Citrix Systems

556% Increase in Conversions with Landing Page Optimization from ion.

Paid search pays off in the tough-to-crack enterprise healthcare market.

With ion’s post-click marketing services, Citrix can easily deploy online campaigns, track results and modify campaigns in real-time to optimize our spend while providing a consistent, flexible framework for click landing experiences.
Diane Kalmanowicz
Director, Web Marketing, Citrix Systems, Inc.

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background

With over 180,000 customer organizations, Citrix Systems is the global leader in access infrastructure software. Citrix provides secure, easy, instant access to business-critical information at any time from anywhere. Their marketing efforts require a similar level of immediacy.

synopsis

ion helps Citrix to achieve increased online conversion rates in a narrow target market with online conversion optimization, reallocating media dollars to realize greater ROI.

challenge

In 2005, Citrix launched a paid search campaign to generate leads for the company’s compliance solutions for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The search campaign directed respondents to a topic-specific minisite that resulted in a 0.5% conversion rate.

In 2006, two factors led to a shift in the campaign strategy. First, feedback from the Citrix inside sales team was that the campaign was generating poor quality leads. Next, Citrix determined that decision makers in hospital purchasing were the most qualified prospects—a much smaller subset of the healthcare industry than previously targeted.

objective

The objective of the new campaign was to target hospital-purchasing decision makers and generate qualified leads at a higher conversion rate than the original campaign with the help of landing page optimization.

solution

The challenge was that the paid keywords generating the traffic were not hospital-specific. The new campaign needed to “weed out” respondents who were not part of the target audience, and hit decision makers with messaging that was specific to their hospital’s size and needs.

ion created a message-matched set of post-click marketing conversion paths with segmentation to direct respondents down forks based on the size of their hospital.

results

Based on post-click marketing segmentation analysis—conducted in real time—Citrix immediately learned that more than 70% of respondents were not in their target audience of hospital decision makers.

Even with only 30% of the respondents in the target audience, conversion rates still soared 556%, based in large part on the directed paths, audience-specific messagingand landing page optimization.

Within 10 days of launch, the ion RTP matrix (Respondents/Traffic sources/Paths) revealed that respondents from Google were better qualified and were converting at a higher rate than respondents from other search engines in the media buy. By week three of the campaign, the budget was moved entirely to Google.

The campaign launched with A/B testing of two test paths. Immediate real-time analysis revealed that path A was performing significantly better than path B. Based on these results, path C was crafted and launched with nearly double the effectiveness of the already highly successful A path. The C path converted at a rate 756% higher than Citrix’s original campaign and segmented over 40% of respondents. This segmented traffic converted at a rate of 12%, almost 2,500% better than the original campaign.

Based on these results, paths A & B are being phased out and a D path was crafted to improve the C path results—all within three weeks of the initial launch of the campaign.

Construction Data Company

Reaching Lead Generation Nirvana:
Quantity and Quality 

ion interactive’s services team helped us strategize how to best implement a holistic optimization – really a redesign of our lead generation program – with LiveBall as opposed to an optimization of only a certain part of the process. 

Guy Colangelo
Marketing Director, Construction Data Company

background

Construction Data Company (CDC) is the leading regional provider of both public and private commercial construction leads, with three brands (CDCNews, BidTool, and DataFax) each servicing different regions in the Eastern and Midwestern United States. CDC has been a trusted lead source for general contractors, sub-contractors, construction equipment suppliers and manufacturer representatives for more than 30 years.

the challenge

The CDC marketing team maintains a culture of testing and data-driven decision making, and as long-time LiveBall customers, they already had a multifaceted landing page program in place. Their first goal using LiveBall was to maximize lead generation efficiency, bringing as many leads to their sales force as possible. As lead quantity increased, CDC shifted focus towards evolving their online marketing strategy to also improve the quality of the leads handed over to sales. They knew that in order to find the perfect balance between lead quantity and quality, they were going to need bring together their PPC, landing pages, and email efforts into one holistic strategy. 

the solution

The first step in improving lead quality was for the CDC marketing team to determine what was important to their visitors and which pages engaged their highest quality leads the most. Since CDC had been using the LiveBall platform for several years, they already had a plethora of data and analytics at their disposal, which revealed not only what converted well, but also which combination(s) of body copy, imagery, and ad text attracted their most qualified prospects. Thus, CDC was able to leverage existing LiveBall data to perform a self-audit and optimize their landing experiences for higher quality prospects. 

Once the CDC team had perfected their messaging strategy, it was time to integrate the message with their post-click marketing portfolio. The CDC team was familiar with ion interactive’s services team from their initial adoption of LiveBall, and knew ion’s landing page optimization experts could help figure out the best way to implement their new strategy using LiveBall.

CDC’s marketing team shared their goals with ion, and received an updated framework that included a new feature called Ready Made Widgets to help them improve lead quality. Ready Made Widgets help LiveBall users add and customize interactive layered content like accordions, image rotators, and tabbed content to pages without code or development resources. These widgets made it possible to add more content to a page without the page feeling overcrowded, giving the CDC team the creative flexibility to display highly-targeted content that their most valuable prospect segments could interact and identify with.

The CDC team also created a series of new microsites that used both the tabbed content and image rotator Ready Made Widgets to communicate the unique value that CDC offered to each of their prospect segments. Similar to the new landing pages, diverse visitors could self-identify and self-segment by clicking on a particular tab or image and then view a value proposition that spoke directly to their needs. These value propositions were discovered using the existing LiveBall data that CDC had originally cultivated and analyzed, and were shown to consist of highly-targeted, convincing, and effective messaging and imagery.

Next, CDC wanted to test both the length and manner in which forms were displayed, and the effect of using two-step forms on both conversion rates and lead quality. Two-step forms are shorter, and thus recommended in certain cases to remove user fatigue and boost conversion rates. However, CDC was concerned that a boost in conversion rates may be related to diminished lead quantity and a low-quality conversion overload.

Previously, CDC used a one-step form and considered any visitor who converted on that form to be a “sales-ready lead”. Now, the first three fields on that form (name, email address, and state) are presented separately in a step one form, and any visitor who converted on that first step became a marketing lead. Marketing leads could be added to a nurture or drip campaign, and given the opportunity to view valuable content and complete their profile. Those visitors who converted on the first step and then followed-through to convert on the second step were considered “sales leads” and were sent straight to the sales department. 

results

The CDC marketing team had originally hypothesized that dividing their registration form into two steps would increase the number of marketing (step one) leads, but decrease overall sales-ready (step two) lead generation. To their pleasant surprise, CDC discovered that while the number of marketing leads did indeed increase, the total number of overall sales- ready leads remained equal to that of their control. This meant that CDC’s marketing team was able to glean a new list of marketing leads from pay-per-click campaigns without sacrificing sales-ready lead quantity, quality, or adding to cost. Many of these marketing leads are also converted daily into full, sales-ready leads, lowering CDC’s overall cost per lead and improving not only lead gen efficiency, but also lead quality. Recent testing has also resulted in dramatically improved lead quality without diminishing conversion rates, which average over 16%. 

what’s next

CDC is focusing on optimizing and improving the lead funnel. They’ve begun testing a 3- step form, complete with an enticing call-to-action to ‘skip the line’ and speak immediately with a sales representative. The content of these forms and associated pages has successfully shifted the mindset of CDC’s prospects from an offer to a value orientation, which results in a pre-qualified call. With approximately 57% of CDC’s sales leads completing the third step, CDC’s marketing team is driving more and more high quality leads every day. 

Global Manufacturer

Launching Multilingual Custom Landing Pages in Minutes

Offline media drives traffic to single- and double-byte language, high-conversion landing experiences

I’m a usability person myself. LiveBall is neat, usable and well thought through. It lets us focus on the marketing and on the experiments — on the what rather than the how. We’re now turning around landing pages in any language in 40 minutes. That’s down from four weeks before LiveBall.

The real power is in the templates. I was planning to create pages in German. Instead, I ended up calling my colleague in Germany. About 15 minutes into my explanation of LiveBall she asked if she could just use it herself. I gave her access and she had made her first conversion path an hour later. We’re empowering teams around the world that are in close touch with their markets. It lets us focus on the marketing and on studying the behaviors of respondents instead of pages and code — the process stays out of our way.
Confidential Client
Web Marketing Specialist, Multinational Manufacturer

background

A multinational manufacturing conglomerate with strengths in government, commercial and military markets was seeking a global B2B lead-gen solution.

This company, which remains nameless at their request and due to the sensitive nature of their industries, has global reach and needed multi-lingual landing experiences with language and database support for single- and double-byte characters.

The company uses global print advertising to drive traffic to download topic-specific technical white papers. This activity takes place at the top of their lead-generation funnel and marks the start of a long, complex sales process.

Prior to enlisting ion’s LiveBall post-click marketing platform, our client procured landing pages as part of the service provided to them by their advertising agency.

challenge

The company’s global print advertising campaign’s call to action is to download a white paper. The challenge is that the call to action can be ‘Download White Paper’, but it can also be 下载白皮书, Download-Weißes Papier, 다운로드 백지, ダウンロードの白書, and many more.

The company needed to quickly and efficiently create localized landing pages in English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Turkish, German, Italian and many more languages. Once it became clear that their previous solution couldn’t deliver professional market-specific pages, they sought a solution that could. They found ion’s LiveBall post-click marketing platform.

solution

The client licenses LiveBall — ion’s post-click marketing platform — as the cornerstone of their in-house landing page solution. They use LiveBall to create, test and analyze international landing pages and conversion paths. The platform is used by a global, far-flung team of online marketers. World-class landing experiences are produced in many languages — both single- and double-byte and localized for markets from Turkey to Australia, and from the United States to China.

A Web Marketing Specialist at the company says “I was in a bind and drawn to the pages and the analytics of LiveBall. We need double-byte language support in the pages, the forms and the lead database. LiveBall gave us all of that and a lot more. The advanced reporting makes it easy for me to take a one-page summary and send it to my colleagues. We’re using the data to make decisions on campaigns going forward.”

He goes on to say “LiveBall turned out to be so robust and easy to use that we’re now using it as a stop gap on many other online projects. It’s compensating for a lot of our web shortcomings.”

On LiveBall’s usability and interface, the client says “I’m a usability person myself. LiveBall is neat, usable and well thought through. It lets us focus on the marketing and on the experiments — on the what rather than the how. We’re now turning around landing pages in any language in 40 minutes. That’s down from four weeks before LiveBall.”

He continues “The real power is in the templates. I was planning to create pages in German. Instead, I ended up calling my colleague in Germany. About 15 minutes into my explanation of LiveBall she asked if she could just use it herself. I gave her access and she had made her first conversion path an hour later. We’re empowering teams around the world that are in close touch with their markets. It lets us focus on the marketing and on studying the behaviors of respondents instead of pages and code — the process stays out of our way.”

In their first few months of using LiveBall, the client has deployed 32 conversion paths fielding traffic from 88 primarily offline sources. Their average segmentation rate of 42.5% has lead to an average conversion rate of 19.5% through September 22, 2008. That conversion rate is over 8X the current global average of 2.2%*.

*Based on the Fireclick index’s global average of 2.2% as of September 22, 2008.

Infogroup

Skyrocketing Conversion Rates with High-Performance Landing Pages

Liveball has made testing very easy and user friendly.  In the past year we have seen our registrations increase by over 50%.
Nicole Bukacek
Director of Online Marketing, Infogroup

background

Infogroup offers solutions to improve every aspect of a marketing campaign from quality consumer data, e-mail and direct mail solutions, database processing and more. Infogroup’s comprehensive databases include 210 million U.S. consumers, 14 million U.S. businesses, 13 million executives and professionals, and so much more. 

the challenge

Without a way to create, manage and implement landing page testing for multiple brands and segments, opportunities for conversion improvement were limited. With a current customer base of 4 million users - and growing, Infogroup sought a way to increase the efficiency of their landing page program through testing and optimization. 

the solution

In February 2009 Infogroup adopted LiveBall and watched their conversion rate increase at an exciting rate. 

Using LiveBall, Nicole Bukacek, director of marketing,  manages and tests well over 500 landing pages and counting. Before LiveBall, Nicole was only able to manage one landing page per business unit with no testing. At the time she was not tracking conversion rates, although she says, “now we are consistently seeing a 15-17% conversion rate.” 

After adopting LiveBall, Bukacek was empowered with the ability to quickly create multiple landing experiences for each business unit. She says, “Now I have landing pages for individual keyword groups for our paid search marketing.  Having the individual landing pages has increased our quality scores with Google, and given the user content that is more specific and focused on the keyword and what they are looking for, rather than a one size fits all type of landing page.” 

Being able to quickly and easily create variations of each landing page led to the ability to implement landing page testing against each other and find high-converting champions. 

“We were not testing before so having the ability to test has made a world of a difference.  We have seen our conversion rates go from our 3% when we first started to rates as high as 20%+ because of a different page we have been able to test. It’s so great to have the ability to see the amount of people who are landing on our pages and converting.  Liveball has made testing very easy and user friendly.  In the past year we have seen our registrations increase by over 50%.”

Going forward Infogroup will continue expanding and growing their landing page optimization program taking advantage of the scale, customization and flexibility provided by LiveBall.  

MarketingProfs

Integrated A/B testing increases landing page conversions.

LiveBall has empowered the MarketingProfs marketing team to create elegant, high-performance landing pages. We launch and test pages in minutes and robust minisites within days.
Megan Leap
Online Marketing Manager, MarketingProfs

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background

MarketingProfs specializes in providing practical, strategic, and tactical marketing tools and know-how for marketing business professionals in organizations worldwide through a full range of online media. MarketingProfs shares their knowledge and engages with a community of more than 430,000 members and 300 contributors.

the challenge

Prior to adopting LiveBall, the MarketingProfs marketing team relied on an in-house landing page tool. The platform did not have easy testing capabilities or a real-time analytics dashboard. Without a way to create, test and optimize landing pages, conversion rates remained stagnant.

the solution

In March 2011, Online Marketing Manager Megan Leap spearheaded the company’s landing page optimization program by choosing LiveBall to replace their proprietary system.

Megan tackled each of MarketingProfs’ business units, creating pages to find big wins across email, PPC and social media campaigns. Within a few weeks, Megan’s lead generation campaigns boasted conversion rates of 20%-50%, depending on the stream of traffic. Email campaign landing pages converted over 50%. The results spoke for themselves: within a few months the program was evangelized to the team of marketing managers within four different business units.

Since the adoption of LiveBall, the MarketingProfs marketing team has created and tested over 330 landing pages, microsites and conversion experiences for lead generation, event promotion, registration and subscription services.

Click the image above for more landing page examples.For Megan, A/B testing and ongoing optimization has made all the difference in MarketingProfs’ online marketing performance. Increased speed to market and subsequent analysis of results has led to improved conversion rates and lower cost-per-acquisition. As Megan explained, “LiveBall has empowered our marketing team to create elegant, high-performance landing pages. We launch and test pages in minutes and robust microsites within days.”

what’s next

What’s next for MarketingProfs? Megan predicts that “…2012 will be a year of tremendous expansion and growth for our landing page optimization program. We will be laser-focused on A/B testing to continue to drive online conversions from all of our marketing channels. In addition to ongoing testing and optimization, we plan on taking advantage of LiveBall’s ready-made widgets to add interactivity and sophistication to our pages.”