For instance, when a broker does a big banner campaign they may look at the amount of leads per banner placement and divide the cost of the placement by that number in order to arrive at a Cost per Lead.

This is good because it shows how effective your marketing mix is at generating attention and allows you to do more of (what is an educated guess at) what works. An educated guess is better then nothing. But what it doesn’t show is that certain channels, messages and creatives generate leads and client types that are heavily skewed in one way or another.

For example, a PPC search ad for the keyword ‘Free Charts’ might generate lots of leads because these people are interested in the free charts on your platform, but nothing might ever happen in the way of opening funded accounts. On the other hand; these leads might be cheap and right in your target audience, and a shrewd marketing campaign might convert enough to make it a profitable enterprise. But how do you know?

This is where ‘integration’ comes in. The basic principle is that you need to be able to record all client behaviour, from the first impression till the very last trade the client does – in order to know what works & do more of it. The systems involved are various, from Analytics software, a phone tracking service, the CRM system to a demand generation system and banner serving systems – they all need to ‘talk’ to each other to have a granular ROI figure.

When these systems all talk, you’ll be able to learn from past behaviour of clients, and adapt your strategy to market to prospective ones in real time. In financial marketing, remember what Ogilvy said:

“If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.”

This is MarketingFabric’s philosophy, and we’re sticking to it. From helping you implement the systems to analysing and acting upon the data; we do this for a living. Contact us today for a free, no-strings-attached marketing consult, or go to MarketingFabric.com for more information.

The problem is that it is not as clear-cut as just advertising to your current clients, we need to be intelligent about it. We need to figure out why they stop being our clients, only then can we figure out what actions to take. From experience, we know that the number one reason why clients stop trading is a loss of collateral. Especially for brokerages that are targeted at the lower end of the client spectrum.

The most important reason why clients are losing their collateral is a lack of sophistication in their training behavior. So a logical conclusion is to focus on education. Again, this is not as easy as it sounds.

Education programs are a dime a dozen these days but clients seem to resist entering them because of the time and effort involved. Why not take a page from educational institutions and try to make learning involved and fun?

In a university, students are rewarded for good behavior by getting good grades, by social approval from other students, teachers or parents and the end goal of the diploma. Brokerages can take this principle and apply it to their education program by involving other traders, by giving points, diplomas, public validation moments like events and awards ceremonies and other such mechanisms.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that not every student likes learning the same way; some like to learn by video, some like to learn by audio, some like to learn by text etc. Why not give your clients the flexibility to learn the way they want to?

MarketingFabric can help to craft a custom education program that will delight your colleagues and clients alike. After an initial investment of time and money, you will start to see results surpassing the ROI of most of the other channels in your marketing communication program. Go to www.MarketingFabric.com for more information.

They ask for high margins and carve a niche so deep that clients will jump through hoops to get the chance to become a client. *Almost* no selling required.

So how do they do this?

In essence the answer is simple; don’t be all things to all people.

In the online FX trading space Etoro is a great example. In a market of ever more complicated platforms and serious players, Etoro realized that there is a segment of unsophisticated traders that is driven by the thrill of trading. They built a user interface that is wildly different from anything in other platforms, making trading more like gaming. Of course they have a big following, and command higher margins.

But a radically different product is not a pre-condition. In FMCG, companies like P&G use different brands for each product category. They are number one to three in most markets they are in because they analyse the market and find a profitable gap in the competition’s communication. Their products are not radically different than any of the other players – the brand and its communication is.

As implied in above example, an important rule in differentiation is specialization. P&G would not be where it is today if it was all things to all people; in practice that means they haven’t used one brand for all their target audiences.

Financial brands can utilize these principles also. Many insurance players do it, mortgage players do it – but why not the major retail bank, the broker or the boutique hedge fund?

Think ‘divide and conquer’. Analyze & specialize. In an ever fragmenting world this is the only way to efficiently and sustainably attract clients.

MarketingFabric can help. As a niche agency specialized in financial services marketing we can help you do the research & develop a brand and communication program that will deliver the sustainable competitive advantage needed in todays environment. Go to www.MarketingFabric.com for more information.

The number one question companies should ask themselves about their website is ‘what do I want my site to do?’. If you want it to generate accounts, you should make sure that every page is build to take away barriers to that action.

Things like sign up forms, call to actions (Sign up for a Free Trial!) and contact information on every page will greatly help your sites’ conversion. However, by far the most important thing a financial company can do online is writing for their target audience. There are four questions that can help them do that:

1. Who is the product for?
   Ask yourself: Can the target audience tell from this copy that we’re speaking to them? Can other people outside our audience tell that we’re NOT speaking to them?
2. What is the product?
   Ask yourself: Have we spelled out, clearly and in simple language, what the product is? Are the nouns as concrete as we can make them?
3. What does the product do for its target user?
   Ask yourself: Have we laid out the product’s primary features and benefits in a clear, concrete way?
4. Why is the product better than the available alternatives?
   Ask yourself: What evidence do we have for those claims? Are we presenting that evidence clearly and without fluffy, empty language that makes us look like we’re boasting?

From: A List Apart

Now, there is not always bandwidth to completely rewrite and redo the website, nor is it always necessary. The way to prioritize changes is by looking at the data (If you haven’t done so already, have someone technical install web analytics on your site. For most purposes, Google Analytics will do.):

1. What pages are being visited most?
   You’d be surprised how many visitors don’t see your homepage. Make a list of the top 10 most visited pages.
   
2. How many came, saw and left?
   Now  sort the list by Bounce Rate. This is the percentage of visitors that came to your site and left right away.
   
3. What are visitors doing on your pages?
   Now that you have a prioritized list, take a look at page number one on your list. What is the purpose of that page? What expectation do visitors have when they come to it?  What links do they click (Google Analytics has a useful function named ‘Site Overlay‘)?
4. Watch the numbers change
   With the answers from above questions you’ll be able to make some meaningful changes to your pages.  Leave them alone for a couple of days (or however long it takes to gather data – at least 500 visitors) and take a look at their Bounce Rate, what links are clicked and Average Time on Site. Has it changed for the better?

If you follow above guidelines your site will considerably improve over time, at minimal cost. The problem with building a converting site is that it takes time, effort and expertise that is not always readily available. Even if it is, often the basics of the site design are not optimal and prove a hurdle too big to overcome.

MarketingFabric can help; being a specialized agency for the Financial Services Industry, we speak your language – and that of your clients – and can help you convert visitors to leads & leads to clients. Read more on www.MarketingFabric.com.

To get this information we need to get an understanding of the systems involved in measurement. Most commonly there are three to four systems that data flows thru; from banner impression to becoming a client:

1. The media show your banner to their visitors thru an adserver which loads the banner from your own adserver (if you have one).

2. The visitors go to your site by clicking on the banner; this is recorded in both adservers.

3. The visitors land on your site and whatever they do after is recorded by a web analytics package.

4. The visitor signs up for a free trial or requests more information and becomes a lead, this is recorded in the web analytics package, your adserver (thru a code on the confirmation page* ) and your CRM system.

5. The lead becomes a client; this is recorded in your CRM system.

*the confirmation page is typically the page that comes after a visitor takes a desirable action. An example is the ‘thank you for downloading’ page that comes after signing up for a free trial. As you are sure the visitor has completed the sign up you can now ‘tell’ the ad server and your web analytics package that a conversion has happened by executing a conversion code.

Over a century ago, the department-store magnate John Wanamaker observed, “I know half my advertising dollars are wasted. I just don’t know which half.”

Well, no more. With the help of DM principles we have the potential to know what works and what doesn’t, because whenever anyone does anything online, it’s recorded in a computer somewhere.

If you have a small to medium size website (<10.000 visitors a month) then the way to go is Google Analytics.

GA allows us to set up Conversion Goals. Conversion goals are pages on your site the visitor sees as a confirmation when completing a desired action and, being that this action is what your website is for, are thus very important. By setting up conversion goals you now know what drives conversions on your site.

Keep an eye on calculated performance indicators like:

Conversion rate
The main performance indicator. The conversion rate tells you what percentage of visitors do the thing you want them to.

Bounce rate:
The percentage of people who come to your site and leave right away. This says a lot about the quality of traffic you get from your online marketing campaigns. A sudden peak combined with low conversions often indicates a negative change in traffic relevance (i.e. bad marketing).

Time on site & Page views per visit:
The average amount of time a visitor spends on your site and the amount of pages a visitor visits. A low number, combined with a low conversion rate can indicate irrelevant content or a bad marketing campaign. Conversely, a high number can indicate people not finding what they are looking for. It is best to look at these performance indicators on a channel by channel basis.

Your tracking becomes a lot more actionable when you can say: “While they both have a good CPA, display marketing has a lower conversion rate than SEM. This indicates that there still is some room to optimize. Let’s spend the coming period focusing on Display. ”

Other useful things to look at are; the bounce rate per page to find the weak links in your site and the number of ‘direct’ conversions (a big jump indicates a PR event, offline marketing or an increase of exposure online).

Also note the keywords visitors have used to find your site thru the ‘natural’ search results. Be sure to use the relevant keywords for your SEM. When it comes to optimizing individual marketing campaigns it makes sense to do that in the relevant ad servers, as cost are usually not imported in the web analytics solution and we want to optimize based on Cost per Action.

This way your web analytics become a way of comparing performance across marketing channels and optimizing your web site. When you are ready for a customized solution, the bigger players are Omniture, Webtrends and Coremetrics.

Make sure to get a consultancy to advise and implement your choice.

email marketing for lead generation

Email marketing has its uses in the pre-lead process and is often used in cooperation with a partner by placing a text message or banner ad in relevant newsletters or by buying the right to mail to a partners’ list. Especially the latter requires extra diligence to arrive at an acceptable cost per lead/client.

One way of mitigating the risk of mailing to a rented list (usually you ‘rent’ the database for one time use) is structuring the fee that you pay to your media partner to be a cost-per-acquisition. This means paying for every lead generated as opposed to paying for every mail sent out.

If this is not an option then you should make sure the database is comprised of high quality contacts, that the database is mailed infrequently and that the people in the database have the same demographics as your target audience.

A good way to find these opportunities is going on the websites that your clients visit (ask them!) and looking if there’s a newsletter available. If this is the case then there is often the opportunity to rent this list or place a message in that newsletter. Make sure that if you intend to rent the list that all people in the database have ‘opted in’ to being mailed by partners.

Once you have a shortlist of opportunities you then contact them to ask for rates. With the rates in hand you can now calculate what response you need to make a profit.

Let’s say the list you want to buy has 25.000 contacts in it and has a cost of $3000 for a one time dedicated email. This is how your calculation would look (please replace the numbers with your own averages and estimations).

Cost = $3.000 
Distribution = 25k
Open Rate = 28%
Click Thru Rate = 6,5%
Demo Download Conversion Rate = 4%

That means that of 25k emails sent 7000 open the mail. Of those 455 click thru to your site and 18 sign up for a demo. That means that the cost per lead is $166,- (3000/18).

You can decide if this number is acceptable, based on your average earnings per lead and desired return on marketing investment.

The content of these emails should be actionable, to the point and promotional in nature. Make sure all the important information is ‘above the fold’ (viewable without scrolling down) and that there is one call to action which is supported by a button that viewers can click.

Converting leads to clients

When someone shows interest online they are usually contacted by the sales department. While this is without a doubt the most effective channel of conversion it makes sense to start a secondary path. Email marketing can be very effective in keeping your product (and their interest in it!) at the top of their mind while at the same time being a non-intrusive means of contact.

Try to keep these emails educational in tone while at the same time discussing your products. The more trading you get your leads to do with the demo platform the more likely they are to become clients and so it makes sense to send them information on it. A good way to do this is a how-to on selected features of the trading platform in a quick step-by-step format. Besides this, a guide on how to open an account and the general on boarding process is advisable.

A more advanced way of going about this is by automating the process based on certain triggers like demo trading behaviour, time spent, contacts by other channels etc etc. There is, for instance, a solution by Interwoven which takes all channels (except for online advertising) and integrates them in this way.

Email Marketing to clients

The basic premiss is that keeping constant contact with clients increases their awareness of your company, which in turn increases revenues.

The optimal use of email marketing to current customers is offering value while keeping promotional content to a minimum. While this is counter intuitive to most sales organizations the best way to generate more sales is actually not selling in this stage.

The customer is already convinced of your product, they wouldn’t be a customer otherwise. Note that promotion of products the customer is not using (or is decreasing in volume with) is usually a good idea.

So, increasing customer loyalty is the objective of email marketing in this stage. The idea is to offer value by sending informational emails like a newsletter. Market news, how-to guides or educational content in general, pod or vod (audio or video) casts and whitepapers are universally well received.