One conversion rate optimization rule of thumb says: “The more you personalize the site experience based on all you know about the visitor, the higher the conversion rate will be.” Higher conversion equals better results, and greater revenue. That’s strong motivation for any ecommerce site looking to improve ROI.

But another rule of thumb may be emerging as consumers get more sophisticated in their online habits: “Failure to use information about a visitor could have a negative effect on conversion.”

Consider the email I got from Walmart about 10 days ago. It was waiting for me when I came indoors after spending an hour trying to plow the snow from my yard.

The subject was: “Celebrate Spring With Savings on Patio Furniture, Apparel, Swings & More.” Just so you get the picture, I have super-imposed a screen shot of the email on a snapshot of the yard at the time I got the message.

My first reaction to the email, as a consumer and not a marketing professional, was confusion. The mental process went like this: “Walmart knows where I live and the weather where I live is no mystery, so why did they send me an email offering deals on new patio furniture when mine is still covered with snow?”

Then I tried thinking it through as a marketer. Sending the exact same promotion to everyone on your mailing list is cheaper and easier than customizing offers by region. Sure, you might get greater conversion from emails that are geo-targeted, but would the incremental revenue be worth the extra effort?

And there’s the rub: How much extra effort does it take?

For large enterprises the answer often comes down to silos, not the kind in which my neighbors store their corn, but data silos. These are databases that exist in relative isolation within an organization.

Silos often contain information that could be used for multiple purposes, including marketing. But that information currently isn’t available to all the people who could use it — at least not without a lot of effort.

Typical silos are inventory, shipping data, order data, billing data. Different silos often contain multiple records of customer names, addresses, and contact data.

Unfortunately, issues in the areas of system architecture and corporate structure can mean that the fullest possible profile of the customer is not readily available to anyone, and that’s a pity.

For example, Walmart could have achieved a better reaction from me simply by looking in the customer database, seeing where I live, then sending the same email content under a different subject line, such as: “Hang in there, Spring is coming!”

I know Walmart has some amazing data systems and I don’t mean to poke fun at the company (I shop there quite often and I like getting their emails). Although that offer of patio furniture sure didn’t convert in my case, I found it more amusing than offensive. Yet there is a darker side to this silo problem, something you might call conversion poisoning.

Let’s face it, regardless of how much time and money you invest to come out on top of the search engine results page, there are always other results visible on the same SERP, whether your prospects are searching with Google, Bing, or Yahoo. So the searcher always has choices, and if the searcher has a negative perception of your brand, they will likely click one of the other results.

Like Walmart, Verizon also knows where I live. When I go to the website called “My Verizon” to pay the bill for my landline phone, Verizon actually shows me the weather conditions for my address. But I’m also shown offers and information about Verizon’s fiber optic and DSL broadband services.

Unfortunately, Verizon has no plans to supply either of these services to my address. Furthermore, Verizon promotes these locally unavailable services, bundled with phone service, for prices lower than my neighbors and I pay for phone service alone.

From a consumer perspective, that strikes me as insensitive to say the least. After chatting to my neighbors I confirmed that I wasn’t alone in this perception (it turns out that Verizon is equally insensitive when it mails out paper bills, stuffing them with offers that are unavailable at the address to which the bills are mailed).

Verizon is arguably eroding customer sentiment and tarnishing brand perception with this behavior, yet we all know that the information required to behave differently is somewhere within Verizon’s data silos. I would argue that, by failing to use all of the information at its disposal to personalize the “My Verizon” website, the company is undermining its conversion efforts.

Clearly, the time has come to “un-silo” corporate data so that it can be used to improve conversion and brand sentiment, while simultaneously avoiding the perception that your brand is either insensitive or simply doesn’t have it’s act together.

Driving web traffic to specific landing pages is a pillar of digital marketing. It’s an industry best practice that is widely used because it normally works well and its performance is easy to measure. But what about people who get to your site through a more circuitous, less predictable route than a traffic campaign for which you have created landing pages? Are you maximizing conversion of that “random” traffic? In test after test I have seen that giving this traffic some special attention reduces bounce rates and increases conversion.

Suppose you are promoting a new hotel property. You send out an email to several opt-in lists, and you promise “One extra night free if you book now.” The email has an enticing “Book Now” button that sends traffic to a dedicated, optimized landing page that matches the look and feel of the email, featuring that same “Book Now” button. This is a sound approach, and you will be getting plenty of metrics about how well it works — metrics on how many people open the email, what percentage click through to the landing page, and how many bookings the campaign generates.

Use variable content to your advantage
However, think about the entire universe of people who might be interested in that same hotel property (electronic product, media subscription, or other conversion event that you are marketing). Are they all on your mailing list? Probably not. That’s why you use multiple traffic acquisition strategies — like pay-per-click, display ads, and affiliates — to reach a wider audience and bring in more traffic. Yet you are still not reaching everyone. And not everyone that you do reach is going to click through in the dream scenario described above.

That is why it pays to make every page on your site a landing page, a page that displays variable content based on what you know about the person viewing it. The amount of what you know might surprise you. For a start there is the person’s physical location, based on IP lookup (which also informs you on the median income in that location); the distance from your nearest shipping point, store, or competitor’s store; and even the weather. You can also know the type of device that the visitor is using to view the page and whether or not there’s room for a fly-out panel above the fold.

If you are smart, you can also tell if a visitor is new or returning and whether or he or she is on your email list. I have seen all of these variables used to craft successful conversion-lifting campaigns, from special offers on snow boots, to wildly successful email-signup campaigns, to the enticing “items recently on air” box you might have noticed on the right of the homepage at QVC.com if you have a wide enough screen.

Take into account social media
Unless you’ve been abstaining from all marketing blogs, feeds, sites, and newsletters for the past six months, you will know that social media and mobile are the hot marketing trends of the day. But most of the activity in those areas is still about driving traffic to your site where it can then be converted. Some of that mobile- and social media-generated traffic will come through controlled channels and hit the intended landing pages, but some of it will be random. So all of your pages need to be ready to turn on the charm and act as conversion-savvy landing pages.

Consider this increasingly common scenario: Someone tweets about how much he or she loves one of your products, and that person includes a link to the product detail page (or the hotel photo gallery or a piece of content deep within your site). This is social media “buzz” in action, and it can be good news for your website. It’s even better news when a bunch of people retweet that link. You can think of this social media traffic as a gift or the result of having great products and a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter. Either way, you need to ask, “Are we doing enough to make the most of this traffic?”

Acknowledge your customer
You might start with some basic segmentation. If the new arrival on your site is truly new — that is, a new visitor, as determined by Google Analytics or similar technology — you could start by saying “Welcome!” You could also say “Welcome back!” if your cookie-sense says the person is a returning visitor.

In the case of a new visitor, think about the three most important things you would like that person to know about you, your business, your website, your products, how trustworthy you are, and so on. The technology exists to customize pages on the fly to provide that information (or links to it). If you use that technology to make new visitors feel welcome, they are much more likely to become customers.

The same is true if you add some local flavor to the page. Suppose that hotel you are promoting is in the Bahamas and your website visitor is from Chicago. You might display a message that says, “Chicago’s favorite place to stay in the Bahamas!”

Test your efforts
Of course, when you do this sort of thing, you should start out in test mode; for example, show the message to half of the Chicago area visitors but hide it from the other half. When you see which half is converting at a higher rate, you will know whether or not to expand the messaging to all Chicago visitors. (I’m pretty sure that a message like that would increase conversion, and you might agree, but only testing shows if we are right.)

Here are five tips for creating efficient landing pages:

1. Be prepared to customize content on all pages of your site, not just the landing pages you create for specific traffic acquisition campaigns.
2. Enable the display of different content to new and returning visitors.
3. Enable the display of geo-targeted content to encourage conversion (for example, localized content, or shipping and tax-free offers based on location).
4. Always measure the effects of all content changes by initially running them as tests. Convert successful content to default content if tests show positive impact on conversion.
5. To calculate potential ROI for this strategy, use your analytics software to review your site’s traffic sources and determine how much of your traffic comes from sources you do not control; compare how the conversion rate of that traffic compares to the average for all traffic to the site.

Mar 30, 2011 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) — The Indianapolis Indians has announced it sold a record number of single-game tickets online during its first week of sales thanks to a revamped interactive marketing program powered by ExactTarget.

The new campaign has already increased online ticket sales 64 percent over the 2010 season and posted an email open rate of more than 30 percent, the Company reported.

“We had the highest first week of online ticket sales in our team’s history,” said Chris Herndon, director of marketing and communications with the Indianapolis Indians. “By partnering with a global leader like ExactTarget in our own hometown, we’re able to better communicate with our fans with relevant and timely messages, which can sell more tickets.” Herndon said the Indians also plan to use ExactTarget’s survey tools this season, allowing fans to complete surveys via its email program. He expects this enhancement to increase survey participation and provide the ball club with richer customer feedback, allowing the team to improve overall customer service.

“Effective marketing is about the unique needs of the consumer,” said Tim Kopp, ExactTarget chief marketing officer. “The Indianapolis Indians have a rich baseball tradition, and their email campaign is a model for others to follow as it truly serves fans with relevant and timely information.” According to a release, the Indianapolis Indians are considered a leader within the professional minor league sports industry. The Indians are consistently within the top 10 of Minor League Baseball attendance (out of more than 160 clubs) and have turned a profit for 38 consecutive years.

The Indians open the season at Victory Field April 7, facing the defending Triple-A champion Columbus Clippers at 7:05 p.m.

ExactTarget is a global provider of on-demand email marketing and interactive marketing solutions. The company’s Interactive Marketing Hub technology provides organizations a single solution to connect with customers via email, integrated text messaging, landing pages and social media.

ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS–(Marketwire – March 30, 2011) – Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimization solutions, today announced it has signed a distribution agreement with Westcon Mexico, a leading value added distributor of technology solutions.

The agreement expands Exinda’s sales and technical support capabilities in Mexico and gives Westcon Mexico access to Exinda’s complete training, support, and sales resources. Exinda will work closely with Westcon Mexico to help resellers throughout the region to deliver its WAN Optimization solutions to more organizations that want to improve their wide area network performance. Westcon Mexico has also appointed an Exinda Business Development Manager who is dedicated exclusively to expanding and supporting Exinda resellers in Mexico.

“We are pleased to welcome Westcon Mexico to our global roster of distribution partners,” said Kevin Suitor, Exinda’s Vice President of Marketing. “Westcon will offer resellers throughout Mexico the ability to offer product demonstrations and trials to customers, as well as ongoing support to ensure customers take full advantage of Exinda’s visibility, control and optimization capabilities. Backed by Westcon Mexico’s market development initiatives, we are looking forward to working with companies throughout the country to solve their networking issues. We are pleased to have Westcon Mexico as a trusted business partner that will help to fuel Exinda’s continued international growth.”

Exinda’s Unified Performance Management Strategy

Exinda’s WAN Optimization solutions enable network managers to leverage Exinda’s unified performance management (UPM) solution, which offers network visibility, bandwidth control and application delivery optimization technologies within a single, easy to-use appliance. A recent report by Aberdeen Group explains many of the issues facing network operators today. To request a copy of the research report, visit www.exinda.com.

About Exinda

Exinda is a proven global supplier of WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration products. The Exinda Unified Performance Management (UPM) solution encompasses application visibility, control, optimization and intelligent acceleration – all within a single network appliance that is affordable and easy to manage. Founded in 2002, Exinda is headquartered in Andover, MA and has established regional offices in Canada and the United Kingdom to support the growing global demand for its products and services. Exinda is a 100% channel business with products being distributed by a worldwide network of solution partners who offer local support and services. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

With backing from Josh Kopelman of West Conshohocken-based First Round Capital, web marketing firm Monetate raised $5.08 million in equity financing, according to an SEC filing.

The company’s co-founders David Bookspan and David Brussin earlier founded successful companies that operating in the marketing space.

Brussin most recently co-founded (with Kopelman) TurnTide, which created the world’s first anti-spam router. Turntide was acquired by Symantec in 2004. Earlier he co-founded ePrivacy Group and InfoSec Labs.

Bookspan co-founded, and was President and CEO of MarketSpan, Inc., now part of LexisNexis. Earlier he co-founded DreamIt Ventures, L.P., a pre-seed venture fund launching new technology companies.

Named in the filing were Founder and Chairman Bookspan; Founder, CEO and President Brussin; VP Marketing Blair Lyon; and VP Sales Scott Samios. Along with Kopelman, directors include Samuel Decker of Bazaarvoice, and Lucinda Holt of ClickEquations.

Conshohocken-based Monetate helps consumer websites such as QVC and Urban Outfitters test and target product promotions and site features.

SEATTLE, WA–(Marketwire – March 28, 2011) – Skytap, the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced it was named to the “100 Top Cloud Computing Vendors” list by Everything Channel’s CRN Magazine. The comprehensive list features the most innovative vendors and solutions in cloud storage, security, apps, infrastructure, and platforms. This honor represents Skytap’s ninth award recognition in the last twelve months.

“This year’s ‘Top Cloud Computing Vendors’ award is based on a cloud vendor’s approach to creating an innovative product, or an innovative approach to supporting solution providers in the IT channel,” said Kelley Damore, vice president and editorial director, CRN. “Specifically, these cloud vendors help resellers transform themselves into true service providers and help organizations and enterprises take advantage of the ease, flexibility, scalability, elasticity and cost savings that leveraging cloud computing has to offer.”

Skytap is the leading cloud automation solution provider for enterprises, independent software vendors, systems integrators, and value added resellers. In particular, Skytap enables systems integrators and value added resellers to create unique and innovative cloud solutions quickly and cost effectively, and bring them to market successfully.

“As a leading migration software provider, Binary Tree sought a reliable cloud platform with which to provide customers and partners access to both training and proof-of-concept environments,” said Traci Blowers, director of alliances and business development. “Leveraging Skytap allowed Binary Tree to quickly, effectively and profitably support these strategic business development efforts.”

CSC, a global leader in providing technology-enabled business solutions and services, offers a self-service cloud solution for managing the entire application lifecycle using Skytap. After an extensive evaluation of market players, CSC chose Skytap because Skytap solutions are built on a scalable and reliable cloud platform that delivers self-service empowerment to functional users and visibility and control to IT professionals.

Skytap delivers simple, self-service solutions to customers so that they can create cloud-based environments for development, testing, migration and training projects. Leading global companies including Hewlett-Packard, Ellie Mae, Hargis Engineers, Sefas Innovation and Nuance Communications use Skytap to accelerate their transformation to the cloud while decreasing their cost of operations.

“Over 150 customers and partners have selected Skytap based on our proven cloud automation platform,” said Scott Roza, CEO of Skytap. “Through partnerships with companies like BinaryTree and CSC, we’ve demonstrated that our platform enables solution providers to bring new products to market quickly. Recognition by CRN as a cool cloud vendor acknowledges our continued success as one of the lead innovators within the cloud community.”

As one of the top cloud computing vendors, Skytap has launched many new innovative solution capabilities over the last year. Most recently, on the heels of the company’s recent oversubscribed $10 million Series C round of funding, Skytap announced a self-service hybrid cloud solution, which allows enterprise customers to configure hybrid cloud instances in as little as ten minutes. Contact Skytap to get a risk free, hands-on trial.

A sample of the list of the “100 Top Cloud Computing Vendors” can be viewed in the March 28 issue of CRN: http://www.crn.com/

About Skytap, Inc.
Skytap is the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions for dynamic workloads. Skytap enables users to run enterprise applications unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations can gain visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs by 70% or more. Enterprises can securely connect Skytap to their data centers and create virtual private clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including application development, testing, virtual training, application migration and sales demonstration projects. To buy or learn more, visit www.skytap.com.

About Everything Channel
Everything Channel is the premier provider of IT channel-focused events, media, research, consulting, and sales and marketing services. With over 30 years of experience and engagement, Everything Channel has the unmatched channel expertise to execute integrated solutions for technology executives managing partner recruitment, enablement and go-to-market strategy in order to accelerate technology sales. Everything Channel is a UBM company. To learn more about Everything Channel, visit us at http://www.everythingchannel.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/everythingchnl.