CXL - Innovation via theft

TODAY'S HOST

Merritt Aho, CEO at CXL

Too many marketers think innovation is inventing something new.

In reality, the best innovators are adept at stealing, combining and refining, even though they are credited with invention.

Steve Jobs took the ideas for the mouse and personal computer GUI straight from Xerox.

He made these ideas much better by focusing on cost, aesthetic and usability. Xerox backed out of personal computing before it ever took off. Apple turned it into what we know today.

My favorite innovation activity involves getting a group together to generate ideas.

After working independently for a few minutes, I ask the group to take someone else's idea and build on it.

The result is typically something that would not have been possible without the group collaboration. I've never encountered an equally reliable and remotely simple method for creating synergy.

The next breakthrough idea is already out there. It's just waiting on someone to see it, steal it and improve it.

Connect with Merritt on LinkedIn.

YOUR WEEKLY DOSE OF MARKETING UPDATES

Table of contents:

1. Learn more, pay less

2. Email marketing strategy
3. Connect with users through imagery

4. Choose your next marketing instructor

5. Get featured in Growth Notes
6. Building the greatest swipe file
7. What makes e-learning useful to you?
8. How to balance test velocity and complexity

1. Learn more, pay less

Research shows studying in pairs makes you retain information better and longer, and provides you with a system of checks and balances.

Similarly, your bank account shows signs of relief when you split costs with someone. Say, a study buddy.

That’s why we’ve introduced a new 1+1 offer to the CXL subscription.

Here’s how it works:

• Sign up for 1+1 CXL subscription offer
• Invite one friend/colleague to your team account
• You both get access to CXL content
• Split the cost (equivalent to 50% discount for each)

This way, you don’t only get a discounted price for your ongoing marketing education, but also a study buddy with whom you’ll push each other into learning even more from the top 1% marketers on our platform.

Sign up for the 1+1 CXL subscription offer here.

2. Email marketing strategy: collecting subscribers, users & loyal customers

What if each email you sent earned you a 2000% ROI?

Email marketing (yes, still) rocks the highest return on investment of any medium, garnering on average $47 for every $1 you invest.

Effective emails are built on timing: sending the right message to the right people, at the right point in their customer journey.

Getting that timing right is a combination of customer knowledge and an email marketing strategy that fits your lifecycle.

This post will help you craft that strategy, overcome the challenges, and reap the rewards to collect subscribers, users, and loyal customers.

We’ll start by breaking down the main elements of high-performing emails to show you how to drive action from your campaigns.

Read the entire article.

3. Connect with users through imagery 

Almost every B2B website has images or illustrations of some kind. What should they be?

People hardly buy anything without seeing it. Usually, they also want to touch it, hold it, or take it for a spin. You really can’t do those things online, so, to compensate for that, you need to work twice as hard to use great imagery that increases your conversion rate.

Using the right images contextualizes your value proposition and reinforces your message.

This playbook will help you pick compelling and well-positioned imagery that draws attention to your content.

Get your playbook on how to connect with users through imagery.

4. Choose your next marketing instructor

What marketer would you like to be taught by?

Tell us here and we'll try to get them to teach CXL courses.

5. Get featured in Growth Notes

Your last real competitive advantage is constant innovation through experimentation at speed.

Submit your experimentation case studies and we will share them with our audience...

• Newsletter (+120,000 readers)
• Social media (+20,000 followers)

Case studies like the one you're about to submit help us educate more marketers on how to achieve speed through experimentation and win.

We will feature the best case studies across all of our channels and pay credits to you.

Submit your case study here.

6. Building the greatest swipe file

The ad of the week comes from Cognism this time. 

What's great about it:

• It grabs your attention by offering something for free: 25 leads according to your ICP.
• It's differentiated from the rest by mentioning what lots of brands do (Amazon gift cards in exchange for meetings) and delivering something else instead.
• The offer is actually related to what Cognism does: it identifies new leads and helps you target them.

Be more like Cognism.

Join us in building the greatest swipe file there is. We will feature the best ads across our different channels with credits to you:

• Newsletter (+120,000 readers)
• Social media (+20,000 followers)

You can submit ads you've created but also the ones others did. We'll pay credits to you anyway for contributing to the marketing community.

Submit your ads here.

7. What makes e-learning useful to you?

Got 15 seconds? We'd love to get your feedback on how to improve our content.

Fill out the survey.

8. How to balance test velocity and complexity

This blueprint is probably one of Speero's favorite frameworks to benchmark and understand progress in our clients' experimentation and CRO programs.

It tells the story of two opposing forces:

• Running more complex tests with higher impact 
• Running tests faster and testing on more things

That's a never-ending battle. You can't have the cake and eat it. The key here is, unsurprisingly, balance.

So you want to run more tests, but...

As you do it, you want to slowly build the capability to make the tests more complex, and to run them more efficiently every time you jump a certain hurdle.

Get your blueprint.

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