Which wins, email or Web ordering?

I wanted to share some experiences and thoughts about an unintended experiment I ran.

I have a three-year-old email newsletter called The Marketing Minute that has about 4,500 subscribers. Last week's issue discussed common mistakes I'd seen when I judged sites for the Webby awards. I added a special offer of an objective expert assessment of their Web site for $40. To respond, all someone had to do was press "reply," give me their URL and say "I want one." Then I emailed back payment instructions.

I did it this way not as an experiment, but because I didn't have time to program the site review offer into my shopping cart.

I got 25 takers.

Using the direct-mail principle that repeating an offer to the same group usually gets you half again as many takers, I wrote a second article with new points on the topic this week, and repeated the special offer, this time telling people to go to a special Web page to order.

Just 2 takers this time. By studying my traffic logs, I can see that relatively few clicked to the order page.

Of course I know that this was a lousy experiment, because it wasn't controlled. My hypothesis, however, is that not only is it far easier for someone to just email back, "I want one!" it's much more personal. An email reply saying they want something is part of their relationship with me, the person who sends them the newsletter each week. A Web page is not part of a relationship and doesn't convey feelings in either direction.

By telling people to go to a Web page instead of responding directly to me, I was placing a barrier between me and the customer, evoking less enthusiasm.

I'm thinking that next time I'm going to encourage people to email back, "Yes, I want one!" THEN tell them to go to the Web site to pay. What do you think?

Looking forward to your thoughts,

Marcia Yudkin




Here's the $40 site review offer in case you want to take a look...