Time-based Energy Attribute Certificates provide a more granular approach to energy tracking
Google has been working to develop better tools to track energy consumption and production in order to achieve its 24/7 carbon-free energy goal by 2030.
As part of these efforts, the search giant announced a new tool called Time-based Energy Attribute Certificates (T-EACs) last year to advance a more granular approach to energy tracking.
Once T-EACs are fully developed and widely deployed, they will not only help Google achieve its 24/7 carbon-free energy goal but will also provide society with valuable new insights concerning the availability of carbon-free energy on electricity grids during every hour of every day. At the same time, this information will help energy consumers better understand their energy use while also creating price signals that stimulate new investments into green technologies and projects that deliver carbon-free energy when it’s most needed.
Google has spent the past year engaging partners around the world to advance the development and adoption of T-EACs. The company has also expanded the use of hourly certificates, accelerated the development of tools and systems to unlock energy data and hourly matching and created technical standards to drive the widespread adoption of T-EACs.
Tracking and reporting carbon-free energy
The registries that create, track and manage the energy attribute certifications (EACs) associated with clean energy generation are some of the most important stakeholders in advancing T-EACs according to a new blog post from Google Cloud.
In the past, these registries have not issued or tracked certificates on an hour-by-hour basis but this has changed as demand grows for 24/7 carbon-free energy. For its part, Google has been working with global registries to accelerate this shift while creating new products and services for tracking energy attributes on a more granular basis.
In the US, the company partnered with the non-profit M-RETS which tracks and validates energy attribute certificates in order to expand the hourly transaction capabilities of its platform and enable the tracking and retirement of hourly certificates by all of its users. Google has also worked with APX to support the retirement of hourly Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) within the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and as a result of this work, electricity generators across the Central and Midwest US will soon be able to retire certificates on an hourly basis whenever hourly data is available.
In Europe, Google has collaborated with the Danish Grid operator Energinet as it builds the technical foundation to support granular certification and develop innovative applications such as the Project Energy Origin Platform. Meanwhile, in Latin America, the search giant has launched a pilot led by The International REC Standard Foundation in close collaboration with Evident Services and its suppliers ACCIONA Energia and AES Andes.
Going forward, Google plans to continue to advance the adoption of hourly certificates as it works to ensure it is able to meet its goal of running its global operations on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030.
After getting his start at ITProPortal while living in South Korea, Anthony now writes about cybersecurity, web hosting, cloud services, VPNs and software for TechRadar Pro. In addition to writing the news, he also edits and uploads reviews and features and tests numerous VPNs from his home in Houston, Texas. Recently, Anthony has taken a closer look at standing desks, office chairs and all sorts of other work from home essentials. When not working, you can find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home.
At the dawn of the internet, in the mid-nineties, people were blown away by the new technology. Message boards, chat rooms, and file-sharing services dominated the space. Eventually, this was called web 1.0. Then, with the advent of social media in the mid-2000s, the internet reached a new level of interconnectivity. The was a shift to user-generated content like never before. For better or worse, anyone could create and share anything, at any time. This became known as web 2.0. Now, with the popularization of blockchain technology, we are approaching a new age; Internet 3.0. But what is web 3.0?
A whole new world of possibilities
One of the key appeals of blockchain technology is decentralization. This simply means no single entity can control or govern it. This impacts the internet in a few ways, Firstly, complete transparency in everything, at all times. No more hiding behind a “delete Tweet” button. Blockchain technology chronologically stores every interaction and transaction in a ledger that anyone can see.
Secondly, it takes a sledgehammer to the proverbial throne of companies like Meta and Google. It’ll put massive databases of information on users, in the hands of users. Theoretically, the two tech titans won’t have a chokehold on your data anymore.
What’s the catch?
You know how misinformation, hate speech, and cybercrime run wild on the internet like Hulk Hogan? Well, with decentralization, comes (even more) limited authority to prevent these things. Because data will essentially exist everywhere, it can be traced nowhere. It’ll be nearly impossible for countries to apply sanctions and laws on something that doesn’t exactly exist in that country.
For example, right now, if cybercrime occurs on a website hosted in the United States, the US government can intervene. But what if that website was hosted on servers across the entire globe?
What does this mean for us?
Web 3.0, internet 3.0, or whatever you want to call it, could usher in a new era of globalization like never before. Web 2.0 brought people together for better or for worse with the advent of social media and user-generated content. Now, optimistically, we could see those users come together and redistribute control of the internet through decentralization. Pessimistically, it could get really, really messy and chaotic. Web 3.0 could completely change the way the world interacts with each other all over again. But only time will tell.
Search engines cannot discover and index every page on the web – they need to make choices in that regard. And, though all search engines serve the same purpose, they use different criteria for which pages to index.
That being said, it’s generally good if a search engine can crawl and index as much valuable content as possible – it increases the odds that it will show users what they’re looking for.
I was curious about which search engine – Bing or Google – indexes more content in general.
This article describes the different aspects of my research, and though I’d need more data to draw definite conclusions, I still managed to gather many unique and valuable insights.
Here is what I discovered about how Bing and Google index web pages.
Analysing indexing data: methodology and results
Index coverage of a random sample of WordPress sites
The first step of my research was to collect a sample of pages to check their indexing statistics.
I decided that a good starting point would be to use a sample of websites using the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. There was a practical reason behind choosing this plugin: it divides sitemaps by sections, which would let me analyse which sections are indexed the most.
I found a list of websites that use the Yoast SEO plugin on builtwith.com, a site reporting on websites using given technologies or tools. I chose a random sample of 200 websites from a list of sites using Yoast SEO.
Then, I checked the indexing statistics of those websites using ZipTie.dev, and the data that came out is very interesting.
Bing indexed more web pages than Google.
Take a look at the charts below that show the indexing statistics for given sitemap categories:
The index coverage is the same for Bing and Google for the story and press categories. Moreover, Google did index more content in guides and locations. However, in all the remaining sitemap categories, Bing’s indexing exceeds Google’s – including important categories, like posts, products, and images.
But does this mean Bing is also able to crawl more pages than Google? Or do they crawl similar amounts of content but have different preferences when it comes to indexing?
These tools show the pages that the respective search engine knows about for a given domain.
In Google Search Console, I looked at the All known pages appearing in the Index Coverage report and checked the number of URLs for all four statuses (Errors, Valid, Valid with Warnings, and Excluded).
In Bing Webmaster Tools, in the Site Explorer section, which contains indexing data for the pages on a given domain, I filtered the view to display All URLs.
This showed me all the discovered URLs for each domain I analysed.
After comparing the data I got in both of these tools, I noticed that Google discovered more pages than Bing.
On the other hand (assuming these findings are consistent across both tested website samples), we already know that the pages discovered by Google and Bing are more likely to get indexed by Bing.
Keep in mind that these results are only for a small sample of sites and may not represent the whole web.
Index coverage of a sample of popular sites
The third aspect of my research was to check the indexing status of a few popular websites using ZipTie to see how it varies between Bing and Google.
I learned that Bing is much more eager to index these sites than Google. This confirmed my earlier findings for the sample of WordPress websites using YoastSEO.
Take a look at the data I got:
Bing vs. Google indexing – initial observations
Can we tell that Bing is a better search engine based on the data?
Although Bing indexes more content, we cannot point out a single winner just by looking at the indexing statistics. We don’t know why Bing is indexing more than Google.
My hypothesis is that Google might be “pickier” than Bing. It’s no mystery that index selection is a thing.
We’ve been saying it for years – getting indexed by Google is becoming increasingly more difficult.
We also know that search engines crawl pages at different rates.
Here is what John Mueller said about how often Googlebot crawls pages:
I think the hard part here is that we don’t crawl URLs with the same frequency all the time. So some URLs we will crawl daily. Some URLs maybe weekly. Other URLs every couple of months, maybe even every once half year or so. So this is something that we try to find the right balance for, so that we don’t overload your server. […] So, in particular, if you do things like site queries, then there’s a chance that you’ll see those URLs that get crawled like once every half year. They’ll still be there after a couple of months. […] if you think that these URLs should really not be indexed at all, then maybe you can kind of back that up and say, well, here’s a sitemap file with the last modification date so that Google goes off and tries to double-check these a little bit faster than otherwise.
I also found some interesting ideas in Bing’s documentation:
To measure how smart our crawler is, we measure bingbot crawl efficiency. The crawl efficiency is how often we crawl and discover new and fresh content per page crawled. Our crawl efficiency north star is to crawl an URL only when the content has been added (URL not crawled before), updated (fresh on-page context or useful outbound links). The more we crawl duplicated, unchanged content, the lower our Crawl Efficiency metric is.
Bing may not want to go deep when crawling websites as doing so could provide little value and cause their KPIs to drop.
We know that Bing has been working on making crawling more efficient. For instance, Bing attempted to optimize the crawling of static content and identify patterns that would reduce the crawling frequency across many websites.
Also, consider the differences in how Google and Bing indexed the random WordPress websites – they were much smaller. In the case of very popular websites, they are much more significant.
This leads me to think that, in line with the fact that Bing openly admits they use user behaviour data in their algorithms, Bing heavily prioritizes indexing websites that are popular, while for Google, popularity is less of a factor.
Introducing IndexNow
Recently, Bing took it a step further by adopting the IndexNow protocol. You can use IndexNow to inform Bing and Yandex about new or updated content.
Through our tests, we found out that Bing will typically start crawling a page between 5 seconds and 5 minutes from when it’s submitted using IndexNow.
IndexNow is an initiative for a more efficient Internet: By telling search engines whether an URL has been changed, website owners provide a clear signal helping search engines to prioritize crawl for these URLs, thereby limiting the need for exploratory crawl to test if the content has changed […].We will continue to learn and improve at [a] larger scale and adjust crawl rates for sites implementing IndexNow. Our goal is to give each adopter the maximum benefit in terms of indexation, crawl load management and freshness of the content to searchers.
IndexNow allows websites to get their content indexed faster and use fewer resources for crawling. As a result, businesses can create a better experience for their customers by giving them access to the most relevant information.
Crucially, IndexNow is an opportunity for smaller search engines like Bing and Yandex to add to their indexes from an extensive database of content. IndexNow addresses the issue that search engines, including Google, struggle with today – having to crawl and render growing amounts of content.
Time will tell if Google adopts the IndexNow protocol or creates an alternative solution that will allow site owners to submit pages for indexing.
Optimizing how pages are crawled and indexed
Another takeaway from my indexing analysis is how important it is to simplify crawling and indexing for search engines.
First, you need to create and maintain sitemaps that include your valuable URLs. Sitemaps are helpful for Bing and Google for discovering the content they should index.
Search engines will struggle to pick up which pages are relevant and should be indexed if you fail to submit an optimized sitemap. For more details on setting up a sitemap and what pages to include, read our Ultimate Guide to XML Sitemaps.
To define a clear pattern in Bing’s and Google’s indexing, I would have to inspect many more websites, but there are certain ideas we can get from my samples of data:
Bing indexes more content than Google.
Google discovers more content than Bing, suggesting that Google is pickier with indexing. The guiding principle for Bing is to crawl less and focus on the content that has been added or updated.
Bing prioritizes indexing of popular websites, while popularity is less of a factor for Google.
We can also see that content quality and optimizing your site’s crawling and indexing are vital aspects of SEO, and they can’t be underestimated or neglected. Moreover, these factors will likely continue to be crucial as the web grows and search engine algorithms become more sophisticated.
There are many benefits of using social media to grow a business and to craft an online persona that showcases a brand’s values and services. A defined social media strategy can help businesses be more profitable, establish credibility, and gain a strategic edge over the competition. Social media has become a powerful tool in marketing as it’s accessible anytime, anywhere, and is a fun, engaging way to share and collect information.
According to the most recent data from Statista, as of 2021, 82% of the U.S. population has a profile on social media, with the most popular platform being Facebook. In 2021, nearly 92% of U.S. marketers were expected to use social media for marketing purposes.
Planoly consulted research from social media influencers, brand managers, and marketing agencies to compile 10 of the best ways to start building your brand on social media.
There are various strategies for companies and brands to up their social media marketing game. It can be something as simple as taking more time getting to know your audience and creating content accordingly, or following and engaging with accounts that may be similar and relevant to your brand. It also helps to include relevant hashtags—though you don’t go overboard with them in posts. Be sure to include hashtags that will be of interest to your target audience.
A copy-and-paste approach may seem ideal when posting content across various social platforms, but sometimes it helps to take the time to curate and differentiate content for each respective platform. What draws attention on Facebook may fall into the ether on Twitter and vice versa. Giving your social accounts a more authentic feel may require a more unique posting method based on your target audience.
Continue reading for 10 strategies you can use to build your brand on social media.
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Determine your specialty
Influencers on social media tend to specialize in a certain area—whether it’s the beauty, parenting, or financial coaching spaces, specificity is key. Finding a niche can sometimes be challenging for one with myriad interests, but it helps for an influencer to hone in on a specific audience and establish authority. Your niche is what you’re genuinely interested in and what suits your personality.After deciding what you want to focus on, begin creating your posts around that topic. It helps to tag other accounts closely related to your topic of interest.
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Know your audience and demographic
What does your business know about its customers? What are their age groups? Where are they located? These are questions that companies need to ask in order to learn about their customers.In terms of selecting influencers to represent their brand, companies will want to partner with influencers followed by the same group of people who purchase its products and services. Influencers who are authentic, engaging, and who have an understanding of the brand will be key to the success of the company’s social media campaigns.
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Target the right social media platforms for your brand
It’s important for a business to know the demographics of its target market when deciding which social media channels to use. Brands that are more visual may lean toward Instagram and TikTok, while brands focused on real-time events may find Twitter to be more suitable.It’s beneficial to define social media goals and to figure out the social media channels the company’s audience uses in order to develop a receptive audience. Take time to analyze the type of content the business is posting on its channels and how the content works for each social media platform.
As of 2021, for business-to-business companies, Facebook and LinkedIn tend to be the preferred social media platforms. For business-to-consumer companies, Facebook and Instagram were the most popular platforms.
Canva
Define your brand’s voice and tone
A brand’s target audience is the most crucial aspect of developing a voice and tone. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and consider what would inspire them to take action to buy your company’s product or follow your brand.Often, companies take more of a general approach, directing social media posts to a broad audience, but catering to more niche users may work better. Brands need to think of what it is they wish to accomplish—when the dust settles, what is the primary purpose?—and how the answer to that question can resonate long-term with its audience.
Worawee Meepian // Shutterstock
Connect with influencers in your industry
Networking on social media has been a way for many companies to get their name out there and build brand recognition. It’s no different when influencers decide to join forces, even if just for one specific event. It can be highly beneficial to collaborate with fellow industry influencers, whether it’s launching a cross-promotional giveaway experience or appearing on another influencer’s podcast.Whether you’re looking to expose your business to a bigger audience, generate leads, or boost traffic to your blog, partnering with fellow influencers with a similar target audience can be impactful. Collaboration can diversify an influencer or company’s possibilities, build connections, and create more opportunities overall.
Jacob Lund // Shutterstock
Identify which products or services you want to promote
For the most part, influencers work independently and generate their own content while integrating a brand’s marketability. For relevant influencers, creating content takes time; therefore, a brand must recognize and value the work required in growing that influencer’s following and establishing their voice.When it comes to promoting products and services, in-demand influencers tend to lean toward companies that offer paid partnerships in addition to complimentary products. This is not to say that influencers will only work with a company that gives away free products, but the pull of a partnership arrangement is certainly a more attractive, mutually beneficial arrangement. Canva
Pay attention to trends in social media and video content
Companies should focus on trends to better hone their marketing efforts. Some trends include the rise of short video content shared on platforms, such as TikTok, or via Instagram Stories and Youtube Shorts, all of which have resonated with marketers and brands, notably throughout the pandemic.The e-commerce option for social media platforms has also taken off as brands can connect their online store with their brand’s social media account, removing the need for a third-party website. Paid advertising on social media also gives brands the opportunity to showcase content in front of a target audience.
Be consistent with your social media posts
It can be challenging to post consistently on social media, especially when managing several social platforms or multiple accounts across platforms. But consistency is key when it comes to audience recognition and follower growth and retention.Posting strategically and consistently maximizes your organic reach, which is the number of people you reach without paying for an ad or boosting a post. Scheduling your content ahead of time with news or upcoming events can make it feel more timely. Planning in advance also allows you to keep a steady stream of posts in front of your audience at times when you may not be online.
Kaspars Grinvalds // Shutterstock
Engage with your consumers and followers
Engagement develops customer relationships, builds trust, and helps businesses reach a larger audience. It’s also a quick way for companies and influencers to receive feedback on what’s resonating with their target audience. Some ways that companies and influencers engage on social media is through responding to comments, sharing content, responding to direct messages, and creating polls to generate responses on insights for particular topics.In most cases, engagement is often more important in terms of impact than the number of followers, as a business can have 20,000 followers on social media with zero engagement. This results in a low return on investment. But if there are, say, 5,000 followers with much higher engagement, a higher ROI makes the business appear more credible and not like there’s a bunch of ghost followers.
oatawa // Shutterstock
Define your metrics of success and use them to inspire future content
In recent years, social media has served as a major tool for businesses and influencers to have a better understanding of their audience. There are ways to analyse social media data through built-in insights and analytics that are provided by most social platforms. These findings show information such as demographics, impressions, and reach, all of which are essential metrics for building an audience.Analytics and metrics help to track progress, such as the speed at which you’re building an audience and which posts are performing better than others. The posts that do well can be an example of what may work for similar future posts.
Social media engagement can be a war of attrition, so weeding out content that is not engaging your target audience will result in a stronger overall profile and present an image of brand authority.
This story originally appeared on PLANOLY and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
The majority of you likely fall somewhere in the middle
Running a business can be really challenging, and managing a team of employees is perhaps one of the more difficult aspects of the job. Not only do you have your team with widely different personalities, learning styles and strengths and weaknesses to contend with but you have your own management style and tendencies that can often complicate things even further. I have seen many well-meaning business owners lose years of growth and scaling due to their own bad habits, which is why it’s important to understand where you fall on the management spectrum. Once you have a good idea of where you fall, you can make the necessary changes to do better if necessary.
The dreaded micromanager.
I have lost count of how many times I have asked a business owner what kind of manager they are and they replied with: “oh, well I am not a micromanager….I know that!” Being a micromanager gets a bad rap, but it is well known for a reason. A lot of business owners out there have trouble letting go. They think that they are the only one that knows the ins and outs of their business and struggle to let go and delegate things to their team. And when they do, they feel the overwhelming urge to oversee every single detail to make sure that it is done correctly.
Not only does this drive your employees to seek employment elsewhere, but it stifles the creativity of those that do stick around. Your employees may have skills or experiences that could help grow your business even faster, but you are silencing them by micromanaging their every move.
The laid back abdicator.
On the other end of the spectrum is the laid back abdicator. Now this type of manager on the surface seems like a better alternative. Employees are free to use their creativity and come up with solutions to problems as they arise. But what often happens is that this type of management style ends up leaving the employees in the dark without key details about projects and higher level objectives. They may miss deadlines, and managers in this realm often miss key reporting details leaving their team in the dark. Which over time could lead to the same problems as micromanaging, losing key team members and slowing down growth.
Somewhere in the middle.
For the majority of you, you likely fall somewhere in between the two extremes. For some projects or employees, you tend to hover and micromanage. Maybe you feel like they lack the skills necessary to complete the task correctly or have been burned in the past with other employees. Others on your team may hear from you very infrequently and wonder if you have any idea what they are working on at all.
If you want to improve your management skills, the key is two fold. First, get to know your employees and find out how they like to be managed. Some employees like to check in often and get very detailed instructions for tasks and projects. Others like the challenge of having a broad overview, and then having the freedom to fill in the details as they go. Make notes of each team member, and how they prefer to receive their project handoffs. Second, get used to delegation. Practice handing off projects in the preferred method and take notes of what worked and what didn’t and adjust as needed. Over time you will become a better manager and leader for your team. Good luck!
Those in the marketing industry should be familiar with inbound marketing strategy. Many marketers use built-in customer relationship management (CRM) for marketing reporting. HubSpot is a leader in this digital marketing industry, with 135,000 global customers. This guide will explore how to use HubSpot.
HubSpot is known for marketing and business activities and as a sales hub that boosts and empowers business growth. For start-ups or entrepreneurs looking for the proper tools to start a new venture, this guide to HubSpot provides a deeper dive into the tool, as well as HubSpot tips to help you thoroughly utilize it.
What Is HubSpot?
HubSpot is a cloud-based CRM system that helps align sales and marketing teams. It is a powerful tool that fosters sales enablement and optimizes inbound marketing strategies to generate qualified leads, therefore increasing and boosting return on investment (ROI). In short, HubSpot is software that can be used to market and sell more successfully.
Why Do You Need HubSpot
You need HubSpot because it has the tools to build websites, manage social media, send a marketing email, automate lead-nurturing workflows, and publish content. It makes email marketing easier and it saves time. In addition, this tool allows the creation of sales pipelines that track business growth. HubSpot users find business transactions and objectives are easier met.
HubSpot Use Cases
Automate emails and workflows: Workflows can trigger emails, update data, and send internal notifications. They can also identify and categorize prospects to help pinpoint potential customers. Automated emails make it easier to communicate and market to your customers. In 2020, 31 percent of businesses had fully automated at least one process.
Nurture sales opportunities: HubSpot users can target emails and trigger actions based on the makeup of a deal. They can also utilize options in HubSpot, such as creation date, deal stage, and follow-ups for customers.
Create personalized templates and tokens: Time-saving email templates are available, allowing users to send personalized messages they can easily edit. Personalization tokens in emails can also be substituted by a recent piece of content to share with recipients.
Chat with real-time customers and prospects: When a client’s question is answered promptly, that is a mark of great customer service. HubSpot has a live chat option to allow a business to answer its prospective clients as soon as possible. Because of this, there’s no need for additional customer service software.
Produce an inbound marketing campaign: With HubSpot’s help, users can make inbound marketing campaigns to attract visitors by producing content that’s tailored to them. From there, users can turn those visitors into leads and nurture them to become customers.
Key Terms You Need to Know to Use HubSpot
HubSpot Marketing Hub
This is a set of tools to help the marketing department when it comes to inbound methodology. It offers an easy content creator for email, social media accounts, websites, and blogs. It also provides tracking and custom reports and offers tools such as social media organization and scheduling, calls to action, mobile optimization, and landing pages.
HubSpot CRM
This is a robust tool that boosts companies’ customer service. HubSpot CRM stores the company contacts and leads. The lead is then passed from marketing to the sales department so that both can work to convert the lead into a paying customer. Its outstanding product features are email scheduling, live chat for the website, and Outlook and Gmail integration.
HubSpot Sales Hub
This is designed to help the sales team by allowing them to focus on closing deals with more qualified clients. The HubSpot Sales Hub tool helps reach sales quotas and increase sales productivity. Popular features included in this hub are email notification and marketing, meeting scheduling, reporting dashboards, and multiple-deal sales pipelines.
Analytics
Analytics can be considered the eyes of inbound marketing since it’s defined as discovering and communicating meaningful patterns in data that help analyse customer and business trends, as well as boost business productivity. With an analytic tool, a company can develop actionable insights that lead to informed decisions.
A/B Testing
This is the process of comparing two campaigns or variations to see which performs best, a helpful tool in marketing efforts. It can be used in variations to a subject line in an email, in calls to action, with the structure or template of marketing emails, and more. This business strategy eventually helps growth and revenue.
Equipment You’ll Need for HubSpot
Laptop or desktop: You must have a desktop or laptop to run Hubstaff’s business activities and begin business growth. A computer also makes it easy to access product features like the HubSpot Marketing Hub and HubSpot Sales Hub.
Stable Internet connection: Because HubSpot is cloud-based software, a stable Internet connection is a must. Ensure that you’re always connected, especially when making changes or creating posts, content, or emails.
Email address: Creating an account in HubSpot requires an email address. There’s also an integration feature to link an email.
Google Drive: HubSpot also allows Google Drive integration, making it easier to access files when needed. Google Drive is available with a Gmail account.
Social media accounts: Regardless of which social media platform you intend to use, social media accounts are one way to use HubSpot seamlessly. If you are connecting Instagram, it should be a business account. Having social accounts to connect to will help increase business performance.
How to Set Up and Start Using HubSpot
Step 1: Integrate Email
The first step to using HubSpot is to connect the CRM to an email. This is important because all email activity will be seen and stored inside the CRM. This way, users can keep up to date, especially on the emails they send and receive. They’ll receive a notification if customers reply and the HubSpot CRM helps with business productivity and performance.
Step 2: Create Filters
Filters record in the present time. This means users can gather similar contacts based on the information in the HubSpot CRM. This way, users can organize data to learn which contacts to focus on. This helps ensure no one falls through the cracks.
Step 3: Import Contacts
In this step, users can add information to HubSpot’s CRM by importing contacts and information about sales and companies. Users can then fine-tune filters with more information to increase outreach. This is as simple as manually adding a single email address or using a spreadsheet to import several contacts at once.
Step 4: Identify Deal Stages
Deal stages represent the sales process steps in HubSpot CRM. This is essential because they help to manage multiple relationships simultaneously. Instead of spending time tracking the progress of individual prospects, users can lay out the sales process visually, and drag and drop individual deals from one stage to the next.
Step 5: Develop a Lead Ad
This is the last step, where users can create targeted ads across social media platforms. The ads should have a strong call to action (CTA) and use Facebook or Instagram data to auto-populate forms. As new leads come in, they’re automatically added to your CRM.
The Importance of HubSpot for Business
HubSpot improves marketing strategies, generates leads, and boosts inbound marketing. Users won’t need tools outside the platform such as an SEO tool, reporting tool, or an analytic tool, because those are already built in. HubSpot increases sales and business productivity, which leads to higher revenue, efficient business transactions, and greater performance.
Top HubSpot Tips: Use HubSpot Like a Pro
Test contacts: Not many people use their real email addresses, which can be a challenge when seeking leads. To combat that, HubSpot has an automation tool that allows users to send follow-up emails that can also be used to test whether accounts are real. Doing this can also boost email and business productivity.
Learn how a CRM database works: Users must learn the best CRM practices, especially how to gather, store, and manage data. Becoming familiar with the CRM tool will help to boost sales and nurture leads.
Direct to thank-you pages instead of thank-you popups: When someone downloads content or subscribes to a business, directing them to a thank-you page helps show that each client is not just a number, but an important customer or prospect regardless of whether they are qualified leads.
Make use of HubSpot Academy: HubSpot offers courses and certifications for professional development. Its courses include inbound marketing, Excel for marketers, and digital advertising. It also offers courses to increase sales and business productivity.
Test out different CTAs: With HubSpot, users can see the views and conversions of various CTAs. Then, they can experiment with what works the best to boost the company’s sales quotas, and eventually, the business revenue.
HubSpot for Different Professions
Profession
Applications
Social Media Manager
Create personalized templates and tokens, produce inbound marketing campaigns
Digital Marketing Analyst
Automate emails and workflows, nurture sales opportunities, create personalized templates and tokens, produce inbound marketing campaigns
Digital Marketer
Nurture sales opportunities, create personalized templates and tokens, produce inbound marketing campaigns
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Specialist
Automate emails and workflows, create personalized templates and tokens, produce inbound marketing campaigns
Growth Marketing Associate
Automate emails and workflows, nurture sales opportunities, create personalized templates and tokens, produce inbound marketing campaigns
Marketing Assistant
Automate emails and workflows, nurture sales opportunities, create personalized templates and tokens, produce inbound marketing campaigns
Email Marketing Executive
Automate emails and workflows, nurture sales opportunities, create personalized templates and tokens
Marketing Manager
Automate emails and workflows, create personalized templates and tokens, produce inbound marketing campaigns
Performance Marketing Lead
Automate emails and workflows, nurture sales opportunities, produce inbound marketing campaigns
Copywriter
Automate emails and workflows, nurture sales opportunities, create personalized templates and tokens, produce inbound marketing campaigns
Should You Use HubSpot?
Yes, because it makes business productivity easier and more efficient. With the CRM that comes with it, you’ll reach more customers and have more quality leads. In addition, HubSpot has relevant popular features to grow your marketing and sales. It has HubSpot CRM, an SEO tool, reporting tools, the HubSpot Sales Hub, and the HubSpot Marketing Hub.
How to Use HubSpot FAQ
Is HubSpot easy to use?
Yes, HubSpot is easy to use because it has a simple layout. In addition, it has other-party benefits such as Gmail integration and those for social media profiles. First-time HubSpot users will have no trouble learning the ins and outs of the program.
How is HubSpot used in marketing?
HubSpot is used in marketing to attract visitors, get leads, and convert them into paying customers. This is done because HubSpot is a platform with popular features that combine the marketing and sales departments in one place.
Is HubSpot good for SEO?
Yes, it is good for SEO because it has a marketing hub that contains built-in SEO best practices and tools.
What makes HubSpot different?
HubSpot is different from other programs because it is an intuitive and scalable program that provides greater business productivity due to its popular features like the HubSpot Sales Hub.
Without a doubt, innovation drives today’s fast-paced, technology-driven and highly competitive business environment. To survive, companies must lead with innovation to evolve, adapt and anticipate the needs and wants of their consumers.
The radical shift in how companies conduct business due to the pandemic has accelerated conversations around innovation and strategy. Business leaders are looking for new ways to enhance customer experience, reduce costs, drive revenue and grow market share. To meet these objectives, many have embraced the concept of innovation. However, their efforts tend to fall flat or end up delivering undesirable results because they fail to include certain critical elements of a successful innovation strategy.
5 Elements of a Successful Innovation Strategy
Five critical elements lie at the core of any successful innovation strategy: Innovation Culture, Leadership Buy-In, Enable Team Members, Reward and Recognize, and Defined Metrics and KPIs. These concepts are imperative to achieving results and maintaining a scalable, sustainable innovation model.
1. Build an Innovation Culture
Companies successful at innovation have a specific mindset and pattern for generating and implementing new ideas. Pushing innovation without having a culture to support creative thinking will fail – wasting valuable time, money and resources in the process.
The first step in building an innovative company culture is to get a pulse and accurate read on where the company stands with innovation. Meetings with leadership and surveys of your team members will help you gauge the level of existing innovation culture. From here, you can focus your efforts on how to build or support your innovation culture.
Remember: Transparency plays a significant role in engaging all team members in innovation. Constant communication, training and check-ins at all levels help establish transparent dialogue on how innovation can create positive change – fuelling innovation culture.
2. Innovation Requires Leadership Buy-In
Leaders must be aligned with one another and have a shared appreciation for innovation principles. Leadership buy-in may come from a passion for client service, constantly seeking faster and simpler ways to do business, making time to innovate, or sharing and scaling results. When leaders don’t believe in the process, their mindset quickly trickles to the rest of the team — which stops innovation culture in its tracks. Remember: It’s not just what you say. It’s explicit decisions and subtle behaviours that inspire innovation and keep it at the forefront of a company’s culture.
A successful innovation strategy reinforces leadership buy-in by consistently highlighting the positive outcomes of innovation through team member engagement at all levels throughout the innovation process.
3. Team Members Need the Tools and Resources to Innovate
Equip your team members with the right tools and resources to innovate. When you provide everyone in your company with the structure, process and tools necessary to connect and share their knowledge, you give anyone permission to innovate. Many of the most impactful, innovative ideas come from those who do the work, day-in and day-out. Remember: Enabling your team members gives them the power to have a voice and take ownership in the innovation process.
Whether ideating independently or collaborating in a group, it contributes to enhancing a company’s innovation culture. Cloud-based innovation platforms also enable businesses to strengthen engagement and collaboration. Innovation platforms are another tool to keep your people inspired, ideas organized and teams accountable throughout your innovation journey.
4. Reward and Recognize Innovation at Its Roots
A big reason companies fail to innovate is because they do not recognize and reward their people for their contributions to innovation. When you fail to give credit or always acknowledge those who lead the teams rather than those involved in the ideation of an innovative concept, other team members grow discouraged and quickly lose the desire to think creatively.
Recognizing individuals who contribute to your innovation goals is an essential piece of a successful innovation strategy. Remember: Acknowledgment reinforces desired innovative behaviours and promotes an innovation culture.
Also, realize everyone has different strengths, so some will be better at different phases of the innovation process than others. Therefore, you must reward and recognize often at every stage of the innovation process – from ideation through execution. Try a combination of financial incentives like gift cards or bonuses, paid time off, office parties, company-wide emails, awards, workspace decorations, or a celebration hub and digital wall of fame. Whatever incentive fits your company culture, ensure you reward and recognize team members for their innovative contributions.
5. Define Metrics and KPIs Which Drive Innovation (and Support Business Objectives)
As a business leader, defined metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential to tracking your company’s goals. The same logic applies to innovation. Choose KPIs that relate to your business objectives, corporate mindset and team behaviours.
Be transparent on what metrics and KPIs support and drive company-wide innovation. Some examples of innovation metrics and KPIs include:
Number of team members trained
Number of ideas submitted
Number of ideas executed
Total revenue generation
Total cost savings
Remember: If you don’t measure it, you won’t achieve it.
What’s Your Innovation Strategy?
When you look at your company’s approach to innovation, does it include the five elements of a successful innovation strategy? If not, revisit your approach. In a rapidly evolving business environment, harnessing the power of creativity is the key to staying competitive. Don’t risk failure and being surrounded by a pool of innovative ideas just out of reach.
Feature Image Credit: Elements of a Successful Innovation Strategy
Molly Goins-Cox is the Chief Innovation Officer at Withum. In her role, Molly partners with Withum’s executives, senior leadership across the business, and key cross-functional teams to strategize, build and execute company-wide technology initiatives.
Your iPhone has secret apps. Do you know how to find them?
There’s no reason to let your iPhone keep secrets from you, especially when those secrets could be so helpful in your everyday life. For instance, you may not be aware that any iPhone with a relatively modern version of iOS installed has hidden apps that you might actually want to use. Here’s how to surface the ones that aren’t so easy to find.
Code Scanner
You can scan a QR code by opening your Camera, but there’s also a Code Scanner app in iOS 14 and later that doesn’t come up when you search your iPhone apps. From Settings, tap Control Centre, scroll down to find Code Scanner and then hit the plus sign to move it into the Included Controls section. When you’re ready to use Code Scanner, just swipe down from the top right of your iPhone to open the Control Centre, then tap on the Code Scanner icon, which will bring up a camera view with the prompt, “Find a code to scan.”
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Magnifier
Likewise, Camera isn’t the only app that will allow you to get a zoomed-in view of your immediate environment. The hidden Magnifier app will not only bring you closer, but it’ll also allow you to adjust the brightness. Use the same process as with the Code Scanner to put Magnifier in your Control Centre. Tap Settings, Control Centre and the plus sign next to Magnifier, then swipe down from the top right of your iPhone to open the Control Centre. The slider adjusts zoom level (or you can pinch to zoom), and you can swipe up on it for more controls, including a shutter button, settings, flashlight, and adjustments for brightness, contrast, colour filters, etc.
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Field Test Mode
It may be Murphy’s Law that your iPhone has the weakest connectivity in the part of your house where you want to use it the most, but Field Test Mode can help you figure out the strength of your signal in numbers, not bars. In order to use Field Test Mode, you should first turn off Wi-Fi in your Control Centre or Settings. Then, open the Phone app and enter the following sequence of symbols and numbers:
*3001#12345#*
Then press the Call button, which will bring up the Field Test dashboard, where you can see which cellular bands you’re connected to, signal strength, and so much more.
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Feedback Assistant
If you’re good at identifying bugs, you should use Feedback Assistant (on iOS 12.4 and later) to report any that you find on Apple TV, Apple Watch, or HomePod. Automatic might catch a lot, but there’s no substitute for a good personal bug report. Open the Safari app and type applefeedback:// as the URL. This will open the Feedback Assistant which will prompt you to sign in using your Apple ID. If you’re using an iOS beta release, this app is likely visible in your App Library and may have been added to your home screen, but it’s secretly there even if you’re not running a beta version of iOS.
From web development to branding and design, there are plenty of moving parts when launching a new website, but your SEO strategy shouldn’t be an afterthought.
In fact, your SEO strategy should be one of the primary considerations before you even start your website. To take things a step further, the best case scenario would be that your website structure is fully built based on the SEO strategy you already have in place. Doing this from the get-go saves lots of headaches for things like web development, content formatting and design, URL structures, and more.
So instead of fighting to make your website SEO-ready later on (which, trust me, is always an uphill battle), start with this holistic SEO checklist for new websites and save yourself valuable time and resources, and experience the beauty of good SEO (i.e. revenue) in a fraction of the time.
Why is SEO valuable for new websites?
New websites are like infants. They can’t comprehend language yet (no indexed pages), they don’t have many friends (no backlinks), and thus also have no authority (aka they can’t do much for society, yet).
As time presses on, Google starts to sniff out and apply changes as your website matures (assuming the SEO strategy is done right), and you’ll soon see that there are some big kids on the playground to contend with.
But don’t be afraid, all you need is a clever SEO strategy.
A baby website can start by focusing on longtail, low-competition keywords until it works its way up to toddler, then teenager, then full-fledged adult. Over time, with some tender SEO love and care, your new website can grow to compete and even overtake the strongest of competition.
So, if you’re ready to fast forward your baby website to an adult and beat the competition, just follow this SEO checklist for new websites!
1. Pick the right domain name (you can’t change it after!)
The right domain name is associated with SEO equity, so aligning your company and brand name with your domain name is critical. When you have a new domain, you’re essentially starting your SEO from scratch.
So, how do you find a domain name?
Here are some popular options to check if the domain you’d like to purchase is available:
Bonus points if your brand has a keyword similar to what you do as a business. It’s helpful, although not a must. If in doubt, choose a smooth brand name over a keyword.
2. Choose a high-speed website hosting provider
I personally recommend Siteground for its 100% uptime reliability, quick page time loads, and support (specifically for WordPress users). The host’s quality has a gigantic impact on your site’s performance, especially when it comes to a dedicated IP, SSD, HDD or other forms of storing, processor, and operational systems.
Google Search Console is like your SEO fairy godmother. It’ll provide you with tons of that that you need to achieve SEO success. With Google Search Console, you can check things like:
Page speed issues
Organic keywords that bring in website clicks
Your average click through rate (CTR)
Sitemap submission
Crawl and index errors
Page performance
…and much more!
But before we get too ahead of ourselves, make sure to verify your website in Google Search Console, so that it starts to collect data. You’ve got a few options to do this, which are outlined here.
Once you buy your domain name, Google Search Console is up and running, and you’ve got a speedy host, you’ve built the bare minimum for a website, and it’s now time to focus on developing your SEO strategy.
Quick note: at this stage, you may want to also consider adding Google Analytics to your website, as that is often the starter database for all of your marketing data. However, with recent updates regarding data privacy changes in the EU, I suggest not to rely too heavily on it and check for an analytics platform that matches your country’s customer data privacy laws.
4. Study your SEO competition
Once you’ve completed the essentials for your website, it’s time to study the competition. When analysing and making a list of your competitors consider these questions:
How is their company similar to yours? How is it different? Check out their unique selling points.
What topics do they write about?
What keywords are they already ranking for?
One super important thing to consider here is your true “SEO competitors”. Every business has product and service competitors (people who sell similar stuff), but that doesn’t mean they have an SEO strategy that’s worth trying to outperform. The key here is to identify who sells similar stuff, writes similar content, and is piling up top keyword rankings. Those are your “SEO competitors”, and they’re who you want to beat.
Once you’ve identified your SEO competitors, it’s time to perform a keyword gap analysis. A keyword gap analysis uncovers the keywords you need to rank for in comparison to competitors, in order to close the gap. And with a bit of intentional filtering, you can indeed use this information to soon outrank them.
Here’s a snackable checklist to perform a keyword gap analysis:
Add your root domain versus your chosen competitor root domains into an SEO tool like Moz.
Review the competitor overlap and shared keywords.
Export that into a spreadsheet and filter for the keywords that are relevant for your website (this is where the manual work comes into play, but it’s time that’s extremely well spent, especially because it helps you build your keyword map).
Keywords are at the centre of your SEO strategy, because they’re what connects search queries to your content listed in the SERPs.
Google’s goal is to use the keywords used in search queries to identify and present the most valuable information to searchers, otherwise known as “search intent”.
For example, let’s say you live in Los Angeles and you want to order delivery pizza, so you Google “pizza delivery Los Angeles”. Something similar to the image below pops up (though it can vary based on your search history and IP address):
As the searcher, Google has understood that your “search intent” was to order delivery pizza from businesses in Los Angeles, so the SERPs directly show businesses that match that criteria. Google uses that concept to match keywords with content all day, every day, no matter whether someone wants to buy pizza, compare CRM software, or find socks for their boyfriend.
A keyword is only as powerful as the search intent it matches.
Say you want to make some vegetarian dishes, but you don’t have all the time in the world to do it so you type “quick vegetarian dishes” into Google.
You tap the first one and find it takes two hours to make.
“Ugh! That’s not the one” you think to yourself.
You’re onto the next one and then the next.
Finally the third link down only takes 15 minutes to make.
“Okay, now we’re talking!”
If there are enough people intending to find a quick vegetarian meal and discover that the third option delivers on that “quick” part, then chances are that page will rank higher for intent and keyword matches and eventually overtake the first option.
Let’s now put this into context for your SEO strategy.
Understanding search intent plays a major role with buyer journey stages, so ensuring that you’re crafting content that’s appropriate for buyers in the awareness, consideration, and decision stage is crucial to carrying out the most effective SEO plan.
I often create SEO strategies for the B2B world, so understanding where the reader is in their decision-making process is crucial. If someone searches “what is marketing automation”, you wouldn’t want to give them a full-blown software landing page, because they’re probably not even ready to buy it yet. They just want to understand what marketing automation is. That’s where SEO comes into play and provides that informational content in order to build up brand credibility — emphasis on the “informational” part there. When done correctly, that same reader will come back to you when they’re ready to buy.
As with all things in marketing, being helpful is always more successful than aggressively trying to sell something to someone who isn’t ready.
So when choosing keywords, you’ll need to consider both search intent and the buyer journey by asking questions like:
Does the keyword truly match my product or service?
Does the keyword match questions that customers have asked (or might ask) throughout their buying journey?
What is the keyword’s difficulty? (level of competition to rank for that keyword)
What is the search volume of the keyword?
What page types appear in the SERPs for this keyword? (blog vs landing page vs home page)
The number one SEO strategy essential: your keyword map
At AS Marketing, we make this keyword selection process simple by using an SEO playbook to create a keyword map, which ultimately becomes the content strategy for new websites:
Step 1: We review where the website is now in terms of what’s ranking, what the top pages are, and create benchmarks for key SEO and website engagement stats. With a brand new baby website, this probably zero, but that’s ok, because this playbook also turns SEO zeros to heroes!
Step 2: We do a keyword gap analysis based on top SEO competitors, expand on the keyword list with our own keyword research, and then create a website structure that can achieve the desired business goals. If we know where the website is versus where it wants to be, we can strategize to make that happen. We also consider how users will find content coming from Google organic search as well when searching around on the website, so we always strive to find a balance.
Step 3: We then build a thorough keyword list that spans across the entire buyer journey, including all relevant product or service keywords and organize that into the main content verticals (content that scales and compounds organic search volume over time). Content verticals are often website sections such as industry pages, the blog, use case pages, product pages, and more.
Step 4: Now it’s time for the keyword map – the most important part of your SEO strategy. When creating this map, we cluster keywords (put related keywords into groups), so we know exactly what pages to create in terms of landing pages, blog articles, services pages, or collections and products. Importantly, we’re also getting aligned on the most efficient keyword for a website to try and rank for. Once we know this, we write out the URLs, headings, meta data, and more.
Now comes the fun part, building out your content calendar and breathing life into your website.
6. Build a strategic content calendar (and keep posting)
When done consistently and with intention, a strategic content calendar naturally attracts customers and helps you rank for keywords.
Here’s how to build such a content plan:
Prioritize sections of your keyword map: You might well end up with a keyword map that spans 100+ pages. This is actually a good thing, as it means you have a lot of space to accumulate organic traffic (remember, even multi-million monthly traffic websites like HubSpot began with zero!). To start, you’ll want to prioritize pages that your website needs right away, such as product or service pages, as those have the highest likelihood to result in conversions and generate revenue for your business.
Optimize your content: Writing content that ranks does take some best practice flex. Don’t forget to use keywords in the H1, URL, and metadata. If you’ve truly matched keywords with search intent, this comes naturally through writing anyways – keyword stuffing be gone!
Track your keyword rankings: Once you publish content, keep an eye on how it’s performing. Even if you start out way down at the bottom, content can absolutely move up over time as Google perceives your content to be trustworthy, you provide a good user experience, and your Domain Authority increases. Patience is a virtue here!
Post consistently: In order to improve those last three points, you need a consistent publishing schedule. There’s no one exact number, but I often recommend at least 4 new website pages per month. Remember that SEO has a compounding effect, so the more individual pages rank, the more likely it is that content across your entire domain ranks.
7. Ensure an optimized URL structure
I mentioned putting keywords in your URL briefly above in the content calendar section, but I’ll mention it again, because it is super important for ensuring that your content is being set up properly.
In the words of Rand Fishkin, “if there’s other keywords you haven’t used, or URLs you haven’t targeted with certain keywords, you do so during this process. This way you’re covering your tracks, making certain there are words and phrases that are covered early on.”
Also remember that URLs are permanent, so changing one is like starting any SEO attached to that URL from scratch. It’s always best to choose a URL-friendly system and stick with it to avoid any sudden drop in organic traffic or rankings. And if you have to update them, be sure to redirect the old URL to the new one, so any backlinks attached to it don’t disappear.
8. Review Core Web Vitals and page experience
Just like you go to check your core vitals at the doctor, you should do the same for your website to steer clear of any unnecessary issues.
SEO has been around for a while. There’s tons and tons of content out there and more is being published every day. This means that Google is having an increasingly tough time differentiating who to give the top spots, so CWV and page experience are a way to differentiate the SEO winners and losers. SEO is no longer just about putting keywords in the right places, it now also involves content format, design, page load speed, as well as user behaviour — like time on page and bounce rates.
In a nutshell, sustainable SEO success no longer ends with the click, you have to wholeheartedly satisfy your readers while they’re on the page in order to consistently rank.
The simplest way to review your website’s Core Web Vitals and site speed chops is to pop your domain into PageSpeed Insights.
While this is an extremely technical part of SEO, PageSpeed Insights quickly identifies errors and suggests how to fix them in plain English.
Here’s an example of what the results might look like:
If you have a score that comes up as yellow or red, you’ll see suggestions you can show to your developer in order to improve.
9. Observe accessibility
Accessibility simply means how easy it is for users (and search engines) to access the information on your website. This element is taken into consideration as a ranking factor. You want an accessible site for everyone, right? Of course, you’ll want to make sure that your content is being indexed and crawled correctly, but you can also take these steps to ensure that happens:
Optimize alt text in images (for screen readers)
Use enough contrast (make sure your colours are easy on the eye)
Correctly label elements like buttons
Make your font size big enough to read
10. Promote, promote, promote
Whether for SEO or not, your website content shouldn’t just be published and sit there. The phrase “build it and they will come” is completely untrue when it comes to SEO.
You have put in the effort to create your content, so it deserves to be shown to your audience. Think about where you already have a strong presence and harness that. Maybe it’s on social media, YouTube, or your email list. Whatever the case may be, think about how you can use other channels to drive even more traffic to your website. This in turn improves your SEO, because the more people who spend time on your website, the more Google identifies that you have trustworthy content.
And if you aren’t getting the traction you hoped for when all your SEO efforts are said and done, you may even think about paid traffic for the first few months (after all, Google loves their money, and rewards those who pay). Doing this will help you to test your website design and content with pay per click visitors, so you can use this data to quickly adjust your SEO accordingly!
Now you’re set for SEO success
Ultimately, SEO is a marathon, and not a sprint. Your overall focus point should be laying down a strong website structure from the get-go, so you can scale easily and accumulate monthly organic traffic.
As you move along with your SEO strategy, continue to monitor and update so you can optimize for the best results. With ever-changing competitor strategies and trends, your SEO strategy should never be put in autopilot. Consistent hard work brings in consistent results.
Bam! There you have it – a bulletproof SEO checklist for new websites!
You’ve taken the time to capture customers’ attention and signed them up for your email newsletter. This is a great way to keep in contact with your audience so they remain attentive and loyal. Inevitably, however, some of those email subscribers will lose interest and stop interacting. What then?
When business-as-usual communications like email newsletters aren’t working like they used to, it’s time to cook up some content specifically designed to get inactive subscribers’ eyeballs back where they belong: on your brand.
It’s time to send a re-engagement email.
The exact form of your re-engagement email will differ depending on whether you’re a business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) company, as well as the interests and preferences of your unique audience. The overall goal is always the same, however: Re-engagement emails are meant to reinvigorate a customer connection that has lost its spark.
Email Re-Engagement: What It Is and How It Works
Every company that engages directly with its customers hopes that those customers will respond in kind, clicking through links and coming back to shop with the business again. Re-engagement emails are for the other customers.
The targets of re-engagement messages may have subscribed to a mailing list, but stopped opening or interacting with the messages they’re receiving. Or they might have started making an e-commerce purchase but didn’t finish it. Companies use re-engagement email campaigns to shake up the normal communication cadence and turn at least some of these disengaged customers and dormant subscribers back into active participants.
Businesses can reach out with special offers, new subscription options, specially targeted messages and more. At best, they’ll stoke engagement without the effort that goes into finding new leads.
Even if the email campaign doesn’t work, the company has gathered useful intelligence about what customers are interested in. This is a source of knowledge marketers shouldn’t take for granted. The Content Marketing Institute asked B2B marketers about the metrics that provided insight into the overall performance of their content. Nearly two-thirds, 64%, said email engagement is a useful indicator.
Remember: Some Disengagement Is Natural
Before getting started on a re-engagement email strategy, it’s important to acknowledge that you can’t bring everyone back. Flodesk pointed out a few legitimate reasons why unengaged subscribers stop interacting with brands:
The passage of time has changed the customers’ circumstances, and the products aren’t relevant anymore.
Customers are connecting with the company through another channel, and are ignoring email.
Subscribers simply want fewer marketing emails, so they’re not engaging with as many companies anymore.
In these cases, it’s better to simply cull those lapsed subscribers from the mailing list, therefore making the email list a more accurate representation of engaged customers.
However, as Flodesk added, there are cases when a brand can change up its tactics and win an inactive customer back. This is where re-engagement emails shine.
How Re-Engagement Works
Re-engagement emails break up the normal cadence of communication, serving as a break from something that isn’t working. They are designed to speak directly to a customer’s interests, so that person will return to the fold. There are a few types of re-engagement tactics, each with its own approach:
1. Encouraging a Customer To Complete an E-Commerce Transaction
Cart abandonment in e-commerce is a major problem. Fresh Relevance found in its Q2 2021 report that customers abandon their carts at a rate of 59.2%. Immediately following up with these shoppers through an automatic email can win some of them back. Maybe they forgot about the items, or perhaps the message will remind them why they wanted it in the first place.
2. Re-Engaging an Inactive Subscriber
Has a customer signed up to receive emails from your company, but not engaged with the links in those emails? In that case, it’s time to launch a more thorough re-engagement campaign, compared to abandoned cart email. It could begin with a direct question about whether the person wants to keep receiving emails, an offer to modify subscription settings or a free gift or coupon.
3. Deepening an Interaction With a Customer
Not every re-engagement campaign is about winning over a customer who has stopped communicating with a brand. Sometimes, it’s beneficial to be proactive and ask follow-up questions of someone who has clicked a link in a previous email. This is a way to gather feedback and keep the company top of mind, as kind of a preemptive effort to prevent disengagement.
While each of those objectives is different, the approach to achieving them is basically the same: The company sends a well-crafted email outside of its normal pattern and, ideally, gets a response.
Due to the prevalence of email marketing automation platforms, there is not much overhead associated with sending out messages. This means email re-engagement can be a low-risk tactic that yields potentially great rewards.
Examples of Successful Re-engagement Emails
Re-engagement emails work when they earn attention. This is broadly true of any email communication, but when it comes to re-engagement, awareness is absolutely critical. The email subscriber or e-commerce customer in question hasn’t been doing something the company wants, so this new message is designed to bring them back before their attention wanders further.
So, what are some examples of messages that have piqued recipients’ interest?
The Old Farmer’s Store
The situation: The company sent an email recommending aprons in its e-commerce store. The recipient clicked on one of the aprons to learn more, then didn’t follow through on buying it.
The response: A few hours later, The Old Farmer’s Store sent a second email, this time directly asking the shopper to “take another look” at the apron in question with the subject line “We love what you found”.
Craftsy
The situation: A customer was browsing the Craftsy website, but didn’t engage with the company’s services, due to an unwillingness to pay the price to use them.
The response: The site sent out a re-engagement email saying that the customer’s browsing “makes us feel pretty special,” and included a discount code.
Xero Shoes
The situation: A shopper signed up for the Xero Shoes newsletter, but did not purchase any products from the company.
The response: Xero’s re-engagement email combined an eye-catching subject line (“my apologies… :-(“) with two different discount offers, as well as the honest admission that the company was sending the email because the subscriber had not read its recent emails.
The messages in each email example are designed to work on a different time frame, and they offer a range of enticements to encourage re-engagement. The first represents a quick hit to keep a transaction going, while the latter two are customer appreciation emails designed to drum up business with discounts and offers. The third combines that appeal with the must-click factor of a bold headline.
By mixing and matching email marketing strategies, companies can turn all types of situations into opportunities to re-engage customers and create engaged subscribers, building their own email success stories.
Best Practices for Email Re-Engagement
Creating a re-engagement email is not the same as crafting a standard email. After all, the objective of a re-engagement campaign is to get a different reaction than what the recipient has shown so far. That means the business has to switch up its approach to reclaim customers’ attention.
What are some tactics that can elevate a re-engagement email and get results?
Don’t send anything without a compelling headline: As Industrial Marketer pointed out, the headline of a re-engagement email is essentially the most important part. Without a headline that encourages a click, the actual content of the message won’t be read, and as such is meaningless. Industrial Marketer suggested being professional and straightforward in B2B spaces, with B2C campaigns leaving more room for emotion, such as saying “I miss you” directly in the text.
Pick your moment to follow up: How long is long enough to wait for a customer to respond or act before you send a re-engagement email? According to GetResponse, that depends on what type of action you’re looking for from the recipient. For example, more than 50% of emails will be opened within 6 hours, so if a company is running a limited-time promotion, the 6-hour mark is a fine moment to reach out to customers who haven’t acted yet. In longer-term situations, GetResponse recommends waiting a day or more, or simply not responding in all cases. Not every disengagement demands an immediate re-engagement.
Use what you know about customers: There is one tactic that applies to all forms of email marketing. Namely, sending relevant content. Effective email campaigns are based on audience segmentation, giving offers and recommendations that will resonate with segments of the customer base. Re-engagement campaigns should be the same. Impersonal or irrelevant email blasts aren’t appreciated the first time around, so they don’t stand much chance of winning over a disengaged subscriber.
A successful re-engagement campaign uses key features of email marketing, such as tailoring content to maximize open rate, picking the right send interval and targeting customers based on their interests. It simply dials these approaches up to make sure the emails are especially compelling and able to serve their purpose.
How We Use Re-engagement Tactics in Email Campaigns
As a content marketing agency, Brafton has helped clients design a variety of email marketing strategies, and these include re-engagement offerings. The following are a few specific tactics we’ve employed to reconnect companies with their customers, across a variety of industries and scenarios:
1. Quick Follow-up for Feedback
This approach applies when a customer has clicked through to a piece of content, such as an eBook they requested. It asks for a customer opinion on the deliverable. That, in turn, is a good prompt to gather some insights from the recipient. Additionally, if they haven’t looked closely at the content, it could encourage them to check it out.
2. Unopened Email Follow-up
A more direct form of re-engagement than a follow-up to an opened email, this line of action is basically a do-over. When a customer has engaged with content in the past but not checked out a recent email message, this is just a reminder to take a look.
3. Direct Request for Reply
If a company is looking for a specific response from a client who has been out of touch for a while, sometimes the best approach is to be direct. Rather than a marketing email with links to click on, the business can send a message asking for the recipient to write back directly.
4. Newsletter Email Subscriber Survey
This type of email can re-engage people who have not been interacting with scheduled emails. It gives them a chance to voice their opinions about what they would like to see differently in the future.
5. Straightforward Re-engagement Campaign
When a customer has been out of touch for a while, the best way to check-in can be via an email that asks, in the subject line, whether that person still wants to receive emails. If they say yes, it’s a direct re-engagement with the brand, and if not, it’s a sign to cull a lapsed customer. In either case, the recipient may appreciate that the company is giving a chance to opt-out, not clinging.
6. New Subscription Type Offer
A variation on the newsletter subscriber survey, this kind of email gives customers the chance to subscribe to a new and different newsletter from the same sender. It’s a good tool for reaching once-active subscribers who have recently not been as responsive.
7. Giveaways and Offers
A little incentive can be just what a customer needs to take a second look at a company. Of course, the giveaway or coupon should have value and be tied to the recipient’s interests, or else it will end up seeing the same fate as all the other communications the customer has been ignoring.
These are just a few of the re-engagement tactics available. Any company can set its own terms of re-engagement, based on what matters to that business. Cart abandonment, a lack of engagement, a change in account status — any trigger can earn an email response.
As long as a company has accurate customer data, a well-thought-out email marketing strategy and the technology to support its efforts, there’s nothing stopping that business from re-engaging its inactive email subscribers. Next time you’re worried about your own audience slipping away, ask yourself if there’s a message that could lure people back.
By Anthony Basile
Anthony Basile has been part of Brafton since 2012, having written and edited every form of content that Google’s algorithm has favoured (there have been a few). When off the clock, he sings and plays guitar at the pubs and clubs of Boston.
