It does my heart good to see others say, thanks Carolyn Gardner in DM NEWS, what we’ve been saying for the better part of a decade. Online marketers need to focus on their sales funnels. It’s not enough to have read “Call To Action” or “Waiting For Your Cat To Bark?” (so many did they became NY Times & Wall Street Journal lists’ bestselling books) you have to do something about it.

Carolyn Gardner writes:

“According to Shop.org’s State of Online Retailing report for 2008, online retailers allocate 53% of their marketing budgets to online customer acquisition — driving traf­fic to a Web site or landing page. But when it comes to online customer retention, the marketing spend shrinks to 21%. Does this mean that any effort to convert visitors into customers must come out of the remaining 26% of budget? Because retention is all about building engagement and loyalty, this dispro­portionate spend and disregard for the sales funnel is alarmingly short sighted.

Acquisition strategies that drive traffic to Web sites designed for mass appeal are safe. But going a step further, by creating Web sites with “personalized content,” you improve engagement, retention and loyalty. Loyal customers typically buy and spend more than new customers, so shifting budget into engagement and retention should be a no-brainer. What, then, is the problem?

I think it stems from marketers playing it safe in the comfort zone of e-mail and search. E-mail and search have definite roles to play, but won’t address conversion. After all, what happens after the beckoned traffic arrives? Too often, engagement is weak and visitors bounce. With competition just one click away, there’s a very small window of opportunity. It can only be optimized with personalized content, displaying the right message to the right person at the right time, based on that person’s profile and behaviors. ” (read entire op-ed column)

We explained recently, in our newest whitepaper, how especially in a recession marketers can’t afford not to focus on conversion rates and gaining market share.

Do you need help fixing your sales funnel? We can help.