If you rely on Facebook or Twitter, you are at the mercy of them allowing you to talk to your customers. When you email it gets in your customers inboxes. Then it’s up to you to make sure you are sending things your customers want to receive. Email is the most scalable way to make sales with new customers and build deeper relationship with deeper customers. AppSumo.com is a 7 figure business and 90%+ of our revenue comes from emails.
I also write and read a lot. I’ve come to the same conclusion you have. I write all my own content on my sites, and I will hardly ever outsource content on client sites, unless there’s a specific area of expertise I require. (For example, I hire a retired periodontist, become medical writer, for one of my clients with a periodontal practice, just to get all the facts correct.)
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into effect on 25 May, “clearly presents challenges to effective marketing across many channels,” says Rachel Aldighieri, managing director at the DMA, “but there is an opportunity too. By placing the customer at the heart of your business, you can ensure consumers receive timely, relevant communications they crave.”
Online reviews have become one of the most important components in purchasing decisions by consumers in North America. According to a survey conducted by Dimensional Research which included over 1000 participants, 90% of respondents said that positive online reviews influenced their buying decisions and 94% will use a business with at least four stars. Interestingly, negative reviews typically came from online review sites whereas Facebook was the main source of positive reviews. Forrester Research predicts that by 2020, 42% of in-store sales will be from customers who are influenced by web product research.
Constant Contacts is an email marketing service, created to strengthen email marketing practices of small businesses, associations, nonprofits organizations, etc. It offers WYSIWYG editor to create an email campaign, secure contacts list management, social stats reporting tools, images/texts import feature, real-time tracking of your email campaign, etc.
You also need specific expectations for your landing page, on which to gauge its success. These expectations can be based on previous experience, anecdotal evidence, or simply wishful thinking. But it’s helpful to have a specific number to compare your actual results with. This could be the total number of conversions, or the number of people who make it past your landing page, or some other number, based on your own goals.
Particular groups of customers can be targeted or even individuals. Offering individual customers special deals on merchandise and/or services on the customer's birthday, for instance, is one example of email marketing personalization. (A restaurant might send an email to customers on their birthday offering 50% off an entree,) Email marketing helps a business develop and maintain a relationship with a customer over time that hopefully results in increased sales and increased customer loyalty.
Send emails regularly. Whether you send monthly, weekly, or daily, stay in prospects’ minds and inboxes through regular updates, news, and offers to increase your success rate. Keep your emails consistent so readers look forward to receiving your email. However, don’t overdo it and overload subscribers with emails or you’ll be sent straight to spam or trash.
You’ll want to capture users’ emails regularly, both when they purchase…and even before they become a customer. You can use lead magnets or discounts to incentivize email sign-ups and using an email management service like MailChimp allows you to create triggered autoresponders that will automatically send out pre-made welcome email campaigns when they subscribe.
Of all parts of the Rule of One, your One Reader is the most important. You can’t write an effective page without first identifying your One Reader. Once you know your One Reader well, you know what pains drive them, what benefits they’re looking for, what offer they’re most likely to respond best to, what kinds of social proof will move them—the list goes on. You do not have to get incredibly detailed on your One Reader, but you do have to know them well enough to look at the above list of definitions of perfect parking and know which one they would choose if they could only choose one.
Giving users the option to manage their subscription gives them the choice to opt down instead of completely out – this way you still keep your customers and they’re happy receiving your emails on their terms. When first building your list you should also provide users with a double opt-in option to ensure they are completely happy receiving emails from you.
Email marketing is the practice of nurturing leads and driving sales through email communications with your customers. Like social media, the goal is to remind users that you’re here and your product is waiting. Unlike social media, however, you can be a lot more aggressive with your sales techniques, as people expect that email marketing will contain offers, product announcements and calls to action.
"YOU ROCK JIM! I took the advice you gave me and made the changes you recommended to our website. You said it would take a little more than one month for the updates to take effect, so I stuck with it and didn't make any additional tweaks even though our rank went down. I just checked our rankings after Google's latest update and we're [edited out]. THANK YOU! In the amount of time we had together you gave advice on my on page optimization and content, and gave linking advice, and it worked beautifully. I can't wait to learn more from you." Jason H.
In fact, by the time a potential customer actually reaches out to a person in your organization, 70% of the decision-making process will already have taken place. Puts into perspective why you need to have online and website-based tools to act as proxies! (See Why ZMOT is Relevant for B2B Marketing: 4 Data-Based Reasons and Inbound Marketing and ZMOT: Perfect Together?)
We are delighted that Dr Irene, who is Vice Chair of the Association of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine of Madagascar, founded by the DU graduates (APRM Madagascar), has presented her important pioneering national data from the rehab deptartments across Madagascar to The International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (ISPRM) ; she has been given a scholarship by them to attend their 2018 meeting in Paris. This opportunity to learn and network will reap benefits for the country as she teaches widely.
The brand uses email to increase sales at all points on the customer journey – pre-booking, post-booking and post-holiday. This wide remit means the key aim is to “manage customer interactions of the whole journey rather than a marketing or service touchpoint.” As a result, it has a different strategy for each stage of the customer journey and “email marketing takes on a different type of beast in each of those strategies”.
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.
One of the most obvious advantages of email marketing is its lower cost compared to mainstream marketing channels. There are no print or postage costs and no fees paid in exchange for exposure on a certain billboard, magazine or television channel. Email marketers might consider investing in specialist software to automate, track and evaluate their emails. Granted, there may be a small overhead for sending thousands of emails at a time, but these costs are far lower than what you would expect to pay using other marketing channels.
Have a flawless design. Information architecture comes into play here, as it’s important for a landing page to have a clear, crisp design that leaves all questions answered without inspiring any new ones. Navigation should be obvious and simple, all required information should be provided, and nothing should come between the visitor and the conversion (aka no pop ups!) If at all possible, visitors should be able to convert in one click. Let every additional click weigh on your conscience like a heart beating beneath a floorboard.
SEO is an effective tool for improving the volume and quality of traffic to your website. Visitors are more likely to click on free organic listings than on paid listings. Our SEO strategies apply only the best and most current practices that focus on the use of great content development, content marketing, social media. All of these strategies combined result in the most effective use of best practices that drive long term ROI.
Full disclosure: IMPACT is a HubSpot partner -- but that's not why they're included here. IMPACT's landing pages have long been a source of design inspiration. I love the simple layout of the page, from the large headline copy and detailed featured image, to the outline that surrounds the form, to the colors and fonts that are very pleasing to the eye.
Initially I don’t put my name as the sender, I always write the three word I put together for my domain name but I found out that everyone’s email I receive do come with their name, so why must mine be different and I decided to change it but the rate at which subscribers unsubscribe every time I send out mail is giving me really concern. Though I’m not going to change it, it must remain and with your great post here, I hope everything will change for the better.
It reflects the customer’s stage of awareness. Effective landing page copy mirrors customer comprehension, which is layered and includes: how well a customer understands the challenge the company addresses (e.g. data privacy), what’s at stake (e.g. personal data and/or compliance), the changing landscape (e.g. GDPR), and tools that help (e.g. a specific product).
"One client was very happy with his rankings so he sent the entire team to Atlantic City, all expenses paid. Then he said, 'I loved hearing that you all enjoyed the trip. It's great giving back the joy that I get from seeing us going up in rank. I am hoping to present more such rewards for the remarkable job you are continuing to do, and for Jim's brilliant leadership.'" Rafael D.
Digital marketing became more sophisticated in the 2000s and the 2010s, when[13][14] the proliferation of devices' capable of accessing digital media led to sudden growth.[15] Statistics produced in 2012 and 2013 showed that digital marketing was still growing.[16][17] With the development of social media in the 2000s, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, consumers became highly dependent on digital electronics in daily lives. Therefore, they expected a seamless user experience across different channels for searching product's information. The change of customer behavior improved the diversification of marketing technology.[18]
Hi, Beth! Great tips here. I’m a big supporter of #3. It’s best to ensure that your audience isn’t receiving the same content, especially if they signed up for different categories. You should always have many lists, including a general one for the big announcements. But the rest should be divided by area of interest. I think a few email list builder give you the ability to add a “choose list” option in the form. That way, the subscriber chooses what they want to receive.
We have a saying that “good data” is better than “big data.” Bid data is a term being thrown around a lot these days because brands and agencies alike now have the technology to collect more data and intelligence than ever before. But what does that mean for growing a business. Data is worthless without the data scientists analyzing it and creating actionable insights. We help our client partners sift through the data to gleam what matters most and what will aid them in attaining their goals.
Competitor marketing is pretty much the obsession of every business owner out there. They want to know what the other guy is saying, doing and what is working. They also want to know what isn’t working, so they can swoop in and poach their customers (admit it, you do this any time you can). But keeping up with the competition’s moves is hard and without the right tools you will never know if you are getting the full picture.
Closely tied to the last point, because cloud based email marketing software is easy to use, this means that you don’t need to engage the services of a marketing or design company to prepare your email marketing for you you. Often adding a third party to the mix means that you can lose valuable time in getting your offering out to your email subscribers.
If prospects are solution-aware, they’re actively seeking “membership management software” and would easily call it that. However, Join It is eliminating a segment of prospects by only addressing solution-aware visitors. By finessing headlines and copy to match the problems or state of mind of prospects, Join It can open its aperture to capture more potential customers. Here’s how that might look with tweaks to copy:
Your headline is your opportunity to convince your audience of that value within the first line. What you’re offering will determine what style of headline you write. Do you want to answer a specific question and fulfill a need? Do you want to inform or teach your audience something new? Or, do you want to offer them an opportunity to try your new product?
Here is where many websites make a mistake. The call to action often asks the prospect to take some action. However, visitors thought often asks, “Why should I subscribe?” or “What is there for me?” Rather than ask visitors to do something, offer them something. The call to action should be in the form of promise or value offer to the reader. Customize the submit button to attract the reader. For example, you can use “send me free tips” instead of submit, “Get instant access” instead of join or “give me access” instead of subscribe.
Most online marketers mistakenly attribute 100% of a sale or lead to the Last Clicked source. The main reason for this is that analytic solutions only provide last click analysis. 93% to 95% of marketing touch points are ignored when you only attribute success to the last click. That is why multi-attribution is required to properly source sales or leads.
Writing blog posts is especially effective for providing different opportunities to land on page one of search engines -- for instance, maybe your eyeglass store’s website is on page three of Google for “eyeglasses,” but your “Best Sunglasses of 2018” blog post is on page one, pulling in an impressive amount of traffic (over time, that blog post could also boost your overall website to page one).
We work with you to turn your website into the ultimate industry resource on the Web. We also market your website to those places that need to know about your site in order to help searchers find you - so that your website receives the search visibility it deserves. It takes more than just traffic to turn visitors into customers and to maximize your return on investment, that is why we offer services to maximize value from visitors at every stage of the path to conversion.
For instance, you might use Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences to get your message in front of an audience similar to your core demographic. Or, you could pay a social media influencer to share images of your products to her already well-established community. Paid social media can attract new customers to your brand or product, but you’ll want to conduct market research and A/B testing before investing too much in one social media channel.
As mentioned earlier, technology and the internet allows for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week service for customers as well as enabling them to shop online at any hour of that day or night, not just when the shops are over and across the whole world. This is a huge advantage for retailers to use it and direct customers from the store to its online store. It has also opened up an opportunity for companies to only be online based rather than having an outlet or store due to the popularity and capabilities of digital marketing.
Our SEM team has been managing paid search since its inception and is driven solely by analytics and financial data. Our core focus is to expand our clients’ campaigns, drive quality traffic that will foster conversions and increase revenue, while decreasing the cost per acquisition. IMI’s PPC team members are recognized thought leaders, active bloggers and speakers and major tradeshows, and care deeply about each and every client. We manage our client’s budgets as if it was our own, tracking every dollar and optimizing towards very specific milestones and metrics.
For instance, you might use Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences to get your message in front of an audience similar to your core demographic. Or, you could pay a social media influencer to share images of your products to her already well-established community. Paid social media can attract new customers to your brand or product, but you’ll want to conduct market research and A/B testing before investing too much in one social media channel.
The third and final stage requires the firm to set a budget and management systems; these must be measurable touchpoints, such as audience reached across all digital platforms. Furthermore, marketers must ensure the budget and management systems are integrating the paid, owned and earned media of the company.[67] The Action and final stage of planning also requires the company to set in place measurable content creation e.g. oral, visual or written online media.[68]
A call to action (CTA) is a word or phrase that encourages readers and subscribers to do something specific. Examples of calls to action include “subscribe”, “shop now”, “get the free ebook”. You use CTAs on email signup forms, landing pages, in email newsletters, and more. When someone does what you want as a result of your call to action, that’s called a conversion. In email marketing, a conversion often means following a link in a email newsletter to visit another resource.
Segmenting your data is the most effective way to ensure that you are sending the right email to the right people. When you send out email marketing, if you look at your campaign analytics you’ll start to see trends. This could be in terms of groups of people registering as ‘reads’ within different time windows. So, by segmenting your data you could split these people into groups that may prefer to read in the evening and groups that prefer to read during the day. This really helps to ensure that you are hitting these inboxes at times when these groups are most receptive to reading.
In fact, by the time a potential customer actually reaches out to a person in your organization, 70% of the decision-making process will already have taken place. Puts into perspective why you need to have online and website-based tools to act as proxies! (See Why ZMOT is Relevant for B2B Marketing: 4 Data-Based Reasons and Inbound Marketing and ZMOT: Perfect Together?)
GDPR regulates how companies treat or use personal data (such as a subscribers email address). If your organisation collects data on EU citizens, since the 25th May 2018 new regulations require businesses to process data as set out by the new legislation. The ICO provides further information on GDPR and it’s requirements, as your service provider email blaster and categorised as the “data processor” and is proud to be a fully compliant service provider:
Social media can also be used to extend the reach of your email marketing. Most email marketing software will give you the ability to sync your social media and email marketing accounts together. This means that when you send your email marketing newsletter, your cloud based software can also post a copy directly to your Twitter and Facebook feeds.
Establishment of customer exclusivity: A list of customers and customer's details should be kept on a database for follow up and selected customers can be sent selected offers and promotions of deals related to the customer's previous buyer behaviour. This is effective in digital marketing as it allows organisations to build up loyalty over email.[22]
Of course, the splash page only appears before the homepage. If you try sending someone to a squeeze page when they click a link to an article or product, they ain’t gonna be real impressed. But if prospects are just going straight to your homepage, why not offer them something of value as soon as they arrive—provided you make it clear how to continue to the rest of your site?
Email marketing software will give you the ability to see how your subscribers are interacting with your send. If your email marketing company has analytics, then you can see how many people are reading your mailer, clicking on links or even how many emails are failing to get through. This means that you can fine tune your email marketing to get the best possible results.
Before sending your email to your list, send a test email first to put yourself in your reader’s shoes and see how it will look to them. Research from Litmus shows that 71% of people will delete an email immediately if it doesn’t display correctly, so use this test email to ensure your email is a high standard and everything is functioning perfectly.
For years, I blogged a lot about SEO and link building, and I won some cool awards for my writing. Although I no longer write much for the public, I’m still reading all of the news and theories of others in this industry on a daily basis. I still live, sleep, and breathe SEO. Plus, we have Ann Smarty on our team who blogs and writes enough across the Web to compensate for both of us. Today, I tend to focus my time on my business and clients, not on writing or speaking my thoughts to the world.
Each of those tactics requires different tools when it comes to ceation of the source email, dissemination to specific recipients, and integration with other back-end systems, notably the accounting system, the customer relationship management (CRM) system, and possibly even the inventory management system. You can manage your contacts by simply keeping a list of names and email addresses, or you can create a complex database full of subscribers segmented by demographic slices and engagement levels. Which method you choose really just depends on how much of your budget you're willing to allocate towards the email marketing software that can give your company the features it needs.
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%.
Your recipient’s spam filter, will scan your subject header line and body text. It will scan everything, looking for the presence of spam phrases, typically these are sales related words or phrases, such as: discount, promotion, click here, special offer or free. Your spam checking app will highlight these phrases so that you can revert to your text and make changes accordingly.
In order to be a data driven agency, we foster a culture of inspired marketing entrepreneurs that collaborate, innovate, and are constantly pushing the threshold of marketing intelligence. Our analytics team is well versed in mathematics, business analytics, multi-channel attribution modeling, creating custom analytics reporting dashboards, and performing detailed analysis and reporting for each client.
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.
