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10+ Best Podcast Marketing Strategies to Expand Your Audience

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By Sam Driver

Are you looking to transform your humble podcast into a buzzing audio sensation?

Podcast marketing is your ticket to reach new listeners and engage your audience like never before.

Through techniques such as strategic partnerships, effective SEO, and leveraging social media platforms, you can elevate your podcast to an entirely new level.

So, are you ready to captivate more listeners and skyrocket your podcast’s popularity?

Let’s dive in!

1. Leverage Social Media

Expanding your podcast audience could be as simple as clicking ‘post’ on social media!

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are teeming with potential listeners who are just one compelling post away from becoming your ardent fans.

To unlock this potential, consider creating diverse and dynamic content around your podcast episodes.

This could be a compelling quote from an episode that sparks curiosity, a mini-audio teaser that gives a taste of your captivating content, or an eye-catching episode graphic that stops a scroller in their tracks.

For example, if your podcast guest shared a provocative insight or a funny anecdote, turn that into a tweet or an Instagram post.

Another strategy is to start a conversation using trending hashtags or engaging polls.

If your podcast revolves around entrepreneurship, for instance, engaging with your audience using hashtags like #StartupLife or #Entrepreneurship can attract like-minded individuals who might be interested in your content.

Remember, the goal is to pique interest and drive traffic to your podcast, all while adding value and engaging your community.

2. Podcast SEO

When it comes to podcast marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t just a tool; it’s a secret weapon.

By optimizing your podcast episodes with relevant keywords and enticing descriptions, you can make your podcast more visible to potential listeners who are already searching for content like yours.

Consider the fact that search engines like Google and Apple Podcast are the highways that lead listeners straight to your digital doorstep.

By using SEO best practices, you essentially lay breadcrumbs that guide listeners from their search queries to your podcast episodes.

For example, if your podcast episode is about “vegan recipes,” make sure those words appear in your title, description, and even in your transcript.

Don’t forget your podcast website either! It should be as SEO-friendly as possible. Think of it as baking a digital marketing pie that Google just can’t resist.

An SEO optimized site will improve your search ranking and increase your visibility, which ultimately leads to a larger audience and higher engagement rates.

3. Embrace Email Marketing

Whoever said emails were outdated, certainly didn’t understand the power of email marketing.

In the podcasting world, an email list can be the secret ingredient for transforming casual listeners into engaged fans.

Email marketing allows you to connect directly with your audience on a more personal level.

It’s your chance to share exclusive content, episode highlights, or even teasers for upcoming guests. This not only keeps your listeners in the loop but also provides them with value-added content that enhances their listener experience.

For instance, consider sharing an exclusive mini-episode or a behind-the-scenes look at the podcast recording process with your email subscribers.

Or perhaps a Q&A session with you or your guests that’s exclusive to your email list.

Most importantly, unlike social media platforms, you own your email list.

This means you’re not at the mercy of algorithms for your content to be seen.

It’s a direct, unfiltered line of communication between you and your listeners, like sending a personalized invitation for them to dive back into your audio content.

Remember, the key is to provide value.

An engaged email subscriber can turn into a loyal podcast listener, and eventually, an evangelist for your podcast.

4. Harness the Power of Podcast Advertising

Podcast ads have come a long way from just a means to monetize your show. They’ve evolved into a potent tool for cross-promotion and audience expansion.

By forming strategic partnerships with other podcasters, you can swap podcast ad slots, giving each other’s shows a shout-out.

This is like networking at a virtual conference, except your introduction reaches a dedicated audience who love podcasts just like yours.

You could also approach podcasters in your niche, offering to sponsor an episode or series in return for ad slots.

This not only gives your podcast exposure but also associates it with another high-quality show.

Investing in podcast advertising on platforms like Google Podcasts or Apple Podcast is another avenue to consider.

These platforms curate content for their users based on their interests, and your ad could pop up in a potential listener’s feed.

5. Attract with Content Marketing

Content marketing is a crucial strategy that goes beyond promoting your podcast — it’s about offering additional value to attract and retain your audience.

The art lies in creating compelling, high-quality blog posts and articles related to your podcast content.

For instance, if your podcast revolves around cooking, you can publish recipes or tips on food pairing.

This additional content not only enhances your brand awareness but can also funnel readers to your podcast.

Consider repurposing your podcast episodes into engaging blog posts or articles.

For example, a fascinating interview could be transformed into a long-form article, a panel discussion into a listicle, or an informative session into an infographic.

It’s like creating a content ecosystem where every element is interconnected and supports the others.

6. Partner with Influencers

In the era of social media dominance, influencer marketing can be a game-changer for your podcast.

This isn’t just about getting a celebrity on your show — it’s about leveraging the influence of someone relevant and respected in your niche.

When you approach influencers, make it clear how this partnership can benefit them too.

Perhaps they’re launching a new product or book that they want to promote to your audience, or maybe they value the chance to share their insights in a deeper, more personal format than a typical social media post allows.

The beauty of influencer marketing is that it not only expands your audience but also boosts your credibility.

Your podcast gets the endorsement from someone who is already a trusted voice in the field, and their followers are more likely to become your listeners.

7. Tap Into Communities

There’s no underestimating the potential that online communities hold.

They are vibrant spaces where people gather around shared interests, which makes them an excellent hunting ground for new podcast listeners.

From niche-specific Facebook Groups and Reddit threads, to Q&A platforms like Quora and industry-specific forums, these digital communities are pulsating with individuals ready to be wowed by your podcast.

To tap into this, first identify the communities that align with your podcast’s theme or subject matter.

Once you’ve identified the right communities, don’t just dive in with blatant self-promotion.

Instead, aim to be a valuable member of the group.

Start discussions, respond to others’ posts, and provide genuine, helpful insights.

This not only builds your reputation within the community but also primes your audience for when you do introduce your podcast.

For instance, you might share an episode of your podcast that answers a common question within the group or tackles a trending topic.

This organic, value-first approach can earn you loyal listeners and enhance your podcast’s standing in the community.

8. Leverage Analytics

marketing strategy analytics

Understanding the numbers behind your podcast can revolutionize your marketing strategy.

Analytics is your secret weapon for decoding the habits and preferences of your audience.

Many podcast platforms provide built-in analytics, and tools such as Edison Research or Podtrac can offer you more in-depth insights.

These analytics can reveal which episodes get the most listens, what times and days see the highest engagement, how long listeners stay tuned, and where your audience is geographically located.

For instance, if data reveals that your episodes featuring guest interviews have the highest listens, consider inviting more guests.

If analytics show a spike in listens on weekdays around 7 pm, this could indicate that your audience prefers unwinding with your podcast after a workday.

Moreover, understanding where your audience is located can influence your promotional efforts.

If a significant percentage of your listeners are in New York, consider coordinating your episode releases with Eastern Standard Time or explore partnerships with local influencers or businesses.

Remember, these insights aren’t just numbers — they are clues that lead you to a more targeted, effective marketing strategy.

9. Optimize for Podcast Apps

Accessibility is key when it comes to expanding your podcast audience.

One way to ensure this is by making your podcast available on all major podcast apps. But it doesn’t stop at just being present on these platforms.

You also need to optimize your podcast for these apps.

So, ensure that your podcast descriptions are detailed and filled with relevant keywords. It makes it easier for potential listeners to discover your podcast when they search for their interests.

For example, if your podcast is about eco-friendly living, include phrases like ‘sustainable lifestyle’, ‘green living’, or ‘environmental conservation’ in your description and episode titles. The more specific you can get with your keywords, the better.

This way, you can reach the niche audience that is actively seeking content like yours.

Also, don’t forget the aesthetic element.

Make your podcast visually appealing with professional cover art and clear, compelling episode thumbnails. This can make your podcast stand out in an often overcrowded app interface.

10. Regular & Consistent Posting

Your listeners, much like fans of a TV show or subscribers of a YouTube channel, anticipate regular content.

To keep them engaged and eager for your next episode, adhere to a consistent podcast production and release schedule.

This reliability is not just good for listener engagement, but it’s a critical component for marketing too.

Regular posting sends signals to podcast platforms that you’re an active podcaster, boosting your visibility.

One strategy is to decide on a posting schedule that works best for you. It could be weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly.

For example, ‘The Daily’ by The New York Times offers new content every weekday, while ‘Radiolab’ opts for a bi-weekly schedule.

Find a rhythm that matches your content creation capabilities and audience expectation.

And remember, a missed episode could mean a missed opportunity to strengthen your listener relationship.

11. Engage with Your Audience

social media optimization audience

Engagement isn’t just for social media platforms. Building a community around your podcast encourages listener loyalty and deepens the connection they feel with your podcast.

One way to do this is by interacting with your audience through Q&A sessions, either on your podcast or through social media platforms.

For instance, Tim Ferriss frequently includes a Q&A session in his podcast ‘The Tim Ferriss Show,’ where he answers questions sent in by listeners.

Similarly, you could organize regular shoutouts, acknowledging your loyal listeners or even running contests for free merchandise or exclusive content.

This can foster a community spirit that makes your audience feel valued and seen, often transforming them from passive listeners into active advocates for your podcast.

Revitalize Your Approach with Podcast Marketing

We get it; the journey to podcast stardom can feel like climbing a mountain sometimes.

But let’s look at it differently — this is your chance to revamp your game, and this guide is your roadmap.

You’ve got an epic podcast to share, and these podcast marketing strategies can be the wind beneath your wings.

Your voice deserves to be heard by a vast audience, and these tactics can help you achieve just that.

Dive in and conquer this mountain!

 

By Sam Driver

Sam is an Associate Editor for Smart Blogger and family man who loves to write. When he’s not goofing around with his kids, he’s honing his craft to provide lasting value to anyone who cares to listen.

Sourced from SmartBlogger

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28 Best Marketing Tools for Small Businesses

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By Lisa Anthony  

These tools and apps have features that can help small-business owners automate marketing tasks and track the success of their efforts.

Marketing tools can help small businesses maximize their marketing efforts to reach customers, build their brand and drive sales. These tools — including online marketing services, digital platforms and apps — can provide automated features to improve efficiency, plus analytics and reporting to monitor your return on investment. Here’s a look at some of the best marketing tools.

Email marketing tools

Email marketing can be a cost-effective way for a small business to promote its brand, develop relationships with new customers and increase sales. Software can simplify the process through features such as email templates, A/B testing options, lead capture forms for your website, and reports. There are a lot of email marketing software platforms to choose from, but here are our top picks:

  • Mailchimp: Our pick for best overall email marketing software, Mailchimp’s paid plans offer templates, testing, landing pages, forms and reports as well as access to creative design tools and 24/7 support. Paid plans start at $13 per month, and there’s a free option with limited features.

  • Constant Contact: If you’re looking for a free trial, Constant Contact has one of the best — 60 days with no credit card information required. In addition to solid email features, it can help with social media marketing. Plans start at $12 per month.

  • Campaigner: For businesses that want a more advanced platform, Campaigner offers features such as a full code editor, conversion tracking, a Facebook audience builder and a getting started video tutorial. Plans start at $59 per month with a free 30-day trial.

Content marketing tools

Well-written, engaging content is key to a successful marketing campaign. These tools, which use artificial intelligence, can help you write content for blogs, newsletters, videos and social media posts to get the attention of your audience:

  • Simplified: Simplified offers free features such as a content rewriter tool, a company bio generator and an AI writing assistant, plus additional paid features that can help you create content for your website, blog and social media.

  • Grammarly Business: Grammarly can help you write mistake-free content for your website, social media, documents, messages and emails. The free plan offers basic features. Sentence rewrites, word choice options and other advanced features are available in the business version at $15 per month per person.

SMS marketing tools

Short Message Service, or SMS, marketing is a way for small businesses to share product information, promotions and upcoming events with their customers via text message. SMS marketing software can automate the process with design tools, website forms and other features. Here are our top picks:

  • SimpleTexting: Unlimited contacts and keywords, a graphic generator tool and template options are just some of the features that make SimpleTexting our top SMS marketing tool. Plans start at $29 per month with a free 14-day trial.

  • SlickText: For small businesses that want to use SMS for promotions, SlickText stands out for engagement features such as contests, surveys, promo codes, coupons and loyalty reward options. Plans start at $29 per month with a 14-day free trial available.

  • TextMagic: If a pay-as-you-go plan is better for your marketing budget, TextMagic lets you skip the monthly subscription fee and purchase prepaid credits that can be used when you want. Pricing starts at 4 cents per outgoing text, and a 30-day free trial is offered.

Website analytics tools

Understanding the behavior of visitors to your website allows you to optimize your content and reach your marketing goals of retaining customers, attracting new customers and increasing sales. The best analytics tools can help you look at key metrics such as page views and conversion rates and even offer details about competitors:

  • Google Analytics: Google Analytics offers free analytics and optimization tools to help you monitor the activity on your website. This includes acquisition, engagement and monetization reporting.

  • Lucky Orange: Lucky Orange is an optimization tool that provides analytics, but it also includes heat maps of user behavior, session recordings, surveys and visitor profiles at every plan level, including the free version. Paid plans start at $18 per month.

  • Semrush: For businesses looking for features such as competitor analysis and keyword research, Semrush offers them along with advertising and social media tools. Plans start at $119.95 monthly, and a free account is also available with limited features.

CRM tools

Customer relationship management, or CRM, tools do more than just store your contact database. The best CRM software can help you organize your contacts and collect information on potential customers interested in your products and services. Some software also has features that can help you manage a sales team.

  • Zoho CRM: Our top CRM pick offers features to help you collect and sort data, schedule tasks, manage sales pipelines and generate reports. Plans start at $20 per user per month, and a free version with full features is available for teams of three or fewer.

  • Salesforce CRM: This is a platform that can grow with your small business and includes features such as lead management, automatic data syncs and customizable reports. Plans start at $25 per user per month, and free trials are available at most plan levels.

  • Freshsales by Freshworks: For small businesses working on a tight budget, Freshsales’ Growth plan is free and allows for up to three CRM users. It includes solid features, such as personalized messages, contact scoring and sales management tools. Paid plans start at $18 per user per month with a 21-day free trial.

Digital marketing tools

When you’re using digital marketing methods to promote your small business and brand, software can help you automate your efforts and also track your return on investment.

  • Constant Contact: In addition to email marketing tools, Constant Contact also has features to assist you with social media marketing, digital ads and engagement reporting. Plans start at $12 per month.

  • Hubspot: After purchasing a plan, you’ll have access to email marketing tools, a landing page builder and an online form builder along with features that help you track performance. Marketing Hub plans start at $50 per month.

  • Keap: For businesses that want dedicated support, Keap offers customer-success managers at all plan levels to help you meet your digital marketing goals. Plans start at $189 per month.

Social media marketing tools

When you’re using multiple social media platforms to engage customers, reach new audiences and generate brand awareness, digital tools can make the management of your efforts easier through features such as automated scheduling, calendars and channel boosting.

  • Buffer: For businesses on a tight budget with three or fewer social channels, Buffer’s free plan may be the right fit for you. Post scheduling, calendar view, Instagram tagging, Twitter hashtag suggestions and Facebook page mentions are some notable features. Paid plans start at $6 per month per channel.

  • Zoho Social: If you’re managing one brand on 10 or fewer social media channels, Zoho Social offers multichannel publishing, content scheduling, an image editor, a publishing calendar, user tagging and summary reports. Plans start at $15 per month, and there’s a free version for one user.

  • Hootsuite: If you want an app with few limits and advanced features, check out Hootsuite. Notable features include unlimited posts, unlimited scheduling, a social content calendar, recommended publishing times, content curation tools, post boosting and analytics. Plans start at $99 per month, and a 30-day free trial is offered.

» MORE: Best business credit cards for online advertising

Design tools

Design tools can make it easier to create visually appealing graphics and videos for your marketing efforts. The best tools offer templates, image libraries and photo editing.

  • Canva Business: With built-in tools like a drag-and-drop editor, customizable templates, AI-powered design tools and free photos and graphics, Canva is a top pick. A free plan is available, and paid options start at $12.99 per month per person.

  • Adobe Lightroom: If you’re taking photos of your product or team to share on your website, social platforms or other marketing materials, Adobe Lightroom offers editing tools, tutorials and cloud storage. Plans start at $9.99 per month.

Direct mail marketing tools

While not as popular as digital marketing, sending postcards, flyers, catalogs and other types of direct mail marketing materials through the U.S. Postal Service to a customer’s physical mailbox can help your business stand out from competitors. Here are some tools that can help you do it:

  • USPS: The Every Door Direct Mail, or EDDM, tool can help you plan your mailing of postcards, menus and flyers. It offers filtering options and the ability to map routes and select delivery addresses — plus, postage discounts are available for most businesses.

  • Mailchimp: With an address finder and direct mail campaign automation, Mailchimp can help you send postcards to promote events, announce deals and provide other information to customers and potential buyers. Cost per card (with postage) ranges from $1.03 to 79 cents, based on quantity.

  • Click2Mail: If you want more than postcards for your direct-mailing efforts, Click2Mail offers flyers, letters, notecards, booklets and brochures, plus tools that can help automate the printing and mailing process. Price varies depending on mailing.

Project management tools

Project management software can help you manage your marketing projects from start to finish. The best ones help you break marketing projects into manageable tasks with assigned deadlines and offer customizable dashboards to track progress.

  • Jira: For businesses with small teams of 10 users or fewer, Jira’s free plan offers unlimited project boards and customizable workflows, plus reporting and insights. Paid plans start at $7.75 per user per month.

  • Monday: Designed for marketing and creative work, paid Monday Work Management plans offer unlimited dashboards and items to track tasks, projects, customers and any other information you want. Paid plans start at $8 per user per month, and a free version supports two users and limited items.

  • Asana: If you want to track more than marketing projects, Asana can help you manage a variety of different projects with list, board, calendar and timeline views. Plans start at $13.49 per user per month, with a free option available with basic features.

» MORE: Free or low-cost ways to advertise your business

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Lisa Anthony  

Lisa is a small-business writer at NerdWallet and has more than 20 years of experience in banking and finance. Read more

Edited by Christine Aebischer  

Sourced from nerdwallet

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6 Expert Quotes for Transforming Email Marketing

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By Chad S. White

Six of my favourite quotes along with the wisdom I see in them.

The Gist

  • Regulatory expectations. Laws protect businesses, but meeting customer expectations is crucial.
  • Audience acquisition. Choose the right customers for genuine engagement and reduced bounce rates.
  • Trust building. Avoid vague emails; clarity brings conversions and maintains subscriber trust.

In the new fourth edition of my book, “Email Marketing Rules,” I include quotes from scores of experts who have impacted how I think about the email channel, as well as about marketing in general. Here, I’d like to share six of my favorite quotes along with the wisdom I see in them. In no particular order, here they are …

Where Law Meets Emails and Consumers

“The law is the low bar.”

— Laura Atkins, owner of Word to the Wise

Most businesses are intrinsically against any new laws or regulations, which invariably introduce additional compliance costs or restrict business practices. Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and other privacy and anti-spam laws have undeniably done both of those.

However, I would argue that these laws have actually protected businesses and the email channel. The truth is the law always lags consumer expectations, as well as the expectations of inbox providers in the case of anti-spam laws. And a growing gap in expectations is a growing risk to businesses in terms of customer loyalty and brand image and reputation.

This danger is most evident in the US, where the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is still sadly in effect. In this country, merely complying with CAN-SPAM would be disastrous, leading to block listings and wholesale junking and blocking of campaigns by inbox providers. As Laura says, our subscribers expect much more from us. At a minimum, they expect us to respect their permission, both in terms of opt-ins and in terms of responding to their inactivity by eventually suppressing future emails to them.

Quality Customers and Quality Emails

“Customer loyalty is mostly about choosing the right customers.”

— John Jantsch, author of “Duct Tape Marketing“

Where you acquire new subscribers almost predetermines whether your email program will struggle or thrive. If you acquire many of your subscribers through list purchases, poorly done list rentals, sweepstakes and other sources that are far from your business operations, then you’ll be plagued by high bounce rates, low engagement and high spam complaints.

On the other hand, if you’re gaining the vast majority of your subscribers via signups during your online or in-store checkout processes, on your website and in your app, then you will have added lots of customers to your list who are genuine fans that are predisposed to engage with your emails and buy again.

If you’re unsure how your audience acquisition sources are affecting your overall email program health, then start tagging your sources so you can track the behaviours of the subscribers that come onto your list from each one. Chances are you’ll find that one or two of your acquisition sources are responsible for the majority of your bounces, inactivity and complaints.

Avoid Baiting Subject Lines for Open Rates

“Don’t confuse attention for intent.”

— John Bonini, founder of Some Good Content

Too many email marketers still believe that the key to getting more conversions is to get more opens. After all, a subscriber can’t convert if they don’t open the email, they reason.

In the pursuit of high open rates, these marketers often use vague and cryptic subject lines and preview text — often defending their use as being “clever” or in service of creating a “curiosity gap.” However, these open-bait tactics only succeed in attracting curious subscribers rather than ones who are actually interested in the email’s call-to-action. Not only does this result in low click-to-open rates, but open rates eventually decline over time as subscribers end up repeatedly feeling like their time was wasted reading messages they ended up having little interest in.

 

In these cases, the marketer has sacrificed subscriber trust in exchange for getting additional opens that rarely drove business goals. The wiser path is to respect your subscribers’ time by using envelope content that reflects the content of the email. Long-term, this results in higher total opens, as well as more conversions and less list churn as your openers will have stronger intent.

While John was talking about campaign engagement when he said this, his sentiment can also easily be applied to marketers’ habit of pushing their way into channels that consumers prefer to use for communicating with family and friends rather than focusing on the channels like email where consumers most want to hear from brands.

Marketers: Manage Your Audiences

“The customers are the assets; not the store and not the ecommerce sites.”

— Michael Brown, partner at A.T. Kearney

Marketers too often get confused about what they’re supposed to be managing. Often, they think they should be managing product inventories. In particular, email marketers often think they should be managing email campaigns.

As Michael points out, the truth is that marketers should be managing their audiences. I certainly understand that business demands routinely drive the goals of email and other digital marketing campaigns, but the overarching focus should be on serving your audience. If you do that well — sending relevant campaigns at the right time and right cadence — then you’ll likely find that you’re also meeting your business goals.

Trim That Bloated Email Content

“When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.”

— Herschell Gordon Lewis, author of “Effective E-mail Marketing“

Everybody wants a piece of email marketing, so marketers often find themselves fending off requests from their co-workers in merchandising, operations and beyond. (It’s because of those persistent merchandisers that so many marketers think their job is managing inventory levels.) If unshielded from that, email marketers often feel pressured to include an excessive amount of content in the messages they craft, with that clutter undermining overall performance.

Given the trend toward shorter, more focused emails with fewer calls-to-action, as well as the trend toward AI-driven content, it’s more important than ever to have a curated and clear content hierarchy to guide your time-starved subscribers to the actions you most want them to take. When it comes to email content, more usually isn’t better.

Make That Next Email Better

“The strength and power of anything — whether it is a business, an individual fitness plan, or event — has its foundation in an accumulation of small, incremental improvements that all either fit together or build on each other. To sum it up: small improvement x consistency = substance.”

— Nicole Penn, president of The EGC Group

One of my favourite things about email marketing is that it’s a channel that’s built for iteration. It doesn’t matter so much if your last campaign wasn’t perfect, or if you made this mistake or that mistake, because chances are that you’re sending another campaign in two or three days, if not sooner. And every send is an opportunity to get a little better.

I’ve tried to bring this spirit of iteration to “Email Marketing Rules.” With each new edition, I’ve added new rules, concepts and checklists — which are both a reflection of email marketing’s growing complexity and my own personal growth as an email marketer. I hope you’ll join me on this journey of incremental improvement.

Feature Image Credit: Mushy on Adobe Stock Photo

By Chad S. White

Chad S. White is the author of four editions of Email Marketing Rules and Head of Research for Oracle Marketing Consulting, a global full-service digital marketing agency inside of Oracle.

Sourced from CMSWIRE

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4 Things Marketers Need To Know About Direct Marketing Right Now

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By Arthur Hall

Every marketer worth their salt is constantly analysing consumer data. For those who specialize in collecting that intel — through direct metrics, surveys and other instruments — well, let’s just say there’s no rest for the weary.

At Quad, we work with more than 2,900 marketers across every type of vertical — from automotive, CPG and retail to financial services, pharma and healthcare — so we’re constantly hearing about the challenge of making sense of the nonstop flood of data. How much data is too much data? Which data is actually actionable? And when it comes to analysing specific campaigns and channels, how can we see the forest for the trees?

The answer to that last question is to step back — way back — but doing so is, of course, a lot harder in practice than in theory.

That’s why at Quad we’ve built a research and insights practice that regularly surveys both consumers and marketers on their engagement with, and deployment of, channels — everything from digital and broadcast to social media and direct — independent of specific campaigns.

Our recent big-picture research effort focuses on direct marketing (both digital and print). It’s available in the form of a free white paper (more on that below), but for now I want to share four key findings:

Marketers remain heavily committed to direct mail

Despite rising costs — thanks particularly to higher postal rates — nearly seven out of 10 (68%) marketers surveyed reported that their direct mail budget allocation had either increased or stayed steady year-over-year.

Notably, financial services marketers reported the highest year-over-year increase in their direct mail ad budgets — 47% — followed by insurance, retail/wholesale and telecom marketers, who reported an average 26% increase.

Consumers — especially younger consumers — find direct marketing to be useful

In Quad’s survey of consumers, 84% of respondents said that the direct mail they receive from a company they purchase from regularly is “extremely useful” (24%), “very useful” (26%) or “somewhat useful” (34%) — statistically on par with email (with a combined extremely/very/somewhat usefulness of 87%).

Notably, younger generations are the most enthusiastic about the usefulness of direct marketing — both in the form of direct mail and email. A total of 90% of 18- to-34-year-olds said they found email extremely/very/somewhat useful, and 85% said the same about direct mail.

Among 35- to 49-year-olds, 88% reported the email they received was extremely/very/somewhat useful, the same percentage that said direct mail they received was extremely/very/somewhat useful. These two age groups reported a stronger embrace of email and direct mail than older generations.

Multitouch — and personalization — matters

Quad’s consumer research strongly supports the value of multichannel communications. Nearly four out of 10 (39%) of consumers said they are extremely or very likely to respond to an advertising promotion when they see it across multiple channels; the tally rises to 78% across the extremely/very/somewhat likely responses.

And consumers appreciate when multichannel communication is personalized across all the channels. Among consumers surveyed, 44% said they are extremely or very likely to open a direct mail offer when it’s coordinated with a personalized email and social media ad; again, the tally rises to 78% when “somewhat likely” responses are added in.

Direct mail isn’t fleeting — and consumers like that about it

In this age of transitory media experiences, Quad’s survey revealed that consumers — across all product and service categories and age groups — hold onto direct mail. The reason? They see it as a resource.

For instance, 46% of consumers say they’ve saved a piece of direct mail because it contained “information I intend to use/follow-up on.” Also notable: Nearly a third (29%) have saved a piece of direct mail to “share with friends and family”; i.e., they see direct mail as a tangible form of, or back-up for, word-of-mouth marketing.

Where should you go from here?

We embarked on this research project with the goal of providing marketers with the big-picture consumer intel they need to help plan direct marketing campaigns — while also giving them a sense of how their peers are thinking about and deploying DM.

The data above is just a sampling of the insights contained in “The direct marketing revolution 2023: New consumer & marketer intel reveals how brands should shift their DM strategies,” Quad’s latest white paper.

If you’re a direct marketer who wants to see the forest for the trees, I invite you to download a copy.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Arthur Hall

As Sr. Director of Consumer Research & Insights for Quad, Arthur leads a team of research and technical resources focused on…Read more

Sourced from Forbes

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WhatsApp Adds New Promotional Options to Help Brands Connect with Customers

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Meta’s adding some more ad tools to WhatsApp, in order to help businesses capitalize on the rising use of messaging, and WhatsApp in particular, in more markets.

First off, Meta’s adding a new option that will enable businesses on WhatsApp to launch paid promotions on Facebook and Instagram, without needing a Facebook account.

WhatsApp Facebook ads

As you can see in this example sequence, this new promotion type will include a WhatsApp CTA, which will drive potential customers back to your messaging channel.

That could be a good way to boost brand exposure, and open up a more direct line of communication via the messaging platform, which is also more likely to give you access to push notifications for any future messages.

Businesses need to respect the use of messaging in this regard, and avoid spamming potential customers (note: Meta has a limit on how many messages brands can send for this reason). But it could be a good way to establish direct contact, and keep customers updated on relevant product updates.

Along this line, Meta’s also adding some new promoted message options to connect with people who’ve previously registered interest in your business.

As per WhatsApp:

“Starting soon we’ll begin testing a new feature within the WhatsApp Business app where small businesses will have the option to send personalized messages to their customers – like appointment reminders, birthday greetings or even updates on a holiday sale – in a faster and more efficient way. Rather than having to manually send the same message to multiple customers, this new feature will give businesses the ability to send personal messages with the customer’s name and customizable call-to-action buttons to specific customer lists such as those with a select label (like “VIP customers” or “new customers”), schedule the day and time the messages are sent and then see what’s working. We’ll offer this advanced, optional type of message for a fee in the WhatsApp Business app. We’ll have more details to share in the future.”

That’ll add another way to re-engage shoppers, and the more relevant you can make these updates, based on their past interaction history, the better.

WhatsApp’s focus on privacy has seen it become a more significant connective tool for many more users, while the broader shift towards messaging, as opposed to feed posting, has also helped to boost reliance on the app. And while WhatsApp has always been big in regions like Brazil and India, it’s now also seeing significant growth in North America, which Meta says is now the platform’s fastest-growing region.

Direct connection can be a powerful tool for engaging potential customers, and as users look to shift more of their interactions to more private spaces, it’s worth considering where WhatsApp may fit into your outreach planning.

By

Sourced from SocialMediaToday

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How to Craft an Emotional Marketing Message That Hits Home

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By Jason Miller

Logic may guide decisions in marketing, but emotions win the heart. They are vital in today’s marketing if you want to stand out, be memorable and build lasting relationships, but it isn’t the easiest to do — so here are some tips to get started.

Think emotional marketing is overrated? Think again — based on a study by Motista, 71% of consumers will recommend a brand they feel emotionally connected to.

Appealing to your customer’s emotions with your marketing messages leaves a lasting impression, as long as you do it effectively and ethically. These are approaches I’ve learned to master over the course of my 20-plus years in business, so let’s dive into it.

Storytelling: Using empathy and other emotions

Emotions are the universal language that connects us all. Weave narratives that captivate your audience, drawing them into a world where they can relate and empathize. Identify the primary emotions you want to evoke, whether that be nostalgia, empathy or excitement. Make sure you choose an emotion that goes with your brand. For example, it may not be appropriate for a funeral home to use humour in its marketing. Always use your discretion; you know your brand and your audience best.

If you’re part of a charity and the goal is to alleviate poverty, using empathy would be a great way to connect with the donors. You could recommend to the charity to reach out to past individuals who received help and see if they’d be open to sharing their stories in order to help more people. This type of emotional storytelling could inspire more donations and support.

Authenticity: The beacon of emotional connection

In a world rife with gimmicks, authenticity shines like a beacon, guiding you toward genuine emotional connection. Be true to your brand’s values and let your message reflect its essence. Authenticity creates trust, and trust allows emotions to flow freely. Avoid the pitfalls of insincerity and let your audience feel the authenticity in every word you craft. To be authentic, be consistent, reliable and make sure you actually care about your audience. Also, make sure you’re being as transparent as you can.

If you own a sustainable clothing company, just stating you’re sustainable isn’t enough. You need to be transparent about what you’re doing consistently to be better for the environment and the people. You can show your supply chain process, share images and videos of the workers and their working conditions and show real statistics on how your brand is different than your competitors.

The art of surprise and delight

Although routine and predictability often prevail, it is essential for your marketing message to stand out and create a memorable experience for your audience. Injecting surprises and moments of delight into your message can ignite joy and leave a lasting impression.

Imagine you are a bakery launching a new line of cupcakes. Instead of simply showcasing the cupcakes’ flavours and ingredients, you decide to take a creative approach to surprise and delight your audience. You craft a marketing campaign where customers are encouraged to order a box of cupcakes, but each box contains a hidden cupcake with a unique flavour not mentioned anywhere in your marketing materials.

Customers eagerly receive their cupcake boxes, filled with anticipation as they bite into the delicious treats. They’ll enjoy the basic flavours like vanilla and chocolate, but imagine how they’ll react when they see a hidden cupcake with an interesting flavor. Maybe it’ll be lavender cream or coconut pie flavoured. The element of surprise adds an extra layer of excitement and delight, creating a memorable experience that sparks conversations and drives customer loyalty.

Using all five senses

When you use aspects like specific colours, design elements and music that align with your brand and your audience, you’re more likely to stir their emotions. The trick to great emotional marketing is using as many senses as you can in your messaging and campaigns.

Let’s say there’s a new yoga studio in town and they decide to invite the community to check out the space and see what they’re all about. The studio can use all five senses on opening day:

  1. They can start by creating a comfortable and tranquil space that is visually appealing through design elements and decor (sight and touch);
  2. Burn incense or vanilla-scented candles (smell);
  3. Play calming instrumental tracks with soft piano melodies and gentle nature sounds in the background to add to a mind and body experience (sound)
  4. Host a yoga session (touch). Maybe the yoga mats are new and extra soft or maybe there are comfortable pillows around in the seating area.
  5. Offer healthy snacks like fresh fruits from the local farmers market (taste) or organic, hydrating drinks post-yoga session.

By creating a multi-sensory experience, you’ll make it more likely that your brand will stay top of mind.

Creating a compelling and unique emotional marketing campaign isn’t necessarily easy, but when you use storytelling, embrace authenticity, surprise and delight your audience and use strong sensory experiences, you will create an experience your audience won’t easily forget.

By Jason Miller

Jason Miller is a seasoned CEO with an overwhelming passion to help other business owners and CEOs succeed. He was nicknamed Jason “The Bull” Miller because he takes no BS and no excuses from the people he serves. He has mentored thousands of people over more than two decades.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Good news – WhatsApp will soon let businesses send you personalized messages

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By Craig Hale

But, you’ll have to pay

Meta is looking to capitalize on the 200 million users now catered to by WhatsApp Business, which previously stood at 50 million in 2020.

With ‘click-to-WhatsApp’ ads now accounting for a healthy part of the platform’s revenue, the Meta-owned messaging platform is now looking to expand that to allow users to generate ads without needing a Facebook account.

As part of the revisions to WhatsApp Business, companies will also be able to create ads for Facebook and Instagram from within the app.

WhatsApp Business is getting better

The news comes as Meta continues to battle a tough and changing economy during its so-called ‘Year of Efficiency’ which has seen it lay off thousands of workers and cut funding to several projects.

While the company has stated that it remains committed to artificial intelligence and the metaverse, ensuring a diverse selection of revenue streams is vital for sustainability, and given the four-fold increase in WhatsApp Business users, trying to eke out more money from SMBs and larger enterprises is a no-brainer.

The company has not confirmed how much the changes to its messaging app will cost, but we do know that the services will be chargeable thanks to a Reuters report.

Personalized messaging is also set to come to the platform, with the messaging app soon to be able to generate messages to customers to notify them of upcoming appointments, or for ecommerce businesses to advertise new products and sales, for example.

These changes represent an entire shift for the company as CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks to make more money from Meta’s messaging platforms, including WhatsApp and Messenger.

The company has not announced details on pricing as yet, but testing for the new features is expected to follow imminently before a full release, likely later this year.

Feature Image Credit: Pexels/Anton

By Craig Hale

With several years’ experience freelancing in tech and automotive circles, Craig’s specific interests lie in technology that is designed to better our lives, including AI and ML, productivity aids, and smart fitness. He is also passionate about cars and the decarbonisation of personal transportation. As an avid bargain-hunter, you can be sure that any deal Craig finds is top value!

Sourced from techradar pro

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You’re not imagining it, brands are texting you way more

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By Emily Stewart

What you give and what you get when a company has your phone number.

I have a new text bestie, and it’s the brands.

Scrolling through my phone recently, I was surprised to see just how many of my incoming messages were not from friends or family but instead from companies. The package update from UPS made sense, as did the alert on the restaurant reservation I’d made over the weekend. But why did I have an offer from a swimming-pool-sharing service I’ve never used and an alert about a sale on items from Tory Burch, a brand I’ve never purchased? And what about the Pride party invite from a beauty loyalty program named Allē?

The situation made me feel a little sad and uncool — I’d rather a friend ask me to a party than an app made by the pharma giant that makes Botox. It’s also just a reality of being a consumer today, albeit a reality that snuck up on us. Reaching consumers via SMS, meaning text messages, has become increasingly popular among marketers. If you feel like the brands are texting you a lot more than they used to, it’s because they are.

“Getting someone’s phone number is incredibly valuable for marketers,” said Erin Blake, vice president director of connections strategy at Digitas, a digital marketing agency. “There’s a reason why a lot of brands care about SMS as a channel for marketing and why you’re seeing so much of it right now.”

It’s not that hard to see why. I voluntarily gave my phone number to all the companies currently texting me except for one (I think), and I’ve considered engaging with those messages much more than I would any other advertisement. If I’m being honest here, if I’d taken a closer look at the party invite, maybe I would have gone.

You open your texts a lot more than you do your emails

There are multiple reasons marketers are turning to text to reach consumers, the main one being that it works.

Text message open rates are astronomically high, having a 97 percent read rate within 15 minutes of being delivered, according to Insider Intelligence. That’s well above open rates for emails, which estimates place at around 20 percent. Consumers click through on SMS at higher rates than they do emails, too.

“Texts are acted on in near real-time, we’re talking minutes, as opposed to email, which is going to have a low response rate in a couple of days,” Blake said.

Text has served as a fresh channel as other, more traditional formats have become difficult to navigate, explained Sara Varni, chief marketing officer at Attentive, an SMS marketing platform. “There’s been a lot of changes around privacy and regulation when it comes to how people can retarget customers, and so channels that used to be tried and true, whether that was a retargeting program with Google or an email, some of those channels have declined over time,” she said.

The GDPR, Europe’s privacy law that went into effect in 2018, has made it a little harder for companies to track you and chase you around the internet with ads for that rug you decided not to buy. (It’s why you’re asked to accept cookie trackers on all the websites now.) Apple’s moves to up privacy protections for its users have caused headaches for email marketers, too.

Many people’s inboxes are inundated with messages from dozens upon dozens of companies they’ve interacted with a handful of times, if at all. Even if you wanted to jump on that sale from American Airlines, you have to sift through 30 other offers you have no interest in. People’s text messages, at least for the time being, are less cluttered — in part because it’s more expensive for brands to text people than it is to email them.

“In general, most users’ text message feed is a lot less spammy than their email feed. It’s harder to get permission, but once you get permission, it works better,” said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at advertising firm Publicis.

Unlike email, text doesn’t have a separate folder for junk or for spam, or, in the case of a service like Gmail, a different section for promotions you never even have to look at if you don’t want to. “There’s none of that filtering on your SMS messenger client,” Goldberg said.

All of our text messages are mashed together, putting brand texts together with messages from your mom. It’s a solid deal for marketers, though maybe not so much for you.

“Your text message inbox is incredibly personal, that’s where a lot of people are having most of their interpersonal communications on a day-to-day basis,” Blake said. “I would caution brands to really think through how they can be good stewards of that trust and build that relationship, because if you break it, that’s a lot harder to get back.”

The good, the spam, and the ugly

What people in the industry say about marketing via text message is that it’s one of a number of avenues brands can use to reach consumers and that the good actors involved are very smart about how often to message and with what. They say that SMS marketing is more conversational, not just a constant attempt at a hard sell, and note that consumers can often respond to messages to really interact. It’s actually somewhat true.

There are plenty of examples where you can see text messaging from brands working. There are moments when SMS is really clutch, like when a flight moves gates, or a shipment is delayed. Chatbots on websites and in text messages are notoriously bad for solving anything beyond basic problems, but in a world where artificial intelligence and ChatGPT do really make them better, you could see that adding some value to SMS, too. “Maybe now because of Chat GPT, the robots will make people more happy than humans, so SMS could grow along with all of the other text-based services,” Goldberg said. (To be sure, the hype machine around AI right now basically has it either fixing everything under the sun or ruining the world, hard to say.)

Varni said that text message marketing can be a solid medium for giving consumers a curated experience, for sending loyal customers special deals, for educating people, or for alerting them when an item becomes available they wanted. Her company works with its clients to try to make sure it doesn’t go overboard. “We don’t want to turn SMS into the next version of email, which becomes a graveyard of brands and promotions in your inbox,” she said.

In many cases when it comes to legitimate companies and brands, people are signing up to receive text messages, often in exchange for a discount or free shipping or some sort of gift. A survey from Attentive found that 91 percent of consumers globally have signed up for an SMS program or are interested in doing so.

Still, it doesn’t take much for people to start to feel annoyed and overwhelmed by all the texts. A report from data company Validity found that 96 percent of survey respondents have felt annoyed at least occasionally by marketing text messages, 84 percent have gotten a text message from a company they didn’t remember signing up for, and 70 percent have worried brand texts pose a data security risk.

According to data shared with Vox by Robokiller, a spam text and call blocker, 70 percent of the spam messages identified on its platform were related to brand marketing messages in May and June of 2023. Even if the texts aren’t technically spam, that’s how many consumers see them, said Patrick Falzon, the general manager at Teltech, the app maker behind Robokiller. “Those are messages that are coming from what you’d think of as legitimate companies offering some degree of promotional discount, sales offer, trying to pull people back into some web funnel or experience,” he said, meaning guiding people from an entry point toward some goal or action, like a sale. He acknowledged that the high open rates can be enticing for marketers, but they can also create tension for brands over time. “You’re likely going to see increasing consumer fatigue,” he said, “and with that, consumer pushback.”

The good news for consumers is that if they want to stop getting marketing texts from brands, in many cases, they can just respond “stop” to the messages, and that’s that. Phone providers tend to take the issue quite seriously, too, in part at the government’s urging, blocking robotexts and making sure that once people say they want to opt out, they can. Still, the system is imperfect. Not every marketer is going to heed a consumer’s “stop” wishes or refrain from passing your phone number onto someone else. “There are more gaps in the regulatory frameworks on the text side of things vs. calls,” Falzon said.

Between the brands and the politicians, maybe just throw your phone into the sea (I kid, kind of)

Much of our personal data is already all over the internet and in the hands of actors good and bad. That landscape makes it a little difficult, from a distance, to decipher just how to think about text message marketing. On the one hand, it’s not ideal that companies that are pretty bad at protecting their data get their hands on yet another piece of information. On the other hand, a text from a company with a sale isn’t the worst thing in the world. Like, oh, yet another brand has my phone number? At least I got a 20 percent discount for handing it over.

“It’s just way more common to see, in funnels, brands asking for your phone number,” Falzon said. “We, as consumers, have become kind of numb to giving out our information online.”

The tipping point here really hinges on whether people become so inundated with messages that their phones wind up looking like their email inboxes — a space where there’s so much of everything that it’s next to impossible to find anything. And again, we don’t really have much ability right now to filter our text messages like we do our emails right now.

The brands, hopefully, aren’t going to blow up our phones to the level of email in the near future, but we should prepare for some text-heavy months ahead. Marketers generally jump on the holiday season to send an extra number of texts, meaning you should expect more messages in October, November, and December. Then there’s election season and the raft of political texts that come along with it. And then there’s the next holiday season after that.

“Political campaigns are really leaning into SMS as well, so it’s not restricted to commercial brands,” Falzon said. “Politicians are using it a lot. I think, unfortunately, it’s going to be a pretty rough next 12 to 18 to 24 months for consumers.”

So look forward to texts from Starbucks and Old Navy and Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders from here until eternity.

We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Every two weeks, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to The Big Squeeze.

Sign up to get this column in your inbox.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the percentage of Validity survey respondents who felt annoyed by marketing text messages. The correct number is 96 percent.

Feature Image Credit: Paige Vickers/Vox/Getty Images

By Emily Stewart

Emily Stewart covers business and economics for Vox and writes the newsletter The Big Squeeze, examining the ways ordinary people are being squeezed under capitalism. Before joining Vox, she worked for TheStreet.

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6 Best Email List Scrubber Tools to Land in the Inbox, Not Spam

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By Trevor Sinclair

Looking for an email list scrubber? You’re in the right place!

Email marketers often agree that your list is your goldmine.

Now, here’s the part you don’t often hear: up to 25% of that goldmine could be fool’s gold!

“Bad emails? No big deal,” you might think.

But turn a blind eye to list hygiene; and these bad addresses send bounce rates soaring!

When that happens, your bottom line takes a hit (since you can’t land in the inbox).

That’s why I’m bringing you a review of six email list scrubbers that are worth your time and investment:

  • Emailable
  • Clearout
  • Hunter
  • ZeroBounce
  • Bounceless
  • Bouncer

Let’s dive in!

No time to waste?

Check out our favourite tool Emailable!

Try Emailable For Free Here

Emailable (Best Email Scrubber)

Email deliverability can make or break a campaign. As marketers, we’ve all felt the sting of meticulously crafted emails landing in the spam folder or worse, bouncing back entirely.

Emailable is an email list cleaner that eliminates irrelevant, spammy, and invalid emails from your database.

It offers:

  • Bulk email checking
  • Email list cleaning automation
  • Real-time email verification
  • A comprehensive deliverability tool suite

But here’s where Emailable really shines: its speed. In a world where every minute counts, Emailable gets it.

It’s fast, efficient, and doesn’t keep you waiting.

Many users report switching over because their old tools took hours or days to complete email verification. In my experience, scrubbing my data only takes a few seconds. For a large list, it will be slightly longer.

The simplicity of Emailable’s email cleaning process is noteworthy. It provides clear descriptions of each type of result, making it easy to act on.

Emailable is no slouch when it comes to security, either. Emailable safeguards data with GDPR compliance and 256-bit TLS encryption.

Also, the platform integrates with the email service provider, customer relationship manager, and marketing platforms you already use.

The pricing is competitive, and most importantly, it works even better than advertised.

You can be confident that your email marketing efforts are built on a solid foundation of reliable, verified email addresses.

Pros vs Cons 

Pros

  • Improves email delivery
  • Reduces bounce rates
  • Enhances campaign performance
  • Automated list cleaning
  • API for integrations

Cons

  • False positives possible

Pricing 

Credits Pay-as-you-go ($/email) Monthly ($/email)
5,000 $30 ($0.00600) $25.50 ($0.00510)
10,000 $50 ($0.00500) $42.50 ($0.00425)
25,000 $125 ($0.00500) $106.25 ($0.00425)
50,000 $225 ($0.00450) $191.25 ($0.00383)
100,000 $420 ($0.00420) $357 ($0.00357)
250,000 $725 ($0.00290) $617.50 ($0.00247)
500,000 $1300 ($0.00260) $1105 ($0.00221)
1,000,000 $1800 ($0.00180) $1530 ($0.00153)
2,500,000 $3375 ($0.00135) $2875 ($0.00115)
Try It Today With 250 Free Credits!

Clearout (#2 Email Scrubber)

Clearout offers a suite of tools designed to streamline and enhance email marketing efforts.

From verifying emails at the point of capture to maintaining data hygiene, Clearout excels.

What sets Clearout apart as an email scrubber is its accuracy. It not only removes invalid emails but also ensures that the emails that do make it through are high quality.

We can avoid spam traps, which keeps my open rates high (and overall ROI positive).

Clearout’s speed is another standout feature. Whether I’m verifying a handful of emails or a list of thousands, Clearout easily handles it.

This efficiency is crucial – no more waiting days for results.

Data security is a top priority, and Clearout doesn’t disappoint. Data is well-protected with 256-bit SSL encryption and adherence to GDPR, SOC 2 Type 2, and ISO norms.

The flexibility of Clearout’s integration capabilities is also a big plus. The rest API is adaptable and can integrate with any programming language.

Looking at other user reviews, it’s clear that my positive experience with Clearout is not unique. Users have praised its accuracy, affordability, and user-friendly interface.

This kind of feedback reinforces my confidence in the platform.

Pros vs Cons

Pros

  • Ensures email list accuracy.
  • Helps maintain sender reputation
  • Prevents accidental data loss
  • Great for large email lists
  • User-friendly interface

 

Cons

  • Setup can be challenging for certain systems.

Pricing

Credits Pay As You Go ($/Email) Monthly Cost (Price per Email)
3,000 credits $21 ($0.007) $16.80 ($0.0056)
10,000 credits $58 ($0.0058) $46.40 ($0.00464)
100,000 credits $350 ($0.0035) $280 ($0.0028)
250,000 credits $625 ($0.0025) $500 ($0.002)
500,000 credits $850 ($0.0017) $680 ($0.00136)
1 million credits $1,100 ($0.0011) $880 ($0.00088)

Hunter.io, at its core, is a tool designed to streamline the process of cold outreach by finding and verifying professional email addresses. (By the way, here’s our full Hunter.io review)

Compared to tools like Emailable and ZeroBounce, which focus more on bulk email verification, Hunter.io focuses more on outbound lead generation.

Yes – bulk email verification is a part of that, so there is also some overlap.

Hunter.io’s features include:

  • Domain Search
  • Email Finder
  • Email Verifier
  • Email Campaigns

The process begins with the Domain Search feature. Instead of spending hours trawling through LinkedIn or company websites, I enter the domain name into Hunter.io.

In an instant, I have a list of professional email addresses from that domain.

Once I have these potential leads, the next step is to ensure the emails are valid. At this point, I’ll use the verifier, which ensures 95% accuracy.

However, where Hunter.io truly stands out is its Email Campaigns feature.

Unlike other tools that stop at email verification, Hunter.io takes it a step further by allowing me to compose, schedule, and track email campaigns directly from the platform.

In terms of use cases, Hunter.io excels in roles where outbound lead generation is key.

For example:

  • Salespeople targeting decision-makers
  • Bloggers performing backlink outreach

If you want to further explore solutions for this outbound use-case, you can check out our best Hunter.io alternatives.

Pros vs Cons

Pros

  • Reliable data for outreach.
  • Confirms the validity of emails.
  • Improves email deliverability.
  • Lead qualification
  • Transparency on data origin
  • Follow up automation

Cons

  • Some verified emails may be non-existent

Pricing

Plan Monthly Cost Monthly Searches Monthly Verifications
Free $0/month 25 50
Starter $49/month 500 1,000
Growth $149/month 5,000 10,000
Business $499/month 50,000 100,000

Note: Annual pricing plans offer a 30% discount.

ZeroBounce

ZeroBounce is a comprehensive email validation service that offers:

  • Email list validation
  • Email list cleaning service
  • Additional data appending
  • Improved deliverability

The accuracy is impressive, with a 99% accuracy claim that holds up in practice.

This was evident in the case of MediaShares, where their bounce rate dropped from 12% almost to 0% after using ZeroBounce.

It’s GDPR, SOC 2 Type 2, and PCI compliant and uses military-grade data encryption to protect data.

ZeroBounce integrates with existing email marketing platforms and CRMs, enabling smooth data transfer. The real-time verification feature is also a bonus, validating emails as they are collected.

The Activity Data service is a unique feature that provides insights into subscriber engagement, allowing for improved email list performance.

The AI-driven email scoring system is another plus, predicting subscriber interaction with your emails.

ZeroBounce’s reputation is strong, with numerous positive customer reviews and testimonials. They also have a free trial for Niche Pursuits readers, allowing you to test the tool’s capabilities before purchasing.

Pros vs Cons

Pros

  • Fast email verification process
  • Reliable email verification results
  • Improves list hygiene
  • Identifies invalid email address, inactive subscribers, disposable emails
  • Excellent value

Cons

  • Some issues reported with API and credit balance

Pricing

They offer both pay-as-you-go and monthly options. For smaller lists or infrequent use, I recommend the pay-as-you-go plan. The monthly pricing may offer better value for regular use.

Emails Pay-as-you-go ($/email) Monthly ($/email)
Up to 2,000 Free $0.0075
From 2,000 $0.008 $0.0075
From 5,000 $0.0078 $0.007
From 10,000 $0.0065 $0.0064
From 25,000 n/a n/a
From 50,000 n/a n/a
From 100,000 $0.0039 $0.0035
From 250,000 $0.003 $0.00255
From 1,000,000 $0.00225 $0.00191

Bouceless

Whether you’re verifying a list of email addresses or searching for new ones, Bounceless delivers results quickly without compromising on accuracy.

It offers:

  • Email verification
  • Email finder
  • Deliverability
  • Blacklist monitoring

Under the hood, Bounceless employs advanced techniques to ensure top-notch email management.

It intelligently cleans spam trap records, removing any potential risks. Duplicate email addresses are swiftly eliminated. Risk validation scans for and eliminates high-risk keywords and domains in email addresses.

To improve deliverability, Bounceless validates the Mail-Transfer-Agent (MTA) and ensures the syntax of email addresses is valid.

It also removes emails with invalid, inactive, or parked domains and identifies catch-all domains.

Not only is Bounceless powerful, but it’s also incredibly easy to use. Most users report completing their first email clean-up within just 20 minutes.

In the 57 email test that I ran, it performed slightly slower than Emailable.

And when it comes to bounce rates, Bounceless delivers impressive results. Users have experienced a remarkable 234% improvement.

The pay-as-you-go pricing model offers flexibility that’s hard to find.

Compared to tools like Hunter, Bounceless does offer more options. It’s also nice that you have flexibility to choose a package without being tied to a monthly subscription.

In addition to its technical prowess, Bounceless offers detailed reporting so you can always keep track of your email list’s health.

Pros vs Cons

Pros

  • User-friendly with affordable pricing
  • Provides insightful analytics
  • Highly accurate in validating emails
  • Rapid validation results

Cons

  • Customer support response can be delayed.

Pricing

Credits Pay as you go Monthly ($/email)
5,000 $29 ($0.0058) $15 ($0.003)
10,000 $49 ($0.0049) $24 ($0.0024)
25,000 $99 ($0.00396) $49 ($0.00196)
50,000 $169 ($0.00338) $89 ($0.00178)
100,000 $299 ($0.00299) $169 ($0.00169)
300,000 $599 ($0.0019) $349 ($0.00116)
500,000 $799 ($0.00159) $449 ($0.0008)
1M $999 ($0.0099) $599 ($0.00059)
2.5M $1649 ($0.00065) $1199 ($0.0004796)
5M $2299 ($0.00045) $1799 ($0.0003598)

The monthly package includes an email finder, inbox placement, and blacklist monitoring.

Bouncer

Bouncer is an email list scrubber laser-focused on email verification and deliverability.

It’s a no-nonsense solution that gets the job done, and it does it well.

First, let’s talk about email verification. Bouncer identifies undeliverable emails before you send your campaign, ensuring you get far fewer bounced emails.

The API is another strong point. It’s robust, reliable, and easy to use.

Users have praised its straightforwardness and the quick response from the support team. The API offers both batch and real-time verification options, making it a versatile tool for any business.

Bouncer’s Toxicity Check feature is another standout. It’s an extra layer of protection, removing potentially harmful email addresses, such as breached ones, complainers, and potential spam traps.

The Deliverability Kit is a proactive feature that monitors your inbox placement and blacklists, alerting you when things go awry.

Bouncer’s ability to verify email addresses hosted by different email service providers, including deep catch-all Google Workspace and Office365 verification, is impressive.

It does this with few unknown results (0.3-3%), which is phenomenal.

In terms of speed, Bouncer can check over 200,000 emails per hour, and the results speak for themselves. Users have reported a significant drop in bounce rates, from 25% to a mere 1-1.5%.

It does all this with a fair pricing model.

The fact that Bouncer allows you to test your list’s quality completely free is a big plus. It will pull a sample from your list, check it, and will tell you if it needs cleaning. That way, you don’t burn unnecessary credits.

Pros vs Cons

Pros

  • Easy to use and connect to other tools
  • High accuracy email checker
  • Keeps email list clean at great price point
  • Exceptional support
  • Reduced spam complaints

Cons

  • Onboarding could be better

Pricing

Credits Pay-as-You-Go Price ($/email) Monthly Price ($/email)
5,000 $29.00 ($0.0058) $29.00 ($0.0058)
10,000 $49.00 ($0.0049) $49.00 ($0.0049)
25,000 $99.00 ($0.0049) $99.00 ($0.0049)
50,000 $169.00 ($0.00338) $169.00 ($0.00338)
100,000 $299.00 ($0.00299) $299.00 ($0.00299)
300,000 $599.00 ($0.0019) $599.00 ($0.0019)
500,000 $799.00 ($0.0016) $799.00 ($0.0016)
1,000,000 $999.00 ($0.0099) $999.00 ($0.0099)
2,500,000 $1649.00 ($0.00065) $1649.00 ($0.00065)
5,000,000 $2299.00 ($0.00045) $2299.00 ($0.00045)

Email scrubber – Final Thoughts

Remember, maintaining a clean email list is just as important as growing it. A clean email list can improve your deliverability rate, reduce your bounce rate, and ultimately increase your ROI.

So, invest in a good email scrubber like Emailable. It’s one that will pay for itself in the long run.

P.S. List cleaning and maintaining sender reputation are necessities for landing in the inbox, but so are avoiding spam trigger words. So make sure to pay attention to those as you craft your emails!

By Trevor Sinclair

Trevor Sinclair is an entrepreneur and online business expert. He’s seen first-hand how the internet can empower people to create businesses and lifestyles they love. Now, he’s passionate about helping others do the same.

When he’s not working, you may find him hacking up a golf course or savouring the bold flavours of Thai cuisine.

Sourced from NICHE PURSUITS

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There Is a Bright Future for AI-Driven Integration

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By Anant Jhingran and Matt Roberts

A look at how an integration layer completes AI applications and how integrations can be done better with the help of AI.

AI is reshaping the enterprise landscape. Already, developer productivity, digital labour, email marketing, website creation, etc., seem ripe for a major transformation. It is also well understood that general AI foundation models like GPT4 and Falcon-40B need to be fine-tuned or prompt-tuned for enterprise-specific tasks, and therefore must be fed some curated data that allows for some subset of the parameters to be “adjusted,” or output changed based on new task information given in prompts.

However, training the models is one thing. Enterprise applications today live and die on access to current enterprise data. For example, an e-commerce website might return the status of the orders of a logged-in customer. Or a chat application might process the return of a product. In neither of these cases can anything useful be done without real connectivity to ( integration with) one or more enterprise applications. First, we’ll speak to how an integration layer completes AI applications.

In addition, these integrations do not magically appear. They have to be coded, and they have to be tested and maintained. Later, we’ll speak to how integrations can be done better with the help of AI.

AI Without Integration is Incomplete

How would an AI application return useful information? AI without integration is like fish without water.

In the above figure, a natural language question, “When will my package arrive?” will need to be parsed by a foundation model, and generate a GraphQL request that then accesses an enterprise data source (and in this case, third-party systems such as FedEx), and then the response needs to be used as the input to generate the output.

The above example, while simple, shows that AI foundation models must be complemented by integration and API technologies. As readers of articles from one of the authors know, we have a particular bias for GraphQL APIs. And in this case, they are especially useful since the AI application can be trained to call one universal GraphQL API, and not have to deal with the subtleties of formats and authorizations and sideways information passing if the application were to learn multiple backends.

Integration Without AI is Incomplete

However, the complement to the above is that the opposite is also true. For each of the personas and task sets in the integration space, there are benefits in the application of AI:

Integration personas in the API management domain

  • Developers are the primary focus of this effort in the industry today. Prior to the rise of AI, domains like API management and application integration have already evolved toward low code/no code tooling for creating integrations, enabling citizen developers with less skill and experience to use them. AI provides the ability to further augment and empower those developers in more advanced or historically specialist scenarios.
  • Administrators, operations folks and site reliability engineers (SREs) of integration deployments will also benefit from the application of AI. Anomaly detection on operational metrics such as API response codes, transaction rate, queue depth and on system logs are all scenarios that machine learning models are well evolved to support – and provide the administrator a sixth sense to observe and maintain the health of a system.
  • Product managers and business owners often being on the less technical end of the spectrum also benefit from the low-code and generative capabilities described above, supporting them to self-serve their needs for query and analysis of data to identify business trends and new revenue streams.

In all cases there are various aspects that require close watching as AI technology matures:

First, the models have to be trustworthy. The art and science of trust in AI is being created rapidly, but of course, the rate and pace of innovation in the core AI algorithms is moving even faster. At some point in time, the trust research will have to catch up with the model research.

Related to this is determinism and repeatability. In scenarios such as generating a mapping between two data objects, it is not desirable that a different mapping be created each time you ask the same question, and yet that is the case today for many foundation models as they balance probability between multiple competing options.

Critical to the effectiveness of AI capabilities is correctness. There are many well-known examples where content generated by AI is plausible at first glance, but flawed in practice. As such, today a skilled expert is often still needed to review, debug and rectify the AI-generated artefact, but as the technology matures, we expect to see growing confidence in the validity of the output that will reduce the need for human oversight.

Next, the cost of inferencing, which is often not talked about, will become the dominant OpEx, and enterprises will have to learn to trade off the size of the model and the size of the prompt (linear and quadratic influences respectively on the cost of inferencing) with the quality of the output (is it worth going from a 8B parameter model to 100B parameter model for a 2% lift in the quality of the output)?

Sensitivity of data ownership is also a key concern for many enterprises. Foundation models work most effectively when they can be trained using the largest corpus of available examples, but if those examples contain sensitive customer information or represent a competitive advantage to the enterprise, then care must be taken in how that data will be further used by the model owner.

Summary

There is a bright future for AI-driven integration, both in the application of integration to provide access to enterprise data for use by AI tools and also for application of AI to benefit the delivery of integration scenarios.

We will be publishing a whole series of articles on the topic of the influence of AI on APIs and integration, and as some of you might know, StepZen was acquired by IBM, so we will be bringing on some additional API and integration experts, such as Matt Roberts, the CTO for IBM’s Integration portfolio.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock. 

By Anant Jhingran and Matt Roberts

Anant is the founder and CEO of StepZen, a startup with a new approach for simplifying the way developers access the data they need to power digital experiences. With a career that spans IBM Fellow, CTO of IBM’s Information Management… Read more from Anant Jhingran
Matt Roberts is Distinguished Engineer and CTO for the IBM Integration product portfolio where he has technical responsibility for offerings that cover API management, application integration, security gateways and high-speed data transfer. He has extensive experience delivering software products and…
Read more from Matt Roberts

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