New Generation of Digital Marketing Software Helps Brands Win the Crucial “Moment of Truth” After Prospects Make Their First Click
Cambridge, MASS. – February 19, 2013 – Brands are given one-twentieth of a second to make a good impression online, according to research featured in the book Brainfluence by Roger Dooley. ion interactive introduced today a new generation of its digital marketing software to help brands win in that visceral flash of an impression — and the experience that follows.
By empowering marketers to create and test compelling post-click experiences such as landing pages, microsites, web-based “wizards,” and mobile web apps, ion’s new creative studio in its software-as-a-service platform helps significantly improve conversion rates for lead generation and customer acquisition programs.
“Businesses are increasingly recognizing that the click-through is a critical ‘moment of truth’ in digital marketing,” said Scott Brinker, ion’s CTO. “When prospects click on search ads, display ads, email offers, or links in social media channels, they arrive with specific expectations. Unfortunately, many company websites are often too general-purpose to meet those expectations. But typical landing pages, which are sometimes used as a more targeted alternative, deliver a notoriously poor user experience. If they don’t make a great first impression, they not only fail to win the conversion, they also damage the brand.”
ion's new creative studio gives marketers a better alternative, letting them produce highly targeted post-click experiences that look and behave like they were custom-crafted by a team of expert designers and developers. But with ion’s creative studio, any marketer can produce these experiences simply by dragging and dropping web and mobile components into professionally designed frameworks that perfectly preserve a company’s brand standards.
“ion’s platform has removed the barrier for us to create highly-customized, relevant and engaging experiences that we — in marketing — control,” said Amy O. Fitzgerald, vice president of marketing for wedding services company Ever After. “Creating landing pages used to be arduous and time-consuming, allowing for little to no testing, and we were very limited in the degree of sophistication and type of interactive content we could use. With its agility and flexibility, ion’s software has provided us with 3x improvement in our marketing performance while significantly reducing our cost of conversion. With the release of the creative studio, we expect our SEO and conversion rates to continue to soar.”
Customers can now create amazing web and mobile experiences that convert with ion interactive’s landing page solution.
Boca Raton, Florida – ion interactive today announced the debut of the ion platform on Marketo Launchpoint, the most complete ecosystem of compelling solutions for marketers. ion’s landing page platform seamlessly integrates with Marketo to create a cohesive connection between an organization’s pre- and post-conversion activities, allowing for creation of agile, personalized, interactive and compelling web and mobile experiences.
“ion’s platform gives marketers the power to create amazing web and mobile experiences that convert. The combination of ion and Marketo creates closed loop marketing that is actionable and powerful to both the sales and marketing organizations”, said Justin Talerico, CEO of ion interactive. “We are excited about being part of Marketo Launchpoint, because we know it will allow more marketers to transform their click-throughs into breakthroughs resulting in more leads, more branding, more segmentation, and more revenue.”
With ion, marketers can:
Extend lead data. ion’s integration with Marketo gives marketers the flexibility to simply copy parameter, format fields, and output fields for seamless export.
Enhance campaign insight. Campaign data is easy to map in Marketo giving better insight into visitor response, conversion point, and content details.
Drive responsive segments. Create relevant and engaging web and mobile experiences effortlessly with the Marketo and ion integration.
“Marketers are transforming the way they engage with customers and prospects”, said Robin Bordoli, VP Partner Ecosystems at Marketo. “The ion platform, combined with Marketo, enables businesses to deliver web and mobile experiences that are personalized and relevant. We’re excited to have them as part of the Marketo Launchpoint ecosystem.”
About ion
ion’s software and services enable agile creation and optimization of digital content experiences. The efficacy of these experiences exceeds industry averages by 3x. Hundreds of global brands like Dell, DHL, and Western Union entrust their web and mobile marketing performance to ion’s agile technology and services. For more information on how ion delivers more agility, more branding and more revenue, visit ioninteractive.com.
About Marketo: Marketing Software – Easy, Powerful, Complete.
Marketo uniquely provides easy-to-use, powerful and completemarketing software that propels fast-growing small companies and global enterprises alike. Marketo’smarketing automation and sales effectiveness software – including the world’s first integrated solution for social marketing automation – streamlines marketing processes, delivers more campaigns, generates more win-ready leads, and dramatically improves sales performance. With proven technology, comprehensive services and expert guidance, Marketo helps thousands of companies around the world turn marketing from a cost center into arevenue driver.
Known for providing breakthrough innovation and fueling explosive growth, Marketo was recently named to The Wall Street Journal’s 3rd annual “Next Big Thing List,” one of “America’s Most Promising Companies” by Forbes, and the #1 Marketing Software Vendor on the INC 500. In 2011 Marketo ranked as the #1 fastest-growing private company by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, and in both 2011 and 2012 the company received the CRM Market Leaders Awards Winner for Marketing Solutions by CRM Magazine. Salesforce.com customers also honored the company with two AppExchange Best of ’11 Awards, for Best Marketing Automation Solution and Best Chatter Exchange.
Marketo and the Marketo logo are trademarks of Marketo, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
ion interactive, the leading enterprise landing page solution, announced today the availability of Demandbase Real-Time Identification for its customers. “We are excited about the Demandbase and ion integration. It brings even more relevancy to the post-click experience,” said Justin Talerico, CEO of ion interactive. “The ability to improve web content relevancy through key identification markers such as industry, company, or revenue allows our customers to identify and cater to their most valuable visitors to create an experience that resonates with them — driving optimized performance.”
The integration between Demandbase and ion allows marketers to gain valuable insights that can lead to increased conversions and improved data capture. The Demandbase Real-Time Identification API identifies business traffic in real time, delivering over 40 company attributes (company name, industry, employee count, revenue, geographic locations, DUNS number, etc.) giving ion’s platform additional data for dynamic personalization of site experiences for each business visitor. Key features of the integration include the ability to:
Increase conversions and improve data capture by utilizing Real-Time Identification to shorten forms.
Create segmentation and personalized content and offers based on visitor type such as enterprise, mobile, government, and more.
Coupling a robust, enterprise landing page solution with a real-time targeting tool creates a powerful solution for creating responsive engagement and ultimately more conversions.
“The ion platform, combined with our Real-Time Identification API, enables businesses to deliver web experiences that are personalized to each visitor, driving better engagement and more revenue from the customers that matter most,” said Greg Ott, CMO of Demandbase.
About ion
ion’s software and services enable agile creation and optimization of digital content experiences. The efficacy of these experiences exceeds industry averages by 3x. Hundreds of global brands like Dell, DHL, and Western Union entrust their web and mobile marketing performance to ion’s agile technology and services. For more information on how ion delivers more agility, more branding and more revenue, visit ioninteractive.com.
About Demandbase
Demandbase is the first real-time targeting and personalization platform for B2B, transforming the effectiveness of marketing programs and marketing’s ability to impact revenue. While personalization tools have long existed for B2C, until now, none were geared specifically to enable B2B marketers to make online interactions more effective, delivering the right message at the right time. Without the use of cookies, Demandbase’s Real-time Identification service bridges the gap between known and anonymous web visitors by identifying and segmenting the companies visiting a website, and providing detailed, targetable business attributes in real-time. Demandbase integrates with other sales and marketing technologies to deliver unique intelligence about web visitors, and better attract, convert and retain the right customers. Enterprise leaders and high-growth companies alike use Demandbase to drive better marketing performance. For more information, visit http://www.demandbase.com.
There’s an important lesson to be learned from the presidential candidates regarding the role of landing page optimization in your overall campaign strategy. In a recent study by ion interactive, a leading conversion optimization company, there were landing page optimization wins and losses in both of the candidate campaigns race to the election.
ion’s study provides a detailed view into each candidate’s overall landing page strategy and spans social media, email marketing, search engine marketing, and integrating with mobile devices.
“This audit was an excellent opportunity for ion to review a significant national campaign and compare different strategies, perspectives, and tactics across channels. What we quickly learned is that both campaigns realized the need to bring relatability to their post-click strategy – but often missed the mark,” said Justin Talerico, CEO of ion interactive. ”We thought it was an excellent opportunity for us to highlight key principles for driving engagement, relevancy and ultimately performance by using an infographic to tell the story of these familiar campaigns.”
The key takeaway that comes from a scorecard that focused on campaign-specific tactics, localization within experiences, message matching, forms, mobile optimization, dynamic content, and segmentation — both missed the mark.
Both neglected a significant opportunity with campaign-specific landing experiences. Both candidates utilize search engine marketing campaigns that, in most cases, linked straight to their corporate website. These were significant missed opportunities to create very targeted, relevant experiences for those searching and ultimately driving better performance.
The candidates have a good pulse on the role localization plays in gaining momentum in their campaigns. You can’t resonate more than to give regional-specific content. Both the Obama and Romney campaigns had strong Facebook campaigns that drove localization through their landing page strategy.
Campaigns can be won through relevance, yet Romney’s campaign was inconsistent. Within social media there is a consistent delivery of message matching, but within search engine marketing there is a significant gap of ad and post-click experiences. Obama’s campaign, however, consistently delivered message matching between ad and landing experiences, regardless of channel.
For conversion, forms play a critical role. If you ask too much, you risk abandonment. If you ask too little, you sacrifice future targeting. The Obama campaign has hit a solid note with their form criteria. They’ve utilized a multi-step form to make their data capture more digestible. The Romney campaign asks for similar data but it feels significantly heavier since it is pushed through one page.
Mobile matters, and our presidential campaigns have missed the opportunity to engage immediately. Both campaigns are missing major mojo when it comes to mobile optimization. From lengthy forms to complexity of content, the campaigns missed a best practice of everything working effortlessly on mobile devices.
Both the Obama and Romney campaigns have done good jobs driving dynamic content through their marketing programs. From passing data through social media campaigns to utilization in their email programs, the two campaigns realize the impact of dynamic content in their landing pages.
We were disappointed to see the lack of segmentation usage in their optimization strategy. Obama’s campaign collected the data, but didn’t use it to drive a more targeted campaign. Romney didn’t segment at all. Adding segmented paths allows for more relevant content.
“We can’t determine who will win the presidential election, but we can say that the Obama campaign has enriched its landing page optimization strategy with more best practices than the Romney campaign”, said Talerico. “Ultimately we want to shed light on how you can have immediate impact with your marketing programs by driving relevant, engaging experiences that convert. We think this study highlighted many tactics that any marketer can begin using today.”
To download the full infographic, click here.
About ion interactive:
ion provides enterprise post-click marketing software & services to hundreds of customers worldwide. ion’s technology puts your marketing team in direct control of your campaign pages — from content to testing and optimization. The result is unprecedented agility and ROI performance across a wide array of marketing disciplines.
Boca Raton, Fl – Creating sales and marketing alignment isn’t easy – but is necessary for achieving accelerated revenue growth within an organization. Gone are the days of marketing passing leads and calling their job done. The influence that marketing can have throughout the sales cycle is both beneficial and a game changer. While more and more marketers are now becoming responsible for driving revenue – and not just leads – there is a real gap in shared knowledge with sales. In a webinar hosted by ion interactive on Wednesday they addressed the major component landing page strategy can play in bridging the gap for marketing and sales alignment.
“Why Your Sales People Will Love Landing Pages” addresses a multitude of ways that marketers can become creative with their landing page strategy and drive increased conversions, while providing an abundance of lead data that is invaluable to the sales organization. “Our customers have proven time and time again that creating relevant segmented experiences based on buyer behavior, industry, or experience drives increased conversions. What has become increasingly evident, however, is the passing of that knowledge to the sales organization is sometime a significant gap” said Sally Lowery, Director of Revenue Marketing at ion. “According to recent research on lead management, 34.9% of sales organizations polled felt their organization did a poor to very poor job of making lead data accessible.”
The need to create a seamless flow from marketing to sales exists today and if executed well creates better sales and marketing alignment as well as improved revenue performance. In the webinar, “Why Your Sales People Will Love Landing Pages”, ion addresses way to bridge the gap effortlessly. “We wanted to address the sales and marketing relationship, while showing marketers how they can create more qualified leads with experiences that will matter – and ultimately make your sales team love landing pages”, said Lowery.
Included in the webinar:
Creating visibility and collaboration with the sales organization.
Driving more qualified leads through targeted and relevant landing experiences.
How to give insights to sales that will drive focus and revenue.
The webinar had more than two hundred participants and yielded open dialogue on the challenges marketers feel they face today in creating sales and marketing alignment.
To listen to on-demand version of the webinar, click here
Founded in 1998, ion interactive provides advanced landing page software that maximizes pay-per-click search, email and online advertising performance. ion’s web-based platform enables marketing departments and agencies to create, test and analyze landing pages, conversion paths and microsites all without the help of IT or developer assistance.
A newly published “mega-doc” illustrates 50 landing page and online marketing best practices.
Boca Raton, FL (June 26, 2012) — While brands globally realize the influential impact a landing page strategy can have on their performance marketing programs – many don’t know where to begin. “Landing page optimization is an often neglected component of the marketing eco-system”, said Anna Talerico, EVP of ion interactive. “In our latest guide, we attempt to reduce the barrier for many marketers to getting their feet wet with landing page best practices that have impact and will result in increased conversions.”
The new ion guide provides actionable insights such as:
The Fundamentals. From campaign-specific landing pages to brand reinforcement, ion has outlined the A-B-C’s of landing page best practices.
Love Your Visitors. Creating experiences that relate to your audience while streamlining unnecessary hurdles for your visitors drives conversions. This guide gives you ample ideas for taking your landing pages to the next level.
Testing Tactics. “Always be testing” is a key element outlined in this comprehensive document. They’ve included multiple tactics you can begin today to drive your landing page testing strategy.
This guide includes many of the fundamentals that have helped countless ion clients double and even triple their conversion rates.
“We are passionate about helping marketers get more, better qualified leads and higher online sales numbers. Whether it’s by launching new features in our landing page software platform or by sharing the knowledge we’ve gained through years of testing, we’re always striving to see how we can help marketers push the boundaries and outperform their previous best,” says Anna.
Now with this new guide, every marketer—regardless of industry—can have the knowledge they need to build the best landing pages. Get all of the fifty-plus best practices here:
Founded in 1998, ion interactive provides advanced landing page software that maximizes pay-per-click search, email and online advertising performance. ion’s web-based platform enables marketing departments and agencies to create, test and analyze landing pages, conversion paths and microsites all without the help of IT or developer assistance.
Boca Raton, FL (June 15, 2012)— ion interactive, a Florida-based marketing software and services company that was founded in 1998 and later added to Inc.’s 2010 list of the fastest-growing private companies, exhibits strong and continued growth as the rapidly-evolving marketing industry embraces advanced software to overcome new challenges.
Boca Raton, FL, July 13, 2011 –ion interactive, the leading provider of landing page management software, announced that SmartSearch Marketing successfully increased conversion rates from 0 to 16% for individual keywords for their client, QAD, using ion’s LiveBall software.
Boca Raton, FL – ion interactive, inc., makers of the LiveBall landing page platform, announced this morning that the company was named to the annual Inc. 500 list, a compilation of the fast growing private companies in America.
Boca Raton, FL - GetApp.com selected LiveBall, the landing page management platform created by ion interactive, as a Top 20 business application for August 2010.
San Jose, CA — Today at the Conversion Conference and eMetrics marketing optimization summit, ion interactive announced a major upgrade to its landing page management and conversion optimization platform, LiveBall. This latest version of the company’s popular software-as-a-service (SaaS) now lets marketers optimize landing pages, microsites, and conversion paths using both A/B and multivariate testing (MVT)—effortlessly without IT.
Boca Raton, FL — ion interactive, the leading provider of landing page software, announced today that the company’s President and CTO, Scott Brinker, and Executive Vice President. Anna Talerico, have been invited to speak at four industry events this spring.
Boca Raton, FL — ion interactive, the leading provider of landing page software, announced today they have extended LiveBall’s capabilities to include nine features for search engine optimization. LiveBall is an enterprise solution for building and hosting landing pages and microsites.
Boca Raton, FL – ion interactive, the leading provider of landing page software, today announced that it has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the OnMedia Top 100 winners. Inclusion in the OnMedia 100 signifies leadership amongst its peers and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. ion was selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts spanning the globe based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.
Boca Raton, FL—ion interactive, the leading provider of landing page software, today announced the launch of its agency alliance program. Members of the agency alliance use ion’s state-of-the-art landing page platform, LiveBall, to deliver landing page solutions to clients. LiveBall empowers leading agencies, both large and small, to increase billings and improve online marketing ROI, while drastically reducing landing page production costs.
Boca Raton, FL—ion interactive, the leading provider of landing page software, today announced the launch of iPhone-optimized quick-start landing experiences. Combining its existing state-of-the-art mobile framework into its LiveBall quick-start program allows ion’s customers to launch high-performance iPhone-optimized landing pages and conversion paths within just a few minutes — without code or help from IT.
Boca Raton, FL—ion interactive, the leading provider of landing page software, today announced that the company’s President & CTO, Scott Brinker, and Executive Vice President, Anna Talerico, have been invited to speak at 7 key industry events this fall. The series of speaking engagements highlight the online advertising industry’s growing focus on optimization and ROI through better post-click experiences. Along with its clients, ion will speak at prestigious industry conferences through the end of 2009, including SMX East, MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer, and PubCon Las Vegas.
Boca Raton, FL—ion interactive, the leading provider of landing page software, today announced that within its first 3 months of testing, LiveBall client American Greetings achieved a 20% reduction in customer cost-per-acquisition. The $1.7 billion leading manufacturer of innovative social expression products was able to move from a single landing page to over 40 unique landing pages, each context-specific to its source of traffic. Using LiveBall, American Greetings was able to speak to each segment much more specifically, and increase conversions despite economic fallout that actually reduced the flow of traffic.
Boca Raton, FL—ion interactive, the leading provider of landing page software, today announced the launch of LiveBall Quick Start features that include everything online marketers need to launch sophisticated landing pages, microsites and conversion paths without help from designers, web developers or IT resources. ion’s “cloud-based” landing page software allows marketers to increase landing page performance while decreasing resources needed to make it happen.
