Where they should improve: Unfortunately, this ease of use doesn’t apply to the autoresponder editor. You can’t view autoresponders in a workflow, and they’re not very flexible (you can’t send autoresponders to send after an hour, for example, and you can’t set sending time ranges). Historically, Benchmark haven’t performed so great in our deliverability tests, either.
Create a landing page that’s not your homepage. If you’ve recently created a website for your company, your landing page might be your homepage, but they’re two different creatures. A landing page is designed to convert prospects into customers. It speaks to visitors looking for something specific, features content relevant to that particular item, and contains a call-to-action customized to that precise offering. On the other hand, a homepage serves a broad audience, features widely-relevant content, and may not have an immediate CTA.
You can place the opt-in form on the landing page or an optin page that allows your visitors an easy access to it. The most common place to position your opt-in form is on the top of the sidebar of a an optin page, above the fold so that it is one of the first things that your visitors see and also so that they don’t have to scroll down to access it.
Running ads on Google? Use landing pages! Typically PPC ads direct users to a landing page rather than the companies home page. This is because landing pages have higher conversion rates. You will be able to target specific products or promotions so that when someone clicks your ad they are immediately directed to a page that is set up for conversion success.
Rob, you don’t say who ‘booted’ you from using it. A significant GDPR factor is non-profits having to consent/re-consent those on established email lists and experiencing significant proportions of lists being lost because people miss the notifications or are too busy to fill in yet more forms. However, I have found a few using a ‘one-touch’ re-subscription button that takes immediate effect, without the recipient having to do anything else. It would appear that the re-subscription rate is higher, the easier it is to activate. On enquiry, I was told that they were using mail chimp for this.
My homepage is the landing page and the blog is on a separate page. It worked for another website I have, but I’m thinking of changing it to a course like Sonia was talking about yesterday instead and having the blog as the main page. I can see the theory of marketing that doesn’t look like marketing behind that. I believe you when you say that it’ll gain trust with the audience. Think I’ll test it out and see what happens. Thank you 🙂
Pinterest’s approach is different in that they don’t spend much time explaining what Pinterest is, since they can assume most people have already heard of them. Instead, a different example of Pinterest’s value is shown with each visit to the site, with a broader explanation of Pinterest (find and save all the things that inspire you) that sits below the main headline. What is Pinterest doing right here?
Marketing emails need to be personalized to the reader and filled with interesting graphics. Few people want to read emails that are addressed "Dear Sir/Madam" -- as opposed to their first or last name -- and even fewer people want to read an email that simply gives them a wall of text. Visuals help your recipients quickly understand what the point of the email is.
When people talk about email marketing, lots of them forget to mention transactional emails. These are the automated emails you get in your inbox after taking a certain action on a website. This could be anything from filling out a form, to purchasing a product, to updating you on the progress of your order. Often, these are plain text emails that marketers set and forget.
More sophisticated companies will route visitors who, say, search for products for large companies to a page geared toward enterprises rather than a homepage with general information. If you have a website with more than one page—or a more advanced information architecture and sitemap—consider linking to the page on your site that best addresses a visitor’s intent.
“Next, there is too much copy about them compared to the copy for the customer and that story doesn’t do anything to increase confidence in the quality of the product. In fact, it sounds like they did what everyone else does to create a free blog post, but they decided to charge money just for the hell of it. If they are such CRO experts, why not talk about finding the solution as curating the best 200+ headlines they’ve used for clients that helped boost conversion rates in the real-world? That’s just one of many angles they could go.
So what exactly is ‘double opt in’? - If you use a form on your website for people to enter their details to join your mailing list and you are using a two step procedure, then this is double opt in. It means that when they enter their details, they will then be sent an email asking them to confirm their email address in order to be added to your email subscribers database.
As of mid-2016 email deliverability is still an issue for legitimate marketers. According to the report, legitimate email servers averaged a delivery rate of 73% in the U.S.; six percent were filtered as spam, and 22% were missing. This lags behind other countries: Australia delivers at 90%, Canada at 89%, Britain at 88%, France at 84%, Germany at 80% and Brazil at 79%.[8]
For example, when the brand was revamping its service communications, consumer feedback showed there was confusion about where they were in the purchase journey. In order to address this, Virgin Holidays created a “highly-personalised progress bar” in the booking confirmation and other communications that are sent out pre-departure so each customer knows exactly where they are in the process, what the next steps are and what they need to do.
Out of all the channels I tested as a marketer, email continually outperforms most of them. Not only does it have a high conversion rate, but as you build up your list, you can continually monetize it by pitching multiple products. Just look at ecommerce sites like Amazon: One way they get you to continually buy more products from them is by emailing you offers on a regular basis.
3. Who is my audience? And what are their hopes, dreams, and aspirations? As silly as that sounds, it’s true to some degree – the better you understand your audience, the more you can cater to their wants and needs. Unless you know who your ideal customers are, it will be very difficult to write persuasive copy in the voice of the customer. So get in your audience’s head, Hannibal Lecter-style.
Offering a free trial of your product? Use a landing page to make it easier to capture conversions. Users will only have one option available to them – to start your free trial. You could have this same page on your website but as a landing page this information is free of distractions like a navigation bar, it has a clean direct design and it’s easy to measure your conversions.
Internet Marketing Inc. provides integrated online marketing strategies that help companies grow. We think of ourselves as a business development consulting firm that uses interactive marketing as a tool to increase revenue and profits. Our management team has decades of combined experience in online marketing as well as graduate level education and experience in business and finance. That is why we focus on creating integrated online marketing campaigns designed to maximize your return on investment.
Purchased lists are ineffective, and they impact everyone else who uses Mailchimp, too. If you send emails to a list of people whose contact info you bought, many of the emails will get identified as spam. Some spam filters will flag a campaign if anyone with the same IP has sent spam in the past. When you use Mailchimp, your email is delivered through our servers, so if one person sends spam, it could prevent other users’ emails from reaching inboxes. But by forbidding Mailchimp users from using purchased lists, we increase deliverability for everyone.
However, as email marketing developed as an effective means of direct communication, in the 1990s, users increasingly began referring to it as "spam", and began blocking out content from emails with filters and blocking programs. In order to effectively communicate a message through email, marketers had to develop a way of pushing content through to the end user, without being cut out by automatic filters and spam removing software.
The primary purpose of a transactional email is to convey information regarding the action that triggered it. But, due to their high open rates (51.3% compared to 36.6% for email newsletters), transactional emails are an opportunity to introduce or extend the email relationship with customers or subscribers; to anticipate and answer questions; or to cross-sell or up-sell products or services.[4]
InfusionSoft is the tool of choice for serious marketers. If you run a six figure online business or have a list larger 50,000 subscribers, this may be the tool for you. InfusionSoft combines your shopping cart with email marketing, so you can do complex things like segregate your buyers from your subscribers or mail specific sequences to specific people. You can also send physical postcards from InfusionSoft. InfusionSoft isn’t cheap. The monthly subscription is in the hundreds, and there’s a four figure setup fee. It’s geared towards companies that are already successful and need powerful solutions, rather than startups.
One discouraging trend I’ve found is that some business owners assume when you trade business cards at a networking event, that you have opted in to their newsletter. To me, that’s disrespectful. Ask verbally at that time, or ask permission when you connect via email or social media, before adding anyone to your email newsletter distro list. That’s my practice, and my open rates are consistently over 40%.
But I'm not talking about any kind of link building. I'm talking about organic link building by getting out there and creating insatiable "anchor content" on your website, then linking to that content with equally-great content that's created on authority sites like Medium, Quora, LinkedIn and other publishing platforms. It's not easy by any measure. Google is far more wary of newcomers these days than it once used to be.
Our SEO professionals are all well-respected thought leaders in the space and have decades of combined experience and include the following credentials: Search Engine Workshop Certification, Google Analytics and Yahoo Certifications, PMP Certification, UNIX Certification, Computer Engineering degrees and MBA’s. Our SEO team members are acclaimed SEO speakers and bloggers. IMI’s SEO team members have been keynote presenters at Pubcon, SMX, SEMCon, Etail, and many more influential conferences.
What are landing pages? A landing page is the page a visitor arrives at on your website after clicking an ad (for example, a Google text ad or display ad). Inexperienced marketers often direct all of their PPC traffic to their homepage, but this can be a big mistake. Specific landing pages tailored to different offers are essential for providing a quality experience for visitors and driving conversions with a targeted message that matches each user’s need.
Retargeting is another way that we can close the conversion loop and capitalize on the traffic gained from the overall marketing campaign. Retargeting is a very powerful display advertising tool to keep your brand top of mind and keep them coming back. We track every single touch point up to the ultimate conversions and use that data to make actionable recommendations for further campaign optimization.
Write great subject lines. David Ogilvy once said that 80 cents of your dollar should be spent on writing headlines. With emails, the subject line is just as important. If it doesn’t catch your attention, you won’t open it. So, spend the majority of your time writing and polishing your subject line. A great email subject line entices curiosity about the content of the email. It’s also personal, and highly relevant to the recipient. To learn more about how to write amazing subject lines, we have an entire blog post on the topic: 30 Successful Bloggers Share Their Best Converting Email Subject Line.
