I am currently very frustrated... why? because I don't have an HTMail to advertise with!
We do quite a lot of advertising - you may have found us through one of our ads. Some of that advertising is 'Pay per Click' with search engines. Most of these now provide a good service with lots of stats available, and the ability to test various ads and offers - which is great.
The downside is the clicks which do not turn into orders, and as with any form of advertising, this can be quite a high percentage of them. What I want to know is who are these people? What were they looking for? Did they find it on our page? If so, why didn't they order? Or are they just competitors checking the market?
It is incredibly frustrating not to be able to know the answers to these questions.
So we developed landing pages for these ads with simple feedback forms that you do not even need to leave an email address or any contact info with. You can see an example of what I mean at http://www.htmail.com/guk.html. If you look at that page you will see that the feedback form is obvious, and anyone visiting from that source should see it, and hopefully respond, especially if they found you because they were looking for what you have on offer.
So, how much feedback do we get you are asking yourself? Just One form. Yes, in several months, just One form completed. Now you understand my frustration. How can we find out what the people who don't buy don't like about our page or our offer?
It just goes to show how very, very difficult it is to get this sort of feedback on the net, and just what a unique resource HTMail have with our list members who trust us, and enjoy offering feedback to our advertisers. The question is, are you making the most of it?
So how so you make the most of our list members feedback?
Well, firstly don't miss the opportunity to ask your own question. It only takes a minute to enter on the order form, and better still it's at no extra cost. Make sure you enter a question that is relevant, and it's best if it is an open question - something that can't be answered by a simple yes or no. So don't ask 'did you like our website' instead ask 'what did you like about out website'.
Having made the most of the question opportunity - the next stage is to use the feedback to identify any problems with your site or your offer. Common complaints are detailed in our article Useful Tips.
Next, use the feedback to judge your choice of list. Are the responses what you would expect? Sometimes our lists do not perform as expected, as nothing is perfect (we get people who checked our 'lottery enthusiast' box saying they 'don't play the lottery' and smokers saying they 'don't smoke' but generally this is a small minority.
However, there is a lot more information on list choice that can be gleaned by careful reading, especially if you have taken our advice on landing pages (Gateway Pages for opt-in email?) and targeting your list (How to choose an email list that will be 100% more responsive to your ad. ), both of which will make the feedback information even more valuable, as you will know more about the people visiting your site.
I would be interested to hear from customers who have used other advertising methods as well as HTMail - do you find the lack of feedback and knowledge of what people like or don't like frustrating with other services? Does anyone else offer a similar service with feedback from real customers? How useful do you find HTMail's feedback function?
Let me know, I would love to have your feedback!
Regards,
Dave Broadway
June 2005
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