We are in the business of improving conversions for our customers. So a conference that’s all about conversions is just about the perfect conference for us! We met lots of fellow marketers and metrics geeks, web design and landing page experts, SEM and PPC gurus. We had many stimulating hallway conversations, got nice little nuggets of insights and tips from practitioners, do-ers, all folks who’ve been there, and done that, and that and that! This blog is a little long, but there is so much good content to share, I went with it.

We spent 2 days up in San Francisco, hangin’ out, mingling, meeting, sharing, learning. I had a chance to present about Multichannel Engagement for Nurturing & Conversions

If you’re a little too busy to flip through the slides, here are the 5 key takeaways that I talked about:

• “The Power of Interactivity” – Think beyond static banners and landing pages. (Users love to interact).

• “The Power of Content” – Users will engage if it’s in their best interest. (Does your content reflect that?)

• “The Power of  the Visual” – The less users need to guess the better. (Say it here, and don’t make me click).

• “The Power of User-Driven Insight” – Qualify upfront, deliver higher relevance and save on costs. (Users will participate and tell you what they want, if you’ll let them. And that saves you money.)

• “The Power of Incentives” – You’ve got to give something, to get something. (Welcome to the real world!)

And here’s a quick summary of what I got from some of the other key sessions at the Conference:

1. Tim Ash, the Conference Host delivered the Opening Keynote. He talked about Conversions in a Social World, and made the following key points:

• the Rule of 150:  With a group of 150 or so, formalities are not necessary. Behavior can be controlled on the basis of personal loyalties and direct contacts. With larger groups, this seems impossible.

• Inconsistency in Social Interactions is undesirable

• The best kind of Social Commitment (which is valued) is voluntary, public and small

• Put hot triggers in front of motivated people. (Reference: The B=MAT behavior model from Dr B.J. Fogg of Stanford Persuasion Lab. )

• Micro-conversions are powerful: Facebook likes, Tweets of a single phrase within a blog post, writing a review, rating a product or service, click-through to another page. As a marketer, it’s then all about driving and facilitating these micro-conversions.

• Realistic and interactive user experiences (online games, web video, animated characters) are growing rapidly.

• Social Proof drives adoption.

• Go wide and deep, and measure everything – reach, engagement, Facebook fans, fan page re-visits, Facebook photo views.

• Only 0.8% of wall posts in Facebook actually get displayed. Your content must dominate and engage, so it does not get filtered.

• Figure out the minimum publishable unit of content, and recycle it actively.

• Make the entire webinar engagement process (act of sign-up, post-webinar commentary) and content (slides, transcript, replay) easily sharable.

• Make other content forms (blog post comments, e-books) easily sharable. Make e-books downloadable.

2. Mind Games: Brain Science and Conversions by Susan Weinschenk brought some interesting insights around human behavior, with several real-world conversion examples. People do not behave as you might think, whether in the real or the online world! And that has a significant impact on the website design and landing page design that might work for your business. And if anything, it reinforces the need to test your assumptions.

3. While I had to miss this one (sorry David and David!) the session on Turbocharging (Google) PPC and Display Ad Landing Pages, and Social Media Advertising: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn by my good friends, David Rodnitzky and David Szetela had great content for anyone looking to optimize conversions via those channels. Contact them, and I am sure they will send you their #ConvCon material.

4. Conversion Optimization at a large company has its own challenges. Seth Berman of Blue Shield of California, James Niehaus of Symantec, Andrés Amézquita of Mattel Inc and Joe Weller of RealNetworks shared interesting insights on what they’ve found works at their companies. Some interesting points:

• Adapt your conversion to your target visitor. Ensure you are tracking conversions with the right audience. (Andres)

• Focus on the basics first (Andres)

• Go for an iterative approach. Small wins. Talk in $$. Get management buy-in.  (Joe Weller)

• Expect reporting issues. Learn something from each test. Share wins and failures (Joe Weller)

• Cross functional partnerships are the key to success (James Niehaus, and he lists 10 different groups!)

• Avoid IT whenever possible, be technical yourself, and get the word out on your wins! (James Niehaus)

5. There were several sessions on optimizing E-Commerce website conversions, including landing page design, reducing shopping cart abandonment with triggered emails, careful lead form design (put that email address field first!). Especially interesting was the LIFT model by Raquel Hirsch of Widerfunnel. She went through a very rigorous approach to formulating a hypothesis for ideas worth testing, and then testing to a higher conversion rate.

6. My own partner-in-crime at my #ConvCon session was Patrick Bultema of Codebaby. It’s tough to follow Patrick as a Speaker, given how well he can speak in terms of stories that captivate an audience! Patrick talked about the power of driving conversions by engaging users at an intuitive, emotive level. He and Codebaby are pioneering an interesting approach around this, with interactive, digital, characters. Its clearly an approach that takes the experience for users to another level, beyond even online video.

So how would Codebaby’s interactive characters and online video-based engagement contrast with Kwanzoo’s approach to driving multichannel conversions, with highly engaging smart polls & quizzes? That’s a whole different topic, that I thought is worth exploring, as I listened to Patrick. I plan to explore just this topic in a future blog post! (Stay tuned!)

6. The Grand Finale was the closing keynote by Bryan Eisenberg. Confessions of a Conversion Rate Optimizer. Bryan provided the larger context to what we are doing, and pointed out why performance advertising and conversions have always been important, and are now more critical than ever to every online business! High energy, lots of interesting facts and insights. A great way to wrap up the conference, and get us ready to go back into the trenches, and serve our customers!

Looking forward to the next Conversion Conference in New York City, Oct 19-20, 2011!

Popularity: 3% [?]