Following the brilliant talks from Day 1 and Day 2 of SES London, Day 3 is set to be another fantastic opportunity to pick up tips from leading industry experts.
Once again we will be providing a recap of each session, as and when they finish, keeping you updated throughout the day.
Session 1
Joining the Dots: Maximising Marketing Returns in a Socially Connected World
Speaker: Nick Burcher, Head of Social Media, EMEA, MediaCom
The world has changed from people just watching TV and being passive to people sharing content and commenting on it, as well as creating their own content
Broadcasters and media are not competing with each other anymore, they are competing with their audiences too.
Everything is connected and social is the glue.
People share things to define themselves to others: ‘I share therefore I am’ is the new ‘I think therefore I am’.
People also share to get the word out about causes or brands they had an experience with, and to bring valuable entertainment to others.
Session 2
Ad Optimisation in Multi-Channel Digital Advertising
75 percent of Brits who watch TV use a second device at the same time
Think audience not channel
Centralise your buying platform so you can have a single source of truth when you buy your media. If your ad spend is less than 1 million you should consider providers such as AdWords
Have a segmentation strategy
Your organisation needs to be set up to keep your ecommerce and marketing teams together, so marketing is at the heart and everyone understands the audience
Speaker: Jon Myers, SES Advisory Board; VP & Managing Director EMEA, Marin Software
Although desktop is still taking the majority of clickshare, other devices are increasing their clickshare
Consider the Yahoo Bing network because in the UK you can get about another 9 percent market share, which tends to convert well
Use offline tracking such as call tracking, you really need it to understand conversions
Think about the real lifetime value of the customer by using all your external data with your AdWords data
Audience and context are big players in the future of search: audiences are the new keywords
Session 3
Breathing New Life into Your Email Campaign
Speaker: Kelvin Newman, Managing Director, Brighton SEO
The sweet spot of an email is when it aligns what customers want and what you want them to do
A real person is often better than a company, so try to send it from a personal name and email address if possible. People buy from people!
If it doesn’t work in plain text, the email doesn’t work: if your email is so reliant on visual communication then the chances are they won’t work as most people wont see your images
If your competitor can send the same email, you’ve failed
Talk about benefits not features: it’s not about what you’re doing, it’s about what your offering allows your audience to do
Speaker: Philip Storey, Global Head of Strategic Services, Lyris
Use email marketing for things like basket drop out, welcome emails or registration but not purchases
Try sending discount vouchers for people’s birthdays in email marketing
Automation in email marketing is a big opportunity and it takes a small level of resources to create
Automation emails should be a series of email touch points not just a one off message
Listen to your customers with data such as open rates and clicks and take action as a result
Session 4
Spy vs Spy: Competitive Analysis
Speaker: Mark Mitchell, Director of Client Services, EMEA, BrightEdge
There is a cultural shift in SEO: now your SEO tactics are in the public domain and competitors are exposing each other for blackhat techniques
When a big company gets an organic search penalty it can even effect their share prices
Discover your competitors in search and know that your competitors offline aren’t your competitors online
Look at universal rank (not just rank one to ten) so you appreciate when your competitors appear eg in local results, news results etc
Consider your mobile visability and your competitors visibility on mobile (and tablets)
Look at search, social media, display, affiliate, website, links, newsletters, display
Visability score is a mathematical algorithm that translates any given position in the search engine into an estimated CTR based on the context of the position
They see that often around 60 percent of traffic for a query goes to paid search
You must have a holistic view when doing competitive analysis, otherwise you wil never truly see what is going on
Map out your sales funnel to see where the weaknesses is: it could be your checkout page rather than the landing page itself
Survey your customers to ask them why they are leaving the website (tools like Qualaroo allow you to do this, or use email surveys to ask people why they purchased not just why they didn’t purchase)
Usertesting.com allows you to test your website in a low cost way
Landing page optimisation doesn’t just start with the landing page, it starts with what they saw before it eg what they searched for and if the PPC ad fits with the landing page
Don’t have too many elements competing for the users attention, just have one focus and ask them to do only one thing
Speaker: Russell Sutton, Managing Director, Webexpectations and ConversionWorks
Test everything before you apply it because there can be unforeseen negative consequences even if you think you’re improving the page
Make sure you’re PPC account is sending mobile traffic to your mobile site
Define success and your business objectives (quantifiable business success metrics) before you start any landing page optimisation
Use weighted sort on bounce rate within Google Analytics and prioritise those pages
Sometimes the smallest changes have the biggest impact eg having form instructions in the box where the user enters data or above the box
There we have it! Another great conference with plenty to take away, think about and implement. We hope you enjoyed our round up of #SESLON, and do let us know of any additional tips you picked up if you were there with us.
