Global by Design

MarketingSherpa has posted a must-read case study on one company’s adventures in developing a multilingual email campaign to promote an executive conference.

In a nutshell, the campaign was a big success.

Here are the response rates by language:

English — 21.6% purchased
Spanish — 24.5% purchased
French — 187.5% purchased
German — 22% purchased
Italian — 33% purchased

And here’s a great tip from the article:

Instead of translating word for word, each translator was given the leeway to tweak verbiage for smoothness, accuracy and culture-appropriateness in their own language. For example, the German translation to “Hello,” for instance, might not be the right greeting *for marketing literature* in the same way it’s used in the US.

PS: I collaborated with MarketingSherpa a month or so ago on a Web globalization survey. You can read more about it here.

• Just How Literal Do You Want That Translation?
• Web Globalization and the Marketing Executive: A New Report
• Taking Harry Potter Global
• 5 Tips for Expanding into Japan
• Chinese as a Second Language
• The 2005 Web Globalization Survey