The Most Dangerous Kind of "No"

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Marketing Manager: "I want to build a CRO program. Our website conversion rate is 0.5%. Only 8% of those become customers. We need to double those numbers." 🤯

Talks to me and is ready to start work.

Goes to leadership for approval: "No, we're allocating budget elsewhere. We don't want a CRO program."

Marketing Manager thinks the conversation is over after that.

WRONG. That should be fuel for the conversation.

This is a clear indicator that leadership doesn't understand CRO. They don't know what they don't know.

It's up to the Marketing Manager to make a critical decision to push back, and that decision will be determinant of their long-term fate.

CRO is THE WAY to fix these issues. I don't know how much clearer it could be with "conversion rate issues" aligning with "conversion rate" in the name Conversion Rate Optimization.

It goes so much deeper than that though. They don't know why their rates are so low. They don't know the actual problems. They don't know how to solve them. They'll try things by guessing. They'll implement things without testing them, significantly increasing the risk of failure. CRO is how you address all of this.

Not doing CRO here is like trying to fix a broken bone without knowing anatomy and not doing an X-ray. You broke the radius bone in your forearm but put stitches in your humerous in your upper arm. Wrong spot AND wrong treatment.

So again, if this Marketing Manager doesn't keep pushing enough until the team sees enough value to proceed with CRO, that choice has destined them for failure until they all realize nothing else is working.

This happens often. It's extremely frustrating.

Sometimes I feel like people are yelling, "I'm so dehydrated. I need water." There's no bottled water on a table in front of them but I'm showing that there's a mountain stream in front of them with fresh, drinkable water. They don't see the solution right in front of them and won't hear anyone trying to guide them that way. They will only accept bottled water on a table because they are unfamiliar with mountain stream water....that is even fresher, cleaner (assume so for the sake of the analogy), and better tasting.

CRO isn't a hard sell...but it is. I get it...but really don't.

Want me to help you build a case for optimizing your company’s digital experiences?(e.g. website, mobile app, SaaS platform)

Tactics You Should Test 🧪

This is where I share smart, creative ideas that are worth trying. Not theoretical fluff. Just real-world tactics that have the potential to lift conversions, retention, loyalty, or engagement. Try them, test them, tweak them.

Interactive Prompt in Homepage Hero

Check out Penn Foster’s homepage. They’re in education. They offer programs.

New users: likely not going to get started in any way or enroll right away. That’s an unreasonable expectation. Only returning users will do that.

SO, new users will need to explore and learn more. You can’t try to force them to convert faster, so you’ll actually want to make their journey longer on purpose. Counterintuitive to what you typically hear in the world of website optimization, I know.

What’s a great way to do that you ask? Interactive prompts. That’s not the only name you could call this tactic. You could also think of it as a widget. A quiz.

There are three main benefits to this tactic:

1. It is a series of micro-commitments from users. They’ll be more likely to follow through the the end of the prompt…and more likely to complete the final conversion…because they won’t want to waste the effort they’ve already put in.

2. You’ll get tons of first-party data that you can use to better understand your users. It’s built-in research.

3. They’re self-segmenting. You can personalize their current experience once they’ve finished and their future visits. You can put them in a cohort within your marketing and personalize your marketing content for them, too.

What I’d change here:

1. The “Get Started” and “Enroll Now” call-to-action buttons don’t align with taking users to a quiz. They’re not going to expect such a large [perceived] commitment post-click so early in the journey. They’ll be confused. Some will be frustrated. Some portion will not be ready to take the quiz yet. The copy needs to better align with the action.

2. It’s not clear that the “Get Started” and “Enroll Now” call-to-action buttons would lead to the same action. Eliminate that friction point by having a clear call-to-action hierarchy, where if you use different copy for the same action in any instance, it’s intentional with better alignment.

Haley Unfiltered

Hey, I’m Haley Carpenter. 👋 I write these every week. I’m the founder of a company, Chirpy. Here’s something that has been rolling around in my brain recently.

I’ve Adopted Tony Hinchcliffe’s Mindset Relative to Netflix

I’m a huge comedy fan. Yes, I’m a fan of Tony Hinchcliffe’s and his show Kill Tony. Many people aren’t, that’s fine. I respect that. He’s talked about how Netflix hasn’t wanted much to do with him over the last decade…or ever, really. Outwardly, he hasn’t seemed to care and used it as fuel to carve his own path without them (Netflix obviously being an industry giant that leads to accelerated career success). He knew he could find success on his own in ways that allowed him to be true to himself. He was unwilling to compromise to appease Netflix to get into their ecosystem. If success took him longer, so be it.

Well, that’s how I view my journey and Chirpy’s to an extent. I’ve talked to lots of folks over the past few years about how they’ve reached agency success. Common answer: tool and agency partnerships. That’s a large chunk of a lot of people’s businesses…along with referrals, which I guess you could argue partnerships are a subset of that category. I often call this a “willingness to play the game.”

I’ll start by acknowledging that partnerships can be great. Absolutely. I have many set up.

Relative to tools in particular though, something I see often bothers me. Lots of people will promote tools simply for their self-serving partnership to gain business regardless of whether or not they actually like the tool, know the tool, like the team, etc. I don’t necessarily blame them, I suppose. However, it’s just something I’m not willing to do.

In other words, I’m not willing to kiss Netflix’s butt by watering down all of my jokes and removing my favorite bits just so that they’ll stream my special. I’m not going to lie and say I love a tool if that’s not true and get my clients to sign up for it so that you’ll send me deals in return.

If I don’t like a tool, I’m not going to partner with it. I’ll nicely, honestly, and openly share my opinion about it if anyone asks…and maybe not even wait for anyone to ask. If I love your tool, I’ll do the same and nicely, honestly, and openly share my opinion…and partner with you.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of uncool “game playing” that goes on in business that I see all the time. I don’t think it’s acknowledged or openly talked about enough. This is a small (or medium?) example. It irks me.

If some Netflixes of my industry don’t like me and it takes longer to reach success, so be it. I’ve always carved my own path for the most part anyways.

Chirpy Intel

For those of you interested in entrepreneurship and my journey with Chirpy, this section is for you. I’ll share company happenings, struggles, topics I’m noodling on, etc. Even if you don’t run a company, this definitely still applies to other roles like marketers, sales, customer service, HR, and more. A founder truly does it all.

More of the New Site is Live (Here’s My Take on FAQ Pages)

For those of you that haven’t heard yet, I’ve been working on a new brand and new site for my company since last December. It has been full of some unanticipated disasters, hence why it’s all taking so long. Buy cheap, buy twice. The full FAQ page is live here. It’s one of my favorite parts of the new site.

I intentionally tried to make it extensive with a broad coverage of all kinds of common questions. The best practice cited is often “FAQ content should be incorporated throughout the site to eliminate the need for an FAQ page at all.” However, I started disagreeing with that over the years as I think a consolidated list of common questions in one location is almost expected in some instances. I know I personally really appreciate a solid FAQ page. It’s a quick, easy avenue to share information in a commonly understood format.

To Do or Not to Do…X & Instagram

I’ve chosen not to do focus on X and Instagram for 2.5 years. Everyone says LinkedIn is where it’s at. Well, I’ve changed my mind. I think there’s plenty of worthy opportunity on X and Instagram. So, I’m ramping up efforts there.

Check out my new personal X account: @haleyfromchirpy. It won’t be like content I put anywhere else. Not even here in the newsletters. It’s much more raw and unfiltered, which might seem impossible since that’s how I am most of the time everywhere. 🙃

Follow Chirpy’s X and IG accounts: @choosechirpy.

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I'm growing habaneros in my garden this year. It's my first time having them in there. I must say, it's now one of my favorites. Their orange color really speaks to me. Although, they're not nearly as hot as usual. Not sure why. I like when they make my face hurt. If you know how to make peppers in your garden spicier, please tell me. I don't want to search for the answer online...something about not doing that seems more organic. Organic....ha. I’ve gotten some answers about it in LinkedIn comments here. (Check it out if you need some tips, too.) If you have anything to add, please do!

Also, I just went to take this picture to show you, and now something has eaten all of them in one day. Awesome. 😬 Guess I have to figure that out now, too.

Stay Chirpy,

Haley 🤘