May 2007
Measuring your online campaign

ClickZ Events track clicks and conversions to optimize e-mails, banner advertising, pay-per-click ads and its event Web site

By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor

The ClickZ Network (www.clickz.com) is a leading online resource for interactive marketing news and information, covering trends in e-mail, advertising and search marketing. Owned by London-based Incisive Media (www.incisivemedia.com), the network includes events targeting online marketers. What better way to reach them than using the very tools they advocate?

To promote the second Online Video Advertising Forum, held March 19, 2007, at the San Francisco Marriott, the ClickZ Events’ five-person marketing team launched a campaign touting the success of the first forum, which sold out in New York in June 2006.

“We promoted the event through banner and text ads throughout our network and partner networks, e-mails across our network and partner network, and pay per click (PPC) campaigns on Google and the other major search engines,” says Matt McGowan, Vice President of Marketing, ClickZ Events. “Those campaigns were aligned to communicate similar messages about the event.”

Launched about 75 days out, somewhat later than they would have liked, the campaign’s overarching goal was to generate enough attendance to make the event profitable — typically 250–300 attendees. McGowan tracked progress toward that goal by setting “micro goals” along the way, which he measured using e-mail metrics and Web analytics.

Weekly e-mails to ClickZ Network subscribers and past ClickZ Event attendees featured a tiered message, with the main event getting top billing and other ClickZ Events highlighted below the fold. The “World Tour” event calendar closed out the message. After testing subject lines with A/B split tests, open rates ranged from 15–45 percent.

The PPC campaign used the event name, as well as keyword phrases such as “online video advertising event in San Francisco” and “interactive marketing event in California,” to achieve click-through rates of .5 percent. “The best keyword is usually the name of the event,” McGowan says. “Even though you should come up organically, you get double the exposure if you’re on the paid side as well, and double the chance that they’ll click.”

Banner ads on affiliate Web sites promoted a 10 percent registration discount for the affiliated association members. Though the offer was compelling, the ads didn’t produce significant click-through. McGowan says they use the banners primarily for branding but can track registrations back to the ads using unique discount codes. Ironically, the Online Video Advertising Forum did not deploy video because it’s not cost-effective for their events.

The campaign also included a micro Web site for the event, where the team tracked click paths and conversions. Tweaking design features such as where the “Register” button appears on the page affected registration numbers. The event team has also found that, after name, address and credit card number, the optimal number of registration form questions is five. More than that, and prospects abandon the process.

The Online Video Advertising Forum ultimately attracted about 250 attendees — fewer than in New York, but not disappointing given the higher price point in San Francisco. McGowan says, “If you communicate through banner ads, e-mail and PPC, through the associations they’re members of and through the editorial they read, you’ll get their attention in one of those mediums.”

Clear messaging with consistent offers contributed to the integrated campaign’s success. “You learn from your tests what works and what doesn’t work,” he says. “It’s amazing what changing one word in an ad or in paid search can do. It can mean the difference between a .001 percent and a .5 percent click-through rate.”