We help you create highly effective experiences that convert your traffic into leads and customers.
Our services are focused on executing & delivering results quickly. Whether you need a little bit of help getting off the ground, or a fully managed program, we’ll make it happen for you. You’ll be supported by account strategists, conversion optimization experts, data analysts and web producers—all with years of specialized expertise. Your ion team will understand your business, your products & services, your marketing programs, and your conversion influences, and they’ll put this knowledge to work to improve the results of your campaigns.
Smart Launch
Get started with expert hands-on help. The smart launch service gets our new customers up and running quickly. In smart launch you’ll work with attentive, helpful platform & post-click experts who care (on top of that, they are really nice and a lot of fun!). Your smart launch team will take care of initial set up, launch your first landing experiences and provide customized one-on-one training sessions, ensuring your organization is up to speed from day one. It’s like jumping in the car and finding it’s already cruising down the highway pointed in the direction you wanted to go.
- Set up—we’ll take care of forms, exports, and third-party integrations
- Go live!—tell us what you want to launch first and we’ll make it happen, including publishing, R.E.A.D.Y review & QA
- Training—one-on-one customized training sessions conducted by your dedicated onboarding team
- Customized—the ion team provides the guidance and help that your organization needs to accelerate ramp-up time
Managed Services
We take care of everything. Managed service is a comprehensive program including the strategy, design, execution, testing and management of your landing experiences. We conduct discovery, create test plans, execute your landing experiences, manage QA & launch and assess test results in an ongoing cycle. Your experiences are created using the conversion R.E.A.D.Y methodology and each test is documented in a straightforward & detailed format. Weekly status snapshots and monthly reports help you keep your finger on the pulse of program outcomes, learnings and next steps.
- Process—we use a methodical process of discovery, planning, execution and analysis to keep things on track
- Approach—our R.E.A.D.Y framework ensures conversion-focused execution of test waves based on patterns of innovation & iteration to maximize results
- Deliverables—we design, launch, document and report on a pre-defined number of landing experiences & test waves, so you always know exactly what to expect and when
- Team—everyone on your ion team, from the web producers to the account managers to the optimization specialists have deep platform and post-click expertise
“ion interactive’s services team helped us strategize how to best implement holistic optimization–really a redesign of our lead generation program–with the ion platform.”— Construction Data Company
Coaching
You drive, we'll provide the map. Customized coaching provides guidance and recommendations to help build your organization's post-click expertise. We start by assessing your current campaigns, landing experiences and results. We conduct R.E.A.D.Y. reviews of your pages to find new potential conversion opportunities, and work with you to create plans for new landing experiences and strategically sound tests. Our deliverables include test plans, recommendations and post-launch check in meetings to review test outcomes and next steps.
- Assessment & recommendations—we look at where you are, where you've been and where you want your program to go in order to create a set of actionable recommendations
- Executional guidance—we help you plan your landing experiences including defining what to launch, providing copy pointers and formulating specific test plans
- Deliverables—we provide R.E.A.D.Y reviews of current landing experiences, insight on past results, recommendations for new tests and post-coaching check-ins to help stay on track, evaluate outcomes & plan next steps
Production
More hands on deck! Writers, designers, web producers, developers, platform specialists and marketing technologists—ready to help. Production services provide deliverables based upon your specific campaign or project needs. These can range from a one-time small task to large-scale recurring or retainer engagements. Production services are great for companies who know what they want but need support with the execution. We combine our deep platform expertise with efficiency, agility and accuracy. Examples of production services include:
- Publishing—we'll bring your vision to life in the platform, whether it's 1 page or 500 microsites
- Complex integrations—set up of more sophisticated functionality or non-standard integrations
- Retainers—sometimes you just need a team on call to execute for you—from a tiny request to a large one, we're on it
- And more!—each production engagement is unique, let's talk about your specific post-click needs
“I did want to take a moment to express my appreciation for the thorough review that you did with your team, and for sharing all of the great detail below. I am very grateful for your and your team's efforts.”— Noel Levitz
The R.E.A.D.Y Methodology
R.E.A.D.Y is a 25-point framework for creating and evaluating conversion-focused post-click landing experiences. R.E.A.D.Y is the foundation of ion’s services. It ensures a comprehensive view of any landing experience, incorporating a wide-range of best practices and strategically-sound tactics.
We utilize the R.E.A.D.Y. methodology in our smart launch, coaching and managed services engagements. It guides the planning and execution of every landing experience we touch.
We LOVE testing post-click experiences to lift conversion rates. We have a methodical approach to testing that's based on discovery, data, analysis and years of experience in post-click optimization. There's no fluff when you work with us—we're agile, passionate and entirely focused on getting conversion lift as quickly as possible. We use data-driven decisions, combined with years of post-click testing expertise to deliver strategically sound tests. In a typical year we launch & manage about 400 or more unique tests for our customers, and average around an 70% win rate (yep!). Tests are documented in a test plan that's easy to understand and share with your entire organization. Our testing strategy will be built around contextual tests, with patterns of innovation & iteration—that's what we've found works and delivers maximum results.
Test Planning
We document each test wave in a format that includes:
- Who: Who the target audience is for the test
- What: What is being tested
- Why: The test hypothesis and anticipated learning
- When: The anticipated launch and duration for the test
- Where: The specific campaign traffic sources for the test
- What happened: Results and learnings, after the test concludes
The test plan provides the historical reference point for all tests conducted, and helps build learning across a series of test waves. This format also makes it easy to share results across your organization in a easy-to-understand way. Test plans will be created for each traffic-source specific test wave.
Context Counts
The type of post-click landing experience that works well for an email campaign might not perform as well for a paid search campaign. The tactics that convert the highest for one paid search ad group might not win in a different paid search ad group. That's why we don’t design tests for the 'lowest common denominator' visitor—we design contextually relevant, traffic-source specific tests. This ensures conversion can be maximized for each major source of traffic, and that visitors land on compelling, relevant experiences. When planning context-specific tests we take into consideration the traffic source, the message of the ad or link, the target audience, R.E.A.D.Y conversion principles and more. We'll then begin test wave patterns of innovation and iteration.
Innovation and Iteration
ion testing follows a pattern of innovative and iterative test waves. This approach often provides significant conversion lift for our customers.
An innovation wave is about testing radically different things against each other—like an apple against an orange—in an A/B test. We call this "finding the diamonds." In an innovation wave the goal is to find a winner that significantly lifts conversions over the control experience. The learning is focused on the types of experience that compel the visitor through conversion for each unique type of traffic. And while learning from this type of wave is more general, it also has the potential for much bigger conversion increases.
If a new champion is determined in an innovation wave, it’s a perfect time to move into an iteration wave. We call this "polishing the diamonds." An iteration wave is designed to test variables within an experience for specific learnings and conversion lift. In an iteration wave, variables within pages—like headlines, copy, calls to action and images—are tested in order to determine influence on conversions.
The innovation/iteration approach to testing can drive significant conversion improvements.
