Hi everybody and welcome to another edition of web marketing insights podcast from Gulo solutions. Uh, with us, we have as usual, Zach Wilson, the cofounder of Gulo and myself, Chris Bonney, VP of strategy. And today, Zach, we are going to talk about the conversational web and what that means and how you can think about it as you build new websites. As you think about search engine optimization, as you think about how you get conversions on your site, that's what we want to talk about today. It is a small mindset change that can yield huge results.

Huge. Um, yeah, well I'm excited to talk about it and it's been a, it's been a while. The lockdown has, uh, has really pulled us away from podcasting

in general. So I'm happy to be back and happy to be talking and getting back in it and the rhythm of, uh, of having these conversations with you. Yeah, I agreed. I agreed. So, and I'm really excited about today's topic because it's something that we talk about with prospective clients and existing clients. To say not a lot has to change, uh, tactically or, or from an application or development perspective, um, or executionally per se, other than just thinking about, um, a new way to think about your imagery, a new way to think about how you engage with people online. Um, a new way to write copy and even send emails. So want to just kinda jump in real quick and start talking about sort of what is the conversational web. Um, and really it's just a sort of a new approach to help you rethink how to engage your customers, your members, your constituents, and to leverage some proven strategies sort of with a new focus. Um, there are, there have been countless articles written about this, about conversational marketing, conversational media, the conversational web. Uh, we'll put up something on the screen, uh, that shows some of the headlines, uh, from some of those recently. Um, how to actually build a conversational marketing strategy from HubSpot, et cetera. So it's not as if we're just sort of dreaming this up. This is a real thing. This is a big part of, of the, where the web is today. And I only, I only really say that because when we talked to people about it, they don't go, Oh yeah, I heard of that. But it does sort of set off, you know, sort of a light bulb moment when they think about the things they have seen recently, you know, on the web. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and it is a, it is a budding space and I think that people will, it, it will be colloquial. I realized and Oh well knew what the term is and what the term means within the next, within the next couple of years. Because the space in general from a just an a software perspective is really, is really blowing up. It's blowing a lot of brands, big brands are jumping on these different platforms that are helping them navigate these waters. Uh, okay. Through different conversational, um, mediums, uh, social, Chris mentioned, uh, newsletters, uh, on page SEO and uh, what part, there's a couple of parts of it that get us really excited. Uh, I, I think anyway, our one, the, the messaging, the messaging aspect of it, which, how that cascades into your different channels, social OnPage, organic, um, and, uh, an email as well. And even there, there are some, another, a whole nother space with conversational advertising, which is a whole nother ball of wax that we won't get much into. But really there's the messaging component and how that pertains to your brand. And then what we really get excited about is of course, converting, converting customers engagement and finding, uh, tactics and mechanisms where your customers are doing more. Again, on page email. Um, we've, uh, we've been working, uh, internally, you've been heading it up a big shift in terms of how we're, uh, communicating that in email. And, um, yeah, what was it, a four for four months, four or five months ago, maybe a week, we flipped, uh, out of the, into a more conversational, uh, email marketing campaigns. Um, we've seen, uh, uh, you can talk about this a little bit, uh, but we've seen, uh, some really good results in certain channels. We're experimenting with some different channels as well. So results do vary depending on who your audience is. But do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think maybe a way to frame this up is to say, um, what are the sort of the tenants of, of conversational web as far as we see them. And that can sort of lay the foundation for, for some of these examples. And we actually have a client who's in the space as well that we can talk about, but generally there's sort of five things that we talk about, uh, as the conversational web that things are a little more casual, uh, that can come across through imagery, uh, copywriting especially, um, naming conventions, button labels, all of those things, uh, that is personalized. Now, personalization is something that's been going on for the web for a long time, but something as simple as putting a person's first name, uh, into the subject line of an email increases, uh, open rates fairly dramatically. I don't have the data right off the top of my head to support that adding, uh, this is per MailChimp though. Also even adding, um, what an emoji of some kind into a subject line or the first few lines of a, of a, of an email helps generate, um, open rates as well. Uh, being interactive with the site user in whatever way that might be. We can put up on the screen a, um, something that we did for up for probiotics, which was a, a quiz. And at the end of the short quiz, uh, it said, well, here's the four probiotic that we recommend based on your lifestyle. So that's a way to not just say, Hey, go visit this page to learn about it. Hey, let us learn about who you are as a person and then make a recommendation right online. That's a great personalized sort of interactive approach, um, on the conversational web and you need to be engaging. That's another one that's super important. Of course, we always want engagement on the web that's not new. And you know, social media is all about engagement and how they do that. But I think the folks that turn or that coined the term conversational marketing, Oh, that's drift drift.com. They're the ones that do the AI chat bot where you see the little, uh, uh, uh, sort of, uh, chat box in the lower right hand corner of many websites that you go to now asking you a question or seeing if you need help. A lot of times there's not a person behind that, but it's an AI mechanism that allows you to ask questions and answered questions and, and put your answers in and then it directs you a coordinate without a human on the other side. So that's really a lot of engagement there. And then timeliness, which just means we need to be current, we need to be modern, we need to be, wherever the news is right now, that's a good place to start in the conversational web. Let's make sure that we're, you know, we're not dated, um, in, in what we do. So those are sort of the five tenants that we've worked with. Zach, do you wanna is there anything in there you want to expound on or, or,

yeah, I think one of the things, yeah, one of the things that, um, from my perspective that I've seen you play around with again and specifically in the email channel, uh, is, uh, is engagement. Uh, not just open but click through what have you, what have you done tactically to, uh, incomplete increase, uh, some of those, some of those click-throughs and emails. What are, what are the changes that you've made from style to length two number of number of engagement points to you. You already said the subject line, uh, emojis, things like that. But what else? What else?

Yo, yeah, I mean, it's such a dramatic shift with great results. I mean, going from the days of having sort of the HTML based, you're, you open the email and it looks like a webpage and there's pictures and there's headlines and there's multiple topics and there's multiple buttons to click through. It's not saying there isn't a place for that, but it's a very noisy inbox these days and our heads are filled with a lot of, you know, a lot of, lot of noise. And we're really, at the end of the day, we're looking for someone's attention. And the best way to get it is not by flashing imagery, Adam, but by just trying to be conversational, just to break through in a very simple, what we do now is text-based email. Okay. It's casual, it's conversational. Literally it isn't formal. And what I mean just to say, well how do you do that? What does that exactly mean? Well, the easiest way to sort of say from a copywriting perspective to just keep in your mind as a marketer is to say, am I writing this sentence with a massive people in mind or my writing this sentence with one person in mind? And you always want to do the one person in mind that they, you know why, Oh you use that word instead of us or, or you know, whatever the words might be. That sort of imply a group. You want to just pick that person, you know you're talking to that sit there reading your email and talk to them directly. That's the easiest way to get into a conversational mode quickly. You want to double space your lines and what some of the shifts we made is, I mean our emails are maybe 150 words, maybe, maybe 200, probably not. Um, and not inundate the words with anything like uh, links or, or sometimes you could do an animated GIF in there if it's topical or if it's humorous. But at the end of the day, this one email is asking for one call to action, not multiple one. And that link is at the bottom of the copy. The copy sure can be conversational, but it also needs to be compelling, right? If you're not familiar with how to copyright for marketing or the flow of how something like that, a sales letter, so to speak, needs to be, you know, the formula of that. That's something to look into and then ask for that call to action at the bottom. And then the other thing we want to do Zach and think about is where in the funnel do we want this email to lie, right? Is it at the top of the sales funnel where we're just building awareness and we want them to click through to a blog post and sort of gain their trust as an authority? Or are we asking for a sale? Right? And sometimes you can have a campaign of these emails that might sort of walk people through the funnel, right through their inbox. It also could walk them through the funnel on your website. So those are some of the things, just anecdotally that, that we're doing and seeing other people doing, recommending that people do in their, in their emails.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's all it. And I think too, there's, I don't know, from my perspective, the burden, uh, marketing should really be about, uh, high burden versus low burden. But the burden of, uh, putting together, uh, you know, well formed emails that look, look right on every single device and all that. Like, I mean, a lot of the software takes care of that now. But you still end up running through all these tests and you know, making sure all your spacing, all that. I mean now I feel like I feel, I feel like it's just like kind of write a couple paragraphs, send out, you know, some sort of, some sort of content, uh, like you said or message and, and go in our, I know our frequency of, uh, email marketing has, has increased over the last few months as a result of that. So, um, that's also, that's also one upside is there's less, hopefully less time, uh, invested in having to do that, that email marketing as well.

That's a very good point. No, it's a legitimate point too. And if you are only asking for one call, I think what the mentality can be is we're going to send out this big blast. Let's accumulate all this stuff. Let's get every department accounted for in every box and we're going to send this one big email. Let's see what people click. So yeah, I mean just send 40 emails, but just keep them short and brief and compelling. So that's a shift. I mean that's something to get used to and try to get used to. And that's hard for people, I think.

Yeah. Big time. Big time. How, so? Where, where are there areas that we're seeing? Uh, we're seeing this play out with, uh, uh, our clients.

Yeah, no, that's a, that's a great question. Um, you know, the American marketing association, the Chicago chapter, who, you know, we do a lot of work with and they're pretty big and they're marketers, so they know what they're doing. Uh, and we'll put up on the screen right now a screenshot of one of their pages. That's the call to action is to join the organization. Okay. So, um, what you'll hear as I read this is they're making the allure, uh, we know Chicago and you know, Chicago, right? And let's just, you know, we should probably, uh, bring our unique perspective and our history together and what we know into this heritage of what it means to be a Chicago in and, and they're going to say things that only someone from Chicago knows. And that's a perfect example of what this conversational thing, this approach looks like. So we'll put it up on the screen right now and let me read it to you. Uh, as we look at it, uh, for those that are just listening, uh, it says in a big bold headline, join the Chicago marketing community. Then the sub headline, the city of big shoulders, the second city, the windy city, and then in the textbook youth, it says from, from Subsaharan summers to Sub-Zero winters, from the magnificent mile to the bustling burbs steeped in creativity and tenacity. Our complex history brings a unique perspective to marketers in the great city of Chicago. And then it has a joint AMA Chicago button, uh, for the single call to action on that pledge just below it. It's not talking about member benefits, right? It's not talking about, Hey, you get a discount if you join. It's emotionally connecting with you in a casual way and saying, Hey, we're brothers and sisters in the city of Chicago. Let's come together as marketers and be a part of our tribe. That's how I, that's how I read that copy as well. At least. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I really love that. As an example, you know that that's, that's, that's a, that's a big one. Um, our, our other, uh, clients who are in the conversational media space, who is native message, and we'll make sure we put their link in the comments below in YouTube, in any worlds we post this, uh, but you know what we propose to them, which is a unique perspective as well as, as, as, as opposed to having five, six, seven nav buttons on their website. We knew there were kind of two visitors to their site. At the end of the day, there were people that wanted to learn and there were people that wanted to buy basically. So you want to learn about this new conversational media world, great. Go to this realm. There's one button and it opens up to a mega nav and learn about it. Now you're ready to buy. Okay, well why should you buy from native message? That's the other button. And it opens up to make an ad with all those sort of selling and buying kind of conversations. So they know right where in the funnel they are on their nav bar. Right? Um, and they know where in the process someone is trying to maybe convert with them and they can track that through analytics. And we did that by just keeping it very simple and understanding. At the end of the day, there's two people, not people too intentions of, of the brand will come into your site. Really at the end of the day, they, they know all about it and they're ready to buy or they don't really know when they want to learn.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's some, uh, there's been some really interesting things happen, uh, excuse me, happening, um, on their site, uh, specifically, uh, with that, you know, they're, um, yeah, uh, just as an example there, uh, to expound on that, their, uh, session duration since making some of those changes and those things are up. Um, 83%, uh, they're page number of pages, uh, visitors are visiting per session up 50%. Um, the sessions in general, this is not a Testament to conversational, uh, elements, but the sessions are up, uh, over 15%. So, you know, some of those behavioral change, uh, that are cascading again from the perspective, uh, too, uh, like you said, the site structure and how people, uh, journey through the site and those can have a big impact because, uh, ultimately the longer somebody's, you know, ideally what we want to do is we want to try and get somebody to the exact page through marketing or a search that they, we want them to go to. And that answers their question. Uh, obviously that isn't always the case, but we, uh, beyond that, we want to provide them easy ways to, uh, extend their journey and navigate to other places of the site. So, you know, that's a, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, those are, those are great things. The, you know, there, uh, just to expand on that, the bounce rate is down, uh, almost 20% as well since the new site. So the, a lot of, a lot of these things in terms of, you know, people getting to the site, the messaging, uh, the conversation that's happening on the site, that style, uh, of, of, of design, the style of conversation, style, messaging, those all, um, those all add up. They, uh, they add up, uh, in, in big ways. So, um, so yeah, so that's a, that's super, uh, super exciting I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. And they also have a blog and we've also created landing pages for them. So is that, can you know, what's your sort of 32nd take on? I have a topic I want to tell the world about how do I decide if it's a blog post or it's a landing page? What, what helps me distinguish what I'm trying to do there between the two?

Um, yeah, that's a good question. Uh, so I think the, the, the landing pages are better geared towards, uh, uh, specific segments. Uh, that's, that's a way that we sort of separate them out. You know, if there's a, if there's a segment or if there's, uh, a story of sorts that you're trying to, Mmm, well, you're trying to flush out whether with visuals or, or not whatnot. The landing page just in general, can short less copy, more visuals. Um, big, big, uh, big bullet points. Uh, as you journey down the page, blog a little bit more, um, uh, editorial informational, uh, they, you know, they always, it's always good to have a visual AIDS with that or video AIDS with that and things like that. But, you know, you've got, you've got something that's, I mean, it's almost like writing up, writing a book, right? Like, it's, you've got a thesis, you've got a topic that's becomes very topical. I'm sure it can be editorial. I mean, for, for people that are in like the B2B, B to C space, uh, like us and a lot of our clients, uh, it's gotta be typically, if you're doing a, if you're doing content marketing, it's gotta be pretty long tail. Uh, so we usually go from a volume perspective. We'll, you know, we'll, we'll sort of go for a bunch of long tail keywords that all relate yeah. To, um, a more, uh, pie in the sky keyword. For example. You know, if we're talking about conversational marketing, right, Google conversational marketing, you're, it's going to be pretty hard to win that. Well, like you said earlier on because of some of the players in that namely drifts, they've coined that, what was that like three years ago or something like that. And they dominate that pretty heavily. But, you know, how can you make a footprint there? Well, you try and find some tangential, uh, tangential space in there to play, um, conversational media, conversational commerce, uh, conversational web, uh, and all these sort of derivatives that relate to, uh, that you can play with to find, uh, to find opportunities and, and in search to have some visibility. So, Mmm, we've shot, we've, we've seen some really good results with that. I mean, that's really cursory explanation of the methodology, but that, that's, that's seems, seems to be working pretty well for us.

Yeah, no, agreed. It all makes a ton of sense. Um, so what else can we talk about here? Um, we did talk a little bit about con how we convert and the way we convert, uh, by keeping a single, uh, call to action in an email. I think as we saw with the AMA example on that page, again, they're, they, they know what the intent of that page is and that's uh, to keep people to join. Um, I think the intent of a blog post is, is it can, it can be a conversion mechanism and sometimes is to maybe, uh, get someone to give you their email address cause they found you through an organic search, right? So that's an action they can take that moves them down. The funnel. Landing pages tend to be a little more focused and optimized, uh, to, uh, you know, a little farther down the funnel with a single call to action. Um, sometimes it's not as much about information as about selling. Is that a fair thing to say? The distinction between a blog post disorder for sure. Is, is informational and the landing pages a little more compelling?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I would say that's a great, that's a great distinction for sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The, um, but I think the, you know, the, the, you know, to wrap, to wrap all this up in a nice pretty bow, if you're looking, you know, if you're looking for one, one take away from all of this, it's okay that this the, the, the, the, the conversational, uh, uh, engaging in conversational media and on conversational web. You've got all of these different ways you can play on it. Uh, conversational ads, conversational, um, AI, conversational commerce, um, uh, conversational, uh, chat bots as we don't really like to call them, but that's what they are. Um, and conversational marketing and all of these things. You know, what you're ultimately trying to achieve is, is it's two things. One, you're trying to create a tighter connection with your customer. And two, you're trying to create[inaudible] as a lot of these companies are tuned, trying to do, uh, less friction for your customers. And if you're, you're in the B to B space or B to C space and you're, you're, no, you're not playing and true conversational software, chatbots ads, um, ex conversational AI, and you're just trying to get into the conversational web at, you know, step one as we're talking about it and changing your, um, your email style, changing your messaging, your style, what should you look for? Well, you know, at one thing that we looked for was more engagement, more, more, more opens, more click throughs, more um, uh, uh, more conversions on our, on our website. Uh, whether it's a landing page of blog posts, some sort of form, but those are the things that, that's, that's ultimately your goal, right? Like you're trying to, in terms of making, creating this conversation and changing the landscape and how you communicate with your customers or converse with your customers. You're ultimately, and what we're ultimately all trying to do is, is trying to create a more, a higher conversion rate.

Yeah, no, I agree. I think that's what this is about. Why should you take conversational web and conversational marketing seriously? And why, why make the shift? That's exactly right. We ultimately, yeah, we're looking for a conversion of some kind. If it's an new, you know, whatever it is. Uh, we are, and we know that this is the way, and I think what people can take away from this too is keep an eye out for this now. Cause it is a nuance, but the minute you start seeing, Oh, that's really formal and that's not really taking the conversational tenants into, into, you know, account and look at this over here, this is, and it, and it feels a little more emotionally connected. I think that's one of the five to that. Maybe we'll make it a six one to have sort of an emotional connection focused on that emotional connection. That's sort of like maybe our new number six because I think, you know, it's a good one. It's an after effect of it, but I think it is a big part of, it's a big part of all marketing but, but I think that is an aspect that you kind of, you kind of do get drawn in emotionally. So, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So, so that's, yeah, that's a good wrap up, I think. Um, this was a good session, Zach. I don't know if you have anything else you want to share before we wrap up and say goodbye today. Get more conversions. Let's all do that. We can do some too. Yeah. Excellent. All right, so thanks everybody for listening to this, uh, podcast today of web marketing insights from Gulo, Zach Wilson and myself. Thank you very much for listening. If you're on YouTube, feel free to leave a comment or subscribe in the bottom. If you're listening through iTunes or anything else, please feel free to rate or I'll leave a comment as well. We'd love to hear from you and stay tuned for our next web marketing insights, podcasts coming soon. Okay. Thanks Zach. Take care. Alright, bye. Bye. Hi everybody. Thanks for checking out the podcast today. Uh, go to Gulo solutions.com to learn more about us. Subscribe to our newsletter. Also, if you can hit subscribe on our channel here on YouTube, that would be great as well.