that those contacts go stale and are more likely to result in blocked our bounced messages, which drags you sender reputation into the mud. Your sender reputation is a score that an internet service provider (ISP) assigns to an organization that sends emails. It's based on the quality, frequency, size, and user interaction of email campaigns. A higher score means the ISP is more likely to deliver emails to recipients' inboxes. A poor reputation can lead to lower engagement rates, increased email bounces, and reduced deliverability.
Did you know that for 90% of our customers, email is the primary driver of high-value traffic to an association’s website? So, how can you design a superior online experience if you can’t incorporate the strategies and experiences you are driving through email?
On many platforms, you may pay as much as $2k per year for as few as 1,000 contacts. It is common for associations to have at least 1,000 contacts who are not members but have signed up to receive messages (e.g., newsletters) with which they never engage. Monitoring engagement for these unengaged contacts and culling your lists is the key to managing costs and improving the accuracy of our success metrics.
Member-based organizations talk a lot about engagement. We work hard to focus on the intangible value of a member in addition to the tangible or financial value. We are more skilled than most industries at valuing the voices and the views that drive our subject matters. However, we often look at engagement on a department level or even a platform level. Our emails get X% open rates. Great, but what next? Our site had X visitors last year. Great, but what next?
If not, then how do you know whether your emails are resulting in conversions that drive engagement? Quality metrics that can be reported across platforms can create that full-circle marketing perspective that lets you know your strategies are working and you are not losing your customers.
Clear calls to action, intentional user journeys across platforms, and low-cost-of-entry actions can increase conversions. If you make a user jump through repeated hoops or answer extensive questions to interact and engage, you are likely to lose them. While websites and email platforms are separate platforms for many organizations, it is always possible to create more symmetry in those experiences.
Offering users a chance to provide you with valuable insights that can deepen your relationship with them is one strategy. Consider polling or dynamic questions and results for quick-hitting inquiries about a user’s needs or interests. A one-question poll via email or upon landing on a high-value page of your site can help you complete a picture of your users that will lead to engagement.
Story time.
Once upon a time, there was an association that did the world so much good that one of the giant technology fairy godmothers granted them a wish. They could have up to $10,000 in free ads on the fairy godmother’s search platform as part of a grant program.
The association was so excited that they immediately applied for the ads and set them up right away. The association then went back to their modest home in the shire and waited for new members, buyers, and registrants to pile up in their inboxes.
The association woke up the next morning to find that their inboxes were instead full of poisonous toads that ate everything in sight. However, they couldn’t possibly take down the ads. They were FREE, after all.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Google Ad Grants is a good program for some, but it is not a substitute for an effective paid media strategy. Ad Grants only allow the nonprofit to bid a limited amount and restrict the purchase of more valuable keywords. In addition, there are requirements for click-throughs.
This and other paid media strategies sometimes result in a high volume of visits that drive up site users (we already know what that can mean) and potentially flood your marketing systems with low-to-no-value contacts. That means spending money with no return.
Paid media management is not a fix-it-and-forget-it proposition. Constant monitoring and tuning of keywords based on conversions and the quality of those conversions is critical both for successful campaigns and to avoid inflation of costs without return.
Monitoring conversions with industry-standard tools and periodically optimizing is the path to making your ad spending pay off and to eliminating unwanted traffic. In a recent situation with a client using paid media for job board recruitment, the client noticed a dramatic increase in resumes from irrelevant candidates. A quick round of keyword research and an evaluation of the conversion funnel was in order and a good reminder that monitoring both the spending and the impact is critical.
That’s where full-circle marketing takes on true meaning and value.
Full-circle marketing support refers to a comprehensive approach to marketing that covers all aspects of a brand's marketing strategy and implementation. This approach aims to create a cohesive and seamless experience for customers across all touchpoints.
This approach ensures that marketing efforts are coordinated across various channels, including digital platforms, traditional media, and in-person interactions. Full-circle marketing tracks and optimizes the entire customer journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement.
All of these individual tactics and full-circle marketing can help you save money, increase return on investment, and create a more engaged member and user experience.
Brightfind is ready to be your partner in full-circle marketing strategy, development, and execution. Book some time with our CEO today.