Marketing Sherpa Key Insights 2015

1. Key Insights

2. 1. Determine Mental Levers
Flint McGlaughlin Managing Director, MECLABS Institute
Decision) Motion is incited by the mental lever: to humanize our emails, we need to
discover the key point that motivates the customer to take action
• Marketers are NOT thinking through the mental lever of what will make the recipient
ACT, instead they are simply creating copy
• You should be optimizing a thought sequence, NOT an email

4. Jonah Berger, Marketing Professor,TheWharton School
• Social Currency-The things we say and the things we
share, effect how people see us
• How can you make subscribers feel like insiders? Smart,
special, and in-the-know?
• Find the inner remarkability

5. Jonah Berger, Marketing Professor,TheWharton School
• (Mental)Triggers-Top-of-mind means tip-of-tongue
• Cheerios is top of mind at breakfast time
• What is your peanut butter?!
• Emotion- When we care, we share.
• (Engaging) Stories

6. 2. Eliminate Confusion
Live Email Optimization | Flint McGlaughlin Managing Director, MECLABS
Institute
• Find the mental lever for a better subject line- What is the benefit?
• Remove images or input an image that is related to the content. An image in an email
should seize the tension or support the value proposition.
• Shorten the content and include bullet points for a better eye path. A paragraph in an
email should not be any longer than 3 sentences.
• Headlines should be complete sentences. Make sure your headline and sub-header have
meaning. If they have no meaning, they have no message. If there is no message, there
will be no response.
• Change the CTA to match the exact position they are at in the sales process. Example:
“Start my free 2-week trial” is too committing. “LearnAbout Our Free 2-Week Preview” is
much better.
• Don’t have too many links or CTAs. Multiple options typically divide responses and
decrease conversion.

8. Segmentation: 101-401
Ryan Phelan,Vice President, Global Shared Services
101- Segment by purchasers
• What have they purchased in the past that’s related to other products?
201- Segment by one attribute by the individual
• Male/Female
301-Transactional emails
• Email receipt with “Those who bought
what you bought also bought ‘x’.”
401-Valhalla Marketing -----
• Use information to group customers
together

9. Content Demystified:What content is making you look bad?
Jessica Best, Digital Marketing Evangelist, emfluence
1. Pass the duck test
You quack like spam:
• FREE FREE FREE
• Marketing, Pharma, Money
• $ % !!!
• ALL CAPS

10. Content Demystified:What content is making you look bad?
2. Your code is sloppy
• Errors in the code, unpaired tags
• Pasting from MicrosoftWord
3. If your email looks empty:
• All image, no text = ‘empty’

11. Design is Communication
JustineJordan, Marketing Director
Litmus
2 1/2 lessons
1.White space (or negative space) =
BREATHING ROOM
• Use the 'rule of thumb'- 40-
60 pixels between elements
• Sets the tone & improves
comprehension

12. Design is communication
2. Hierarchy has to do with order, number and scale of the elements in
your message
• Influence user behavior & guide subscriber to click
• Enhance comprehension

14. Design is communication
2 1/2 lessons
2.5. Be consistent with styling- Start with your headline, what you're
comfortable with and go down 4 px from there
• Headlines - 22px+
• Subheads - 18-20px
• Body copy - 13px min; 15-16px is better

15. 3.Test like a BAWSE!
The EXPERTS you need to consult are your CUSTOMERS.
• Research Question- Find your ‘which’ question
• Helps identify an alternative (treatment) that performs better
Example:What is the best headline for my landing page?
Instead: Which one of these three headlines words best for my landing page?

16. Hypothesis
The goal of all customer research is to enable the marketer to predict customer behavior.
Which Why What
Customer Behavior  CustomerTheory
Which headline will generate a higher response  What does my customer want the most
Which testimonial will generate the most response  What makes my customer especially anxious?

17. Control vs.Treatment
• Control = Original email
• Treatment = Changed email
• Variable –What changes?
• Values- How it changes?

19. MECLABSTEST PROTOCAL TOOLTIME