editor, Author at Mediastreet

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What is B2B marketing automation? | A small business guide to automated digital marketing

December 6, 2021 No Comments

Learn how to implement B2B marketing automation to effectively streamline your marketing efforts, save time, and keep your teams in sync.

What is B2B marketing automation?

Marketing automation refers to the systems and automated processes that organizations use to facilitate various marketing activities. For B2B professionals, it’s often used to secure leads and monitor their account needs before and during the sales lifecycle. The right marketing automation setup depends on factors such as your current initiatives, the size of your organization, and the customer journey you want to implement.

Why should businesses use marketing automation?

Modern B2B marketers often have to deal with many moving parts, including content marketing, social media engagement, email campaign management, and SEO upkeep, as the minimum marketing effort to stay competitive.

As with B2C marketers, B2B marketing automation can help save time to focus on these efforts. We’ll be looking into how some B2C automated marketing campaigns can help inspire your B2B marketing drive later on.

In this article, we’ll be diving into all things SMB marketing automation. You’ll learn what it is, why it’s important, how you can make it work in your business. We’ll also walk you through its history and share marketing automation examples that you can draw inspiration from.

The importance of automation in B2B digital marketing

While there are countless apps out there that can help you run your promotional initiatives, keeping your marketing operations functioning smoothly can still be a major challenge. Even the most robust email apps or the best content marketing tools won’t work well if they don’t integrate with your other marketing solutions.

This is why marketing automation for small businesses is so important. Marketing automation helps you achieve your marketing efforts faster. When implemented correctly, marketing automation platforms can streamline lead generation for SMB owners by ensuring real-time data sync across software platforms and automating the operational aspects of B2B digital marketing tasks—at any interval of your choice—so you can focus on the wider B2B marketing roadmap.

Logitech afstandswerken — (Image credit: Logitech)

Example: How B2B automation can improve your email marketing campaigns

For example, from the moment they subscribe to your email marketing list you likely want to keep new sales leads engaged with your marketing content. This is key if you’re an SMB owner trying to get to know your client base better. Wouldn’t it be great if you could automatically:

1) Personalize the email subject line and greeting with the business contact’s name

2) Ensure they get relevant brand content throughout their client lifecycle, with personalized product or service recommendations and promotional offers to position them for another point of sale

3) Monitor their email open rate in their first few months of sign up to learn which business content they enjoy most and the best time of day for them to open your email, via an automated email analytics report

Well, with a marketing automation platform you can. Plenty of automated marketing platforms like Klaviyo, MailChimp and Hubspot are designed specifically for growth marketing across all your marketing channels. Pardot, B2B marketing automation by Salesforce, is perhaps the most popular B2B marketing automation pick.

B2C automation inspiration for B2B marketing automation

Before we jump into marketing automation for small business, let’s look at two B2C companies who use marketing automation expertly: UK bank Monzo and global music favourite, Spotify.

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(Image credit: Monzo)

Case study: Monzo’s #YearInMonzo personalized automated marketing emails

Monzo automated marketing email year in review

(Image credit: Monzo)

Case study: Monzo’s Year in Monzo personalized automated marketing emails

(Image credit: Monzo)

Case study: Monzo’s #YearInMonzo personalized automated marketing emails

(Image credit: Monzo)

Case study: Monzo’s Year in Monzo personalized automated marketing emails

Popular online bank Monzo are well known for their community focused, user-first approach both in their services and marketing efforts. In fact, back in 2018 they partnered with “the world’s largest automation platform — IFTTT.” It follows then that their email marketing campaigns are customer led and personalized, even when automated.

Despite having over five million customers Monzo uses marketing automation to create a year-in-review ‘Year in Monzo’ email of individual spending habits. Not only is this a helpful customer summary it also serves as brand engagement via personalization.

Naturally, customers also receive an annual statement of fees, but this works as a softer banking approach with a Snapchat-style carousel of interactive graphics, custom user data and Monzo’s trademark playful design. This kind of engagement can be invaluable for brands, especially if leads to customer-generated marketing such as the tweet shown above in the picture carousel.

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Spotify marketing automation: Spotify Wrapped

(Image credit: Spotify)

Case study: Spotify’s annual Wrapped campaign for listeners and artists using data automization

(Image credit: Spotify)

Case study: Spotify’s annual Wrapped campaign for listeners and artists using data automization

(Image credit: Spotify)

Case study: Spotify’s annual Wrapped campaign for listeners and artists using data automization

Spotify’s yearly Wrapped email marketing campaign is an excellent example of using customer personalization and marketing automation in tandem. Each year Spotify draws listeners back to its platform by recapping their favourite songs, artists and genres via an automated email that encapsulates their musical journey in those 52 weeks. It’s pretty genius to use someone’s own music tastes as time capsule for the purpose of getting them to use your product again. Never underestimate nostalgia!

📖Read next: What is digital marketing

Snapchat, Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp 3D logos — (Image credit: Alexander Shatov via Unsplash)

We break down the history, development and modern online marketing trends plus examples in our What is digital marketing? guide.

The brilliant thing about thing about the campaign is it starts off as email automation and expands into gamification. Using the email link, customers can find personalized playlists made by Spotify, favourite podcast insights, and can even quiz themselves on their favourite artists of the year. Not bad for a company that has over 170 million premium subscribers alone.

Their automated marketing efforts don’t stop there however. The Spotify Wrapped annual automated marketing campaign is also utilized for B2B marketing automation. Spotify send artists on the platform a similar round-up of number of streams broken down into countries, hours and unique listeners.

B2B marketing automation example: Slack

Slack for Enterprise landing page — (Image credit: Slack)

The ‘get report’ CTA pictured here is just the start of using B2B marketing automation to entice leads. Once the user clicks the link, they are directed to a webform which will trigger an automated email containing a link to the promised report and confirmation that they have been signed up to Slack’s marketing content.

More importantly though, the company data added to the webform is segmented by everything from the reader’s business department role, to the company they work at, its size and vitally a company contact email address to help Slack convert a single sign-up into a long term business customer.

Slack’s B2B marketing automation model is incredibly successful and you can use it as a case study to inspire automation along your own B2B automation journey. As well as considering what you want to share with your leads to generate business, also think about:

1) What they want to read and learn about, and how your product/service can directly meet that need

2) The best time to share that information with them

3) The most engaging way to deliver it

Slack chatbot on Slack homepage — (Image credit: Slack)

Their webchat bot is another great example of using B2B marketing automation to your advantage. Before the user even gets to the live chat stage with a Slack employee, the bot has already offered them the information they need to find out whether Slack’s product is suitable for their business.

This way, by the time the Slack employee speaks to the prospect not only have they been engaged with quality educational brand content, they’re a near-qualified lead who’ve decided this product is worth investing time in.

Added benefits of B2B marketing automation 💡

Along with saving you time and getting more work done on your behalf, marketing automation also keeps your teams in sync. Automation is dependably consistent after all.

This is key if you’re a global B2B company or remotely working team, as it’s important that certain tasks are automated to stop confusion across colleague and client time zones. Of course, when your B2B marketing automation efforts are successful you’ll also see a lift in business sales.

Different types of marketing automation

Customer relationship management

A business client is still a customer in need of care, and there are many tasks that come with ensuring healthy customer relationships. These include tracking customer data and purchasing history, as well as regularly touching base with shoppers to ensure they’re happy.

You can streamline these components by using solutions that enable you to collect and manage customer data from one place. B2B marketing automation can also automate tasks like sending follow-up emails and notifications to customers.

Pardot by Salesforce marketing automation product illustration — (Image credit: Pardot by Salesforce)

Automated customer re-engagement

B2B marketing automation tools also let you re-engage with your customers when you haven’t done business with them in a while.

Some brands, for example, automatically send “We miss you” messages to customers who haven’t purchased in a while.

Other businesses use automation tools to help them re-engage when they release new products or services. With the right B2B marketing automation software it’s simple to personalize automated emails with content related to the businesses current needs, so they are prompted to buy.

Marketing automation vs. CRM: what’s the difference?

While B2B marketing automation and B2B customer relationship management (CRM) tend to overlap, they do have some key differences. In short, CRM requires human input to nurture business relationships while marketing automation is self-regulated after human instruction is given.

The longer explanation is: CRM refers specifically to practices related to managing your customer relationships. Software solutions that focus specifically on CRM typically offer features like a robust database as well as capabilities to communicate with customers.

However, CRM software alone doesn’t necessarily automate your marketing. A CRM software may give you the ability to capture and store customer data, but it may not have features to support drip campaigns or marketing and sales handover.

On the other hand, B2B marketing automation platforms often have CRM features built-in, which means you’re able to communicate with customers and run campaigns in addition to managing your relationships with them.

B2B marketing automation vs. Active campaign management

Marketing activities typically involve several distinct campaigns. They may include things like PR initiatives, social media campaigns, influencer outreach, and more. The act of managing these specific campaigns (i.e., ironing budgets, timelines, and scope) would fall into campaign management.

Meanwhile, anything related to automating the activities within or across your marketing campaigns would fall under the territory of marketing automation.

When did B2B marketing automation start?

salesforce dashboard — (Image credit: Salesforce)

While marketing practices have existed since antiquity, people hadn’t really started automating them until much later.

One of the earliest companies in the arena was Unica (now a part of HCL Technologies), which was formed in 1992. Unica provided various marketing management tools that allowed enterprises to reach customers in the digital age.

Over the years, more and more consumers started adopting technology, and the marketing automation industry continued to grow. Alongside it, so did the need for sophisticated B2B marketing automation tech. Between 2006 to 2008, software solutions such as Salesforce and HubSpot emerged with more user-friendly and intuitive features that allowed businesses to do things like score leads, segment customers, and communicate with subscribers.

Today, B2B marketing automation technology is more accessible than ever. Solutions such as MailChimp and Campaign Monitor are enabling small businesses to launch more sophisticated marketing initiatives including Drip campaigns, social media funnels, and more.

Why is B2B marketing automation important?

Pardot by Salesforce higher lead conversion — (Image credit: Pardot by Salesforce)

Earlier we looked at why marketing automation is generally a must for any B2C or B2B business that wants to maintain a strong brand presence across sales channels. This is particularly crucial in today’s modern landscape.

For B2B marketers marketing automation specifically helps to quickly understand how likely a new lead is to convert or an existing lead is to spend again. This is based upon prospect/lead scores, activity tracking, and advanced segmentation.

Pardot marketing automation software has a set of AI features to assist your business with this, called Pardot Einstein. Einstein Behaviour Scoring, Einstein Lead Scoring, Einstein Campaign Insights and Einstein Attribution.

Pardot by Salesforce lead scoring software — (Image credit: Pardot by Salesforce)

B2B marketing automation can help by streamlining repetitive tasks like:

✔ Scheduling and sending automated emails on time

✔ Sales outreach content via LinkedIn or Twitter, or retargeting ad campaigns on Facebook Business

✔ Building up targeted leads lists then onboarding them as new clients when secured

✔ Publishing new content: including social media, copy automation for blog posts, feedback surveys, webchat content out of business hours, automated sales tracking and analytics reports for the team,

✔ Notifying the team about important events (e.g., new leads, customer cancellations, brand mentions on social or news platforms, etc.)

Marketing automation solutions also let you manage different campaigns and channels from one platform, so you have a single view of all your marketing activities.

How does B2B marketing automation work?

The specifics of how marketing automation works largely depend on the tool that you’re using, as well as the types of campaigns you’re running. Here are some examples of how different software solutions automate various marketing activities.

salesforce logo

(Image credit: Salesforce)

Salesforce is a large company that offers a wide range of sales and marketing tools, including specialist B2B marketing automation platform Pardot. Alongside its marketing workflow management, one of Salesforce’ top offerings is its Lead Management feature, which makes it easy for marketing and sales teams to manage their pipeline and close more deals.

Pardot by Salesforce marketing automation customer re-engagement — (Image credit: Pardot by Salesforce)

Here’s how it works: whenever you capture a new lead through Salesforce, the solution automatically tracks the activities of that lead and gives them a score based on the actions they’ve taken. For example, a lead that downloaded a piece of content and viewed your pricing page would score higher than someone who visited your site only once.

Salesforce can then route leads to your sales team automatically, to ensure that reps can touch base with leads while they’re hot.

HubSpot marketing automation HubSpot logo

(Image credit: HubSpot)

HubSpot is another well-known solution and one of its most popular features is its workflow tool, which enables you to design automated marketing flows using a web-based interface.

Here’s how it works: You start by setting a trigger that enrolls a lead into the workflow. Examples of triggers include subscribing to your newsletter, submitting a form, or downloading a piece of content.

Once the trigger is set, you can then add automated actions (such as sending an email) to all the leads that enter the workflow. For instance, if you’d like to send a special discount to everyone who signs up for your newsletter, you can set the following trigger + actions:

① Trigger: user subscribes to the newsletter

② Action: send special offer via email

⨠ If the lead redeems the offer, remove them from the email flow

⨠ If the lead doesn’t redeem the offer, send a follow-up email after 5 days

✔Once the workflow is enabled, the system will get to work and start sending offers to the right users.

How do you choose B2B marketing automation software?

Robot hand fist bumps human hand to symbolise marketing automation — (Image credit: cottonbro from Pexels)

Your B2B marketing automation costs will depend on several factors, including the following:

⩥ Size of your database

⩥ Number staff users

⩥ Features and functionalities

⩥ Number of marketing campaigns you need to run

⩥ Level of customer account support you need

When shopping around for a B2B marketing automation platform, you must know your numbers when it comes to the above-mentioned factors. This will help you figure out how much to budget for the software.

It’s also worth noting that most B2B marketing automation solution providers use a subscription pricing model, so it’s easy to scale up or down depending on your needs. If you’re a new business, for example, it makes sense to start small and simple and go for a lower-tier plan rather than starting with a mid- or high-tier plan and end up with features that you don’t need.

How much B2B does marketing automation cost?

Marketing automation costs can range anywhere from $0 to well over six figures annually. Omnisend’s free plan, for example, offers email and SMS automation for up to 250 contacts. Meanwhile, Pardot, a B2B marketing automation platform owned by Salesforce, costs $15,000 a month for up to 75,000 contacts.

In summary

If you want to develop brand awareness with consistent results, and monitor leads throughout the sales funnel, marketing automation software isn’t just something’s that nice to have.

Modern customers expect speed, value, and personalization from the businesses they interact with, whether B2B or B2C. The only way to deliver these at scale is to automate your marketing activities.

Fortunately, marketing automation software is no longer reserved for sophisticated enterprises. These days, small and medium and businesses can gain access to tools that can streamline their marketing and enable them to interact with customers in the most efficient way.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Francesca Nicasio

Francesca has over 10 years experience as a B2B writer and content marketeer, creating content about retail, ecommerce, technology, and SMB. And has written for websites such as Entrepreneur.com, The Huffington Post, Lifehack, MediaBistro, Independent Retailer, Retail Touchpoints, and many more.

Sourced from techradar.pro

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9 Proven Ways to Make Business Emails More Enticing

December 6, 2021 No Comments

By Shirley Stark

Every business owner knows the indispensable value of email marketing. From promotional emails, newsletters to advertisements, the scope is endless for well-crafted emails. It’s safe to say that this trend is here to stay.

On average, an individual receives over 121 emails each day. And marketing/promotional emails comprise the lion’s share of them.

In the face of such stiff competition, marketing emails need to be informative, intriguing, and entertaining, all rolled into one. To find out the various ways to make your business emails more alluring, continue reading this post.

A guide to crafting the best business emails

Everything about emails and email marketing is an art. And, just like any other art, there are various nuances to it. From nailing the subject line to focusing on the audience, a lot goes into a successful business email. See for yourself!

1. Create an Irresistible Subject Line

Image Source

The subject line of your email is your opening salvo, and you need to get it right. Statistics show that by sending out emails with personalized subject lines, the consumers are 22.2% more likely to open them.

Even the length of your subject line has a vital role to play. For instance, research has shown that 6-10 words long email subject lines have the highest open rates, at 21%.

Here’s a list of the other things you can do to develop a winning email subject line:

Use action words to create a sense of urgency
Convey a powerful message
Prompt consumers into taking action by promoting the value

2. Make the Customer Feel Important

Often, business emails go overboard with their marketing. Look at it this way. If you only talk about your products and business in the emails, there is no room for your customer.

That’s why it is essential to place your customers at the very centre of the emails.

For instance, don’t talk about how you developed the fabric for the new range of jeans that your business is launching. Instead, tell your customers how comfortable the jeans are going to be.

3. Create and Provide Value

It’s effortless. If you want consumers to open and read the email, you need to entice them with the promise of value. This is precisely what the shoe retailers TOMS did.

When customers subscribe to the TOMS mailing list, they get sent 2-5 successive emails. These emails are a part of their automated welcome email series, which include the following:

A vivid narration of their brand story
A discount coupon or code
Links to different sections of their website
A mention about the social cause that’s dear to them

In short, TOMS welcome emails are jam-packed with value and are customer-centric. And that’s what makes them wildly successful.

Even Shane Barker, a digital marketing consultant, believes that companies should not underestimate the power of welcome emails and be used to nurture strong customer relationships.

4. Check Your Email Domains

Image Source

This is important if you want your marketing emails to avoid the dreaded spam folders. Evaluate your business email domain reputation. You can use many online tools in this regard, like SenderScore.org, TrustedSource, Postmaster Tools, etc.

Alternatively, you can create an account solely meant for your business’ email marketing campaigns.

Get this: If your reputation score falls between 91-100, there’s a 92% chance that your marketing emails will land safely in the customer’s inbox.

5. Nail the Right Frequency

Image Source

It’s time for the million-dollar question: How often should businesses send marketing emails? Well, it entirely depends on the nature of your products and services and the preferences of your target demographics.

Monitor the consumer response to your emails for a while. Identify a frequency that works. Maybe it’s twice a month. Perhaps it’s once a week. Finally, stick to the schedule.

By doing so, you’ll generate anticipation amongst your customers, and your emails will be well-received.

6. Include Button CTAs

Here’s a fun fact: People are obsessed with pushing buttons. Also, they are a great choice if you want to encourage customers to buy from you. Thus, it would be a good idea to include button CTAs in your emails.

To make your CTAs more actionable, keep the following in mind:

Use action words to create a sense of urgency
Choose contrasting colours
Keep it short
Provide value

And, et voila, you’ll have more people opening your company’s marketing emails.

7. Visual Appeal Matters a Lot

A lot has been said about the attention span of customers. For emails, the span is pegged at 11-15 seconds. Your email needs to do something incredible in this tiny time frame to bait the customers into reading further.

This is where your email’s visual appeal will matter a lot. It would be great to go all out. Listed below are a couple of things you can do:

Use interesting fonts that are easy to read
Throw in images, videos, animations – anything to break the text trail
Think long and hard about the mobile and PC layouts
Select a great colour combination

8. Segmentation is the Key

Image Source

Are the products of your business targeted at different demographics? Then, segmented email marketing is an absolute necessity.

Not only is this a tremendous data-driven marketing strategy, but it is also helpful in sending meaningful emails across your vast customer base. Eventually, as the open email rates improve, so will the conversion rates.

Segment your customers, understand their needs and send them emails accordingly.

9. Mix up Your Content

No, uniformity is not a good policy when it comes to email content. Don’t use your emails to send your customers newsletters all the time. Think differently. Given the versatility that email as a medium brings to the table, there’s a lot you can send:

Infographics
Offer-specific emails
Emails that tell a story

Put on your thinking hats. Rest assured, it will be a rewarding endeavour.

Wrapping Up

With sufficient planning, you can easily make your business emails more enticing to customers. In addition to the nine ways mentioned above, focusing on email deliverability is also a good idea.

Even if your customers only open a few promotional emails a day, make sure that yours is one of them!

By Shirley Stark

Shirley Stark is currently working at InfoCleance as a Marketing Team Lead. She Has hands-on experience in B2B marketing and loves to write blogs, tips, reading b2b articles, creating business strategies, and traveling.

Sourced from Jeff Bullas

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5 Simple Tips for SEO + Email Marketing Flywheels

December 6, 2021 No Comments

By Cyrus Shepard

If you haven’t been using email marketing tactics to support your SEO efforts, now is the time to start. In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus explains how to use the complementary powers of these strategies over and over again, so that each becomes bigger and more powerful the more you do it.

Photo of the ROI of SEO. — Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I’m Cyrus Shepard. I hope you’re enjoying this video no matter which day of the week you’re watching it on. Today I want to talk about SEO and email marketing, specifically five simple tips for SEO and email marketing flywheels.

What is a flywheel?

So when I talk about SEO and email marketing flywheels, what do we mean by flywheel? Well, that’s where we’re using the power of SEO to grow our email marketing list and conversely using our email marketing list to grow our SEO for more website traffic. There are actual ways you can do that and doing it over and over and over again so that each becomes bigger and more powerful the more you do it.

So it’s like a flywheel. It’s really hard to get started. But as you get going, it gets easier and easier and easier, and everything grows a little bit more effectively. So if you’re an experienced SEO and email marketer, this video may not be for you. But if you primarily do SEO and you’re looking for ways to improve your mail marketing, or you’re primarily an email marketer and you’re looking for ways to grow your SEO, these are the tips for you.

Set goals

So let’s talk about our goals. What are we trying to accomplish with this email SEO marketing flywheel? First of all is simply more visitors, more visitors to your website content, because more visitors usually leads to more links, sharing, and things like that. The links and sharing can be positive SEO signals to Google, which actually lead to higher rankings.

So if we can get more people to our content through our email, the downstream effect of that could be higher rankings and more traffic generally naturally generated through Google search results. But also we want bigger and more powerful email marketing lists because your marketing list is one of your best marketing channels, especially if you segment users, which we’re going to talk about in just a little bit.

Ultimately, we want more conversions and sales. Whatever your marketing and business goals are, that’s what we want to achieve with this flywheel effect.

How to achieve those goals

1. Incentivize sign-ups

So let’s talk about the specifics, how are we going to get into it. First of all, we want to get more sign-ups from our content, from our website material. So we want to incentivize sign-ups.

Now the important thing to realize is you don’t have to incentivize sign-ups just through SEO. You can do it through any marketing traffic channel. That’s direct traffic, social media traffic, and referral traffic. Any way that people are visiting your content, you want to target those to incentivize for sign-ups to your email marketing list. So one of the ways I like to do this through SEO is through what a lot of people call content power-ups.

That’s where you’re incentivizing sign-ups by offering bonus or exclusive content in exchange for people to sign up for your list. For example, this is “5 Simple Tips for SEO and Email Marketing.” What if at the end of this post I would offer five additional bonus tips in exchange for signing up for exclusive content? The idea is that you want to offer something that they can’t find on the website. That could be a tool, some additional content, downloads, any sort of free bonus, a coupon, whatever you can think of, something exclusive to incentivize those sign-ups from your content.

2. Segmentation

Second tip, we don’t want to dump everything onto the same large email list. We want to make sure that we’re segmenting those sign-ups by topic and interest.

Unless your site is very narrowly focused, you generally want to segment your list among different topics. For example, here at Moz, we cover SEO, but we cover many, many different types of SEO based on user interest. So there’s local SEO, there’s technical SEO, there’s copywriting, there’s link building, all these niche interests that we want to segment users by.

So there’s a couple different ways to segment. One is self-segmentation, where people can check a box and say I’m interested in this and this and this. But a little bit easier is automatic segmentation based on the type of content that people are visiting. So on your technical SEO pages, if that’s what you were doing, you would put people onto a technical SEO sign-up list and make it clear that they’re receiving technical SEO tips.

Always make it clear what they’re receiving. But this segmentation is going to come in useful in just a little bit.

3. Content promotion

So the third thing, the third tip, and this is where we’re getting into the meat of it, is content promotion. This is where we’re using our email list to send traffic back to our website. When people think about SEO and email marketing flywheels, this is what they typically think about.

They think about the content promotion aspect. Now the important thing is we’re not trying to promote all of our content. No, we want to promote our best content, because your website, your visitors are coming, they’re doing a Google search. They’re not necessarily aware of what your best content is, and that’s why you want to deliver your best content. Importantly, you want to personalize it with the segmentation.

You’re not promoting all your content to all your visitors. You’re personalizing it based on their interests because you already segmented them out based on the type of content that they consumed. So if we’re sending out a technical SEO newsletter, we’re sending the best of our technical SEO content to those people who have already indicated an interest in technical SEO.

One of the most important things to remember, you don’t have to just promote your new content. It’s okay to promote the best of your old content as well, because again your users aren’t aware of what that is. So oftentimes in an introductory email, maybe the first email they receive in a series, you can promote and highlight old posts or even do it in a series.

“This is our best content over the last five years. Make sure you don’t miss this.” That old content, if it’s truly the best, will oftentimes outperform your newer content. So that’s how you can personalize and segment and send out your best content to get more promotion and more eyeballs on your best SEO content and hopefully more links, sharing, and all that to keep the flywheel going.

4. Incentivize sharing

So not only did we incentivize sign-ups, now that we’re in the email part and sending emails out, we want to incentivize sharing. That’s my fourth tip, incentivize sharing, because we don’t only want people to visit and read the content, we’re hoping that they’ll share it with their audience as well. One of the ways I like to do that is to segment my best sharers.

Now what do I mean by this? I’m not only segmenting by interest, but I’m segmenting by influence. So I might put together a list of influencers or people I know in my particular industry that have signed up. Maybe I’ve targeted them. Just like I offer people exclusive content to sign up for the email list, I’m offering my sharers exclusive content before I share it with the rest of the world.

So I might email my sharing segment and say, “Hey, we just published a post. We haven’t told anybody. We’re going to announce it on social tomorrow. But I wanted to let you know about it ahead of time if you want to share it with your followers.” Because we made it exclusive, we haven’t shared it with our followers, it gives our influencers something to share and it makes them feel special and sharing it out with their own audience.

There are different strategies that you can use to do that. But it is often an effective tactic to segment your best sharers. It’s a little advanced, but that can incentivize sharing and hopefully help out your SEO.

5. Keyword research

Finally, when we talk about SEO, we talk about keyword research. Keyword research is one of those SEO areas that works really well in incorporating into email.

Now, here at Moz, we have a tool called Keyword Explorer. There are other tools out there. But millions of keywords suggestions. Traditionally, in SEO, you use keyword research to determine your content, targeting keywords that your audience has interest in. We have lots of guides here at Moz on how to do that, how to target content around keywords.

But you can also use that keyword research in your emails. One of the most important places to use them is your email subject line. If you know the interest that your audience is interested in, through your segmentation, you can start to understand the keywords that drove them to their content, and using those same keywords in your email subject lines can improve your open rates. But that’s not the only place.

One of my favourite places to use keywords is in the sign-up CTA. So when you have a sign-up form on your website, you can use a generic sign-up form, like, hey, sign up for our newsletter. Okay, that’s not very effective. But if you use the keywords, the targeted keywords sign up for our technical SEO tips or our local SEO or our best dog food recipes, the keywords that people use to find your website are going to be the best keywords to incorporate into your CTAs to get them to sign up. You use keywords in your email subject lines to get them back to your content and so on and so forth. It’s another part of the effective flywheel.

Bonus: turn your best emails into content

So finally, bonus tip, I want to make sure that you don’t forget to turn your best emails into content. Your content doesn’t have to live exclusively in separated channels. If you’re writing killer emails to your audience, that get a lot of engagement, that have super high open rates, those are emails that you can turn into content for your website.

Or if you have a popular newsletter, you can simply archive all your emails into HTML so people can search. You may not want to do that for certain reasons if the quality isn’t very good. But if the emails are actually good, go ahead and turn them into content, because that’s going to help your SEO as well.

All right. I hope you enjoyed these tips. If you have any questions about email or SEO, please reach out to the team here at Moz. We’re here to help. Hope you enjoyed it, everybody, and please share this video. All right, thanks.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com.

In News

Top 7 trends shaping digital transformation in 2022

December 3, 2021 No Comments

By Vala Afshar

The pace of digital change in business shows no sign of slowing in 2022. The latest research from MuleSoft identifies 7 key digital transformation trends that will shape the future of work in 2022 and beyond.

The latest research from MuleSoft identifies hyper-automation, hybrid experiences, distributed environments and explosion of data as some of the new challenges and opportunities facing all businesses. The research points to an accelerated digital transformation in business for 2022 and beyond with seven key trends.

The top 7 trends shaping digital transformation in 2022 are:

Trend 1: The future of work will be built on connected, hybrid experiences. The workplace has rapidly evolved, and with it, employee expectations — forcing organizations to deliver digital‑first and connected experiences to drive productivity and retain talent.

Trend 2: The composable business matures. As the pressure to innovate faster continues to rise, organizations will seek even greater agility, leading to an increased drive to composable and event‑driven architectures.

Trend 3: The rise of the business technologist. With the increasing pressure of the digital imperative on organizations, business technologists will come to the fore as an essential partner in IT departments’ efforts to accelerate innovation.

Trend 4: Hyperautomation unlocks digital value. Hyperautomation will unlock productivity, accelerate time‑to‑market, and transform employee and customer experiences.

Trend 5: Security‑by‑default is a must‑have. Security‑by‑default will become a need‑to‑have as organizations increasingly realize their applications and automations are only as secure as the composable blocks on which they are built.

Trend 6: The rise of hybrid, distributed ecosystems adds complexity. As the digital world embraces hybrid and multi‑clouds, finding a universal way of integrating and managing these environments will become essential to successful digital transformation.

Trend 7: A single source of truth becomes key to the data‑driven business. As digitization continues to drive an increasing amount of data, organizations will seek a single source of truth where consumers can get the right data in the right context at the right time.

Here are the top takeaways of the 7 trends shaping digital transformation in 2022 and beyond:

Future of work built on connected, hybrid experiences

Gartner estimates that the use of collaboration platforms alone surged 44%. between 2019 and 2021. McKinsey estimates that more than 20% of the global workforce — although mainly those in high‑skilled roles in verticals such as finance, insurance, and IT — could work most of the time away from the office without any impact on productivity. Automation will play a key role in a hybrid and connected work environment. The use of low‑code techniques will be essential, having been identified by 42% of business users as critical to their ability to create better-connected employee experiences.

Here are some stats around the use of automation to create better-connected employee experiences:

30% of organizations have implemented automation initiatives to create better-connected employee experiences
44% of organizations are currently implementing automation initiatives to create better-connected experiences
Top automation priorities for 2022 include: improving operational efficiency (54%), improving productivity (49%), and creating better-connected experiences (41%)
Top digital transformation investment priorities in 2021 to ensure teams can collaborate effectively included: process changes (66%) and technology (49%)

Use of automation initiatives to create better connected employee experiences

The composable business matures

According to MuleSoft, the 2020s will be a period of seamless digital experiences. To make this a reality, organizations will need to think carefully about how they drive enhanced agility, which will lead to a new era of event‑driven architectures and composable businesses in 2022.

According to MuleSoft, the always‑on digital economy brings huge pressure for organizations to get things right for the end-user. According to PwC, one in three consumers will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience. One of the most effective ways for organizations to drive agility and meet these rapidly rising expectations is through becoming a composable business built on reusable APIs. These APIs can be used to turn the organization’s digital capabilities and data into a series of interchangeable building blocks that employees can reuse in other ways to build their own solutions.

The future of digital commerce is a great example of a connected and composable model. Gartner defines this as “Composable Enterprise”, with composable commerce as the expression of this idea applied to shopping infrastructure. Per Gartner, the composable business means creating an organization made from interchangeable building blocks.

The idea of composable business operates on four basic principles:

More speed through discovery
Greater agility through modularity
Better leadership through orchestration
Resilience through autonomy

Reusable APIs are a great way to achieve this, which is why 96% of global organizations already use public or private APIs. The research identifies important concepts and differentiation with APIs with a focus on event-driven APIs and event-driven architectures. The research concludes that event‑driven architectures are more flexible and extensible than their RESTful counterparts, supporting the fluid, real‑time interactions that consumers expect today.

Four in five organizations recognize the need to make data and integration accessible to business users to increase productivity, deliver connected experiences, and drive innovation.
36% of organizations say they have a mature approach to enabling non-IT users to integrate apps and data sources through APIs easily
44% of organizations say they are developing plans to enable non-IT users to integrate apps and data sources through APIs

According to Gartner, the three building blocks of composable business are:

Composable thinking, which keeps you from losing your creativity. Anything is composable. Combining the principles of modularity, autonomy, orchestration and discovery with composable thinking should guide your approach to conceptualizing what to compose and when.
Composable business architecture ensures that your organization is built to be flexible and resilient. It’s about structure and purpose. These are structural capabilities — giving you mechanisms to use in architecting your business.
Composable technologies are the tools for today and tomorrow. They are the pieces and parts and what connects them all together. The four principles are product design goals driving the features of technology that support the notions of composability.

The rise of business technologists

According to MuleSoft, the volume of digital initiatives doubled during the pandemic, making it even more difficult for already stretched teams to keep up with the needs of the business. In 2022, business technologists will relieve some of this pressure by working alongside IT teams to accelerate innovation. Gartner found that those organizations that successfully enable business technologists are 2.6x more likely to accelerate digital business outcomes. However, to do so, they will need the right tools at their disposal.

By 2024, 80% of technology products and services will be built by those who are not technology professionals, according to Gartner. Low or no‑code approaches and AI‑assisted development tools hold the key to success. Gartner found 77% of business technologists routinely use a combination of automation, integration, application development or data science and AI tools in their daily work. Some 80% of business users agree that if data and IT capabilities were discoverable and available in packaged business capabilities (PBCs), they and their colleagues could create solutions and deliver digital projects more quickly. Over a third (36%) say they have a mature approach to enabling non‑IT users to integrate apps and data sources through APIs easily. 80% of technology products and services will be built by those who are not technology professionals by 2024.

According to Gartner, on average, 41% of employees outside of IT — or business technologists — customize or build data or technology solutions. Gartner also predicts that half of all new low-code clients will come from business buyers that are outside of IT organizations by end of year 2025. 41% of organizations make an average of 41% of their internal software assets and components available for developers to reuse. 86% of organizations said if business users could securely create their own connected experiences using low or no-code, it would improve business outcomes.

Hyperautomation unlocks digital value

Automation will be a fundamental driving force for the modern digital enterprise rather than being used in piecemeal projects. Hyperautomation is about scaling automation across the enterprise via the reuse of processes and the deployment of multiple, integrated technology capabilities — such as low‑code platforms, machine learning, and robotic process automation (RPA). It’s a market the analyst predicts will grow by nearly 24% from 2020 to be worth nearly $600 billion by 2022 — as organizations look to identify and automate as many processes as they can rapidly. Per Deloitte, 93% of business leaders expect to be using RPAs by 2023. MuleSoft found that most organizations are either already using or are planning to implement such automation initiatives to realize strategic goals, such as improving productivity (96%) and operational efficiency (93%) and creating better‑connected customer experiences (93%).

2021 research shows that automation will accelerate the decentralization of businesses with a digital-first investment and new capabilities strategy. Customer service is an example line of business that will see significant hyperautomation. Given their proximity to changing customer needs, customer service provides a helpful window into how workflow automation can increase a team’s flexibility, efficiency, and job satisfaction.

There is no doubt that it has been a challenging year for customer service employees. Research shows these teams have contended with a whiplash of increased case volume and complexity without commensurate increases in headcount and budget. Workflow automation, however, provides needed relief. 77% of agents say automating routine tasks allows them to focus on more complex work — up from 69% in 2018. It is telling that, even amidst a budget crunch, 71% of service decision makers say they’re accelerating automation initiatives.

One area of service automation that’s getting a lot of attention is chatbots. Currently, 83% of customers expect to engage with someone immediately when contacting a company — up from 78% in 2019. This dynamic puts pressure on already-strained teams. Unsurprisingly, we’ve concurrently seen chatbot adoption grow at a rapid pace.

Hyperautomation trends in 2022 and beyond

Security‑by‑default is a must‑have

Security concerns have always been a roadblock on digital initiatives. Some 87% of IT and business leaders claim that security considerations are slowing down the pace of innovation, while 73% say that specific security and governance concerns have increased as their systems have become more integrated. Gartner predicts that by 2022, application programming interface (API) attacks will become the most‑frequent attack vector, causing data breaches for enterprise web applications. According to Forrester, 21% of security decision‑makers plan to prioritize building security into development processes. Many more will follow suit over the coming years as the era of the business technologist continues to gather pace.

Security requirements can slow down pace of digital transformation

The rise of hybrid, distributed ecosystems adds complexity

IT and business leaders agree that the ability to create seamless digital experiences for both employees and customers is key to the success of modern organizations. In 2022, universal API management will come to the fore as organizations seek answers to this question. Cloud solutions enabled many organizations to navigate the challenges the pandemic created. However, they have also drastically increased the complexity of modern digital ecosystems. Today, 92% of enterprises have a multi‑cloud strategy, while 82% have a hybrid cloud set‑up. According to Deloitte, virtually all (97%) IT managers are planning to take a best‑of‑breed approach by distributing workloads across two or more clouds to boost resilience and support regulatory requirements.

The rise of hybrid, distributed ecosystems add digital transformation complexity

A single source of truth becomes key to the data‑driven business

The world is witnessing a data explosion. In 2020 alone, over 64 zettabytes (ZB) were created, and this volume is expected to grow at a rate of 23% up to 2025, according to IDC. Yet, things aren’t getting any easier for organizations looking to integrate, analyze, and act on this data. IT complexity, proprietary systems, and a lack of strategic direction all provide their own challenges.

To be a successful data‑driven organization in 2022, organizations must break down silos across the enterprise to create a single source of truth. Business leaders can only look to machine learning and data analytics to make sense of all their data for enhanced decision-making.

What does it mean to be a truly data‑driven business? It’s all about using the insights derived from AI‑powered analytics to transform business processes. Ultimately, the aim is to improve business outcomes, by driving greater revenues and success. According to Accenture, true data‑driven organizations experience annual growth of over 30%. In addition, 81% of businesses still don’t have a solid data strategy to maximize the full potential of their data, and a similar number don’t have the right platform in place to support their goals. API‑led connectivity is increasingly recognized as the best strategy for achieving the required level of connectivity. Indeed, API‑led connectivity can result in 3x faster project delivery, on average, and a 63% reduction in maintenance costs.

A single source of truth becomes key to data-driven business

The trends shaping digital transformation in 2022 include hyperautomation, hybrid experiences, distributed environments, and an explosion of data. MuleSoft research of these trends concludes with the following recommendation to IT and business leaders with respect to improved collaboration and execution velocity:

Empower IT teams to deliver composable services, API products, and bots at scale for the entire organization.
Empower business teams to automate integrations to common systems without code by leveraging IT’s reusable assets, support, and governance.
Automate repetitive and manual tasks with reusable and composable bots that can intelligently process documents, enter data, or take action on the user’s behalf, all without code.

To learn more about the MuleSoft report on the 7 trends shaping digital transformation in 2022, you can visit here.

Feature Image Credit: Colin Anderson Productions – Getty Images

By Vala Afshar

Sourced from ZD Net

In News

Millennialgram: is Instagram’s new $390m campaign enough to lure Gen Z crowds away from TikTok?

December 3, 2021 No Comments

By Aimee Dawson

The Yours to Make initiative includes an installation at London’s Saatchi Gallery created by digital artist and curator Zaiba Jabbar using Reels

Instagram's “Yours to Make” initiative aims to attract young people to the platform Instagram — Instagram’s “Yours to Make” initiative aims to attract young people to the platform Instagram

In a column about art and Instagram, it’s easy to ignore the other apps scrambling for social media dominance. But the fight for attention is relentless, and while Instagram may be the art world’s social platform of choice, such favouritism tends to be generational. In the mid-2010s, reports started to show that fewer young people were using Facebook while the number of over-55s signing up was growing. It was soon coined “Boomerbook”. Meanwhile, Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 initially to neutralise the threat of competition, but soon the app began to mop up the pool of young people abandoning Facebook.

Now we are facing “Millennialgram”. According to a recent survey

undertaken by the financial services firm Piper Sandler, 35% of US teenagers say Snapchat is their favourite social media platform and 30% prefer TikTok, while Instagram comes in third at 22%. A report from the New York Times

last month revealed internal documents from 2018 in which the company had named the loss of teenage users to other social media platforms as an “existential threat” and a further document from October last year that read: “If we lose the teen foothold in the US we lose the pipeline.”

The latter leaked document laid out Instagram’s marketing plan for this year, and now we are beginning to see it unfold. The platform openly announced what it calls “the next chapter in Instagram’s brand story” on its website in September. Called “Yours to Make”

it aims to “showcase how you can explore who you are with Instagram”. The announcement was accompanied by a video that shows young creatives using the various features and products on the Instagram app, including the hip-hop artist Topaz Jones, the Native American make-up artist Madrona Redhawk and the digital creator Justin Yi—“real creators and everyday users who are using our platform to push the boundaries of creativity and experimentation”, Instagram says.

The New York Times says Instagram has allocated a marketing budget of $390m this year, mostly aimed at wooing teens. In the UK, the Yours to Make film is accompanied by a social-first content series created with Channel 4’s 4Studio, a brand partnership with the culture publication Dazed, targeted digital and video adverts, and “experiential activity” such as an installation at London’s Saatchi Gallery (4-9 November).

The work at Saatchi will consist of a free-to-access, interactive “motion art installation” in the galleries—a “digital portrait of British youth culture” with Instagram Reels video content from 50 handpicked Gen Z creatives. It has been assembled by the digital artist and curator Zaiba Jabbar, who says she has been inspired by “the breadth of creativity” in the Reels. The platform is also inviting users to submit Reels about their own journeys of self-discovery—tagged #YoursToMake—for the chance to be included in the work. Time will tell if Instagram can Reel the kids back in.

By Aimee Dawson

Insta’ gratification

Insta’ gratification is a monthly blog by Aimee Dawson, our Associate Digital Editor. Looking at how the art world and Instagram collide, each article tackles a topic around the innovations and challenges that spring up when art enters the digital world.

Sourced from The Art Newspaper

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Hit by Apple fees, Facebook offers creators new way to earn money

December 3, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from BUSINESS INSIDER India

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has announced new plans for creators to bypass 30 per cent App Store fees that Apple charges on transactions, as it prepares to build Metaverse.

In a Facebook post, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that as we build for the metaverse, we’re focused on unlocking opportunities for creators to make money from their work.

“The 30 per cent fees that Apple takes on transactions make it harder to do that, so we’re updating our Subscriptions product so now creators can earn more,” he posted.

Zuckerberg said that the company is launching a promotional link for creators for their Subscriptions offering. A

“When people subscribe using this link, creators will keep all the money they earn (minus taxes). Creators will have more ownership of their audience — we’re giving the ability for them to download the email addresses of all of their new subscribers,” he explained.

An investigation by The Financial Times has found that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube lost around $9.85 billion in revenue after Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy last year.

Advertisement technology company Lotame estimated that the four tech platforms lost 12 per cent of revenue in the third and fourth quarters, which roughly translates into $9.85 billion.

Zuckerberg said that Meta is also launching a bonus programme that pays creators for each new subscriber they get “as part of our $1 billion creator investment announced this summer”.

The new iOS App Store policy requires apps to ask permission to track users’ data. The policy went into effect in April, barring apps from tracking users if they opt out.

Facebook lost the most money “in absolute terms” when compared to other social platforms due to its huge size.

“Facebook has the most to lose because the cost of running advertisements on its platform has been increasing for years,” the Financial Times report said.

Since the introduction of the Apple iOS policy, most users have opted out, leaving advertisers in the dark about how to target them.

Zuckerberg has slammed Apple for its App Store policies in the past, saying the iOS privacy changes are negatively affecting its business.

“Apple’s changes are not only negatively affecting our business, but millions of small businesses, and what is already a difficult time for them and the economy,” he said last month.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, said that the biggest impact to them has come from iOS 14 changes which advantaged Apple’s own advertising business.

Feature Image Credit: IANS

Sourced from BUSINESS INSIDER India

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What’s the Difference Between Brand Positioning and Brand Strategy? Does It Matter?

December 2, 2021 No Comments

By Nick Liddell

It’s one of the great ironies of branding that, while we tend to care passionately about the precision and quality of the words that brands use to communicate, the language we use ourselves is hopelessly vague. Often, we use identical terms to describe different ideas and concepts. At other times, we use different words to describe identical ideas and concepts.

One of the most glaring examples of this is the confusion that often exists between ‘brand positioning’ and ‘brand strategy’. Positioning is often described as “the space in people’s minds that a brand wants to occupy”. The term was popularized in the 1970s by advertising executives Al Ries and Jack Trout, who argued that brands wishing to cut through in a noisy, over-communicated society, needed to develop an oversimplified message capable of reaching an oversimplified mind:

Avis: we try harder.
Seven-Up: the uncola.

In the words of Ries and Trout:

“Along Madison Avenue, these are called positioning slogans. And the advertising people who write them spend their time and research money looking for positions, or holes, in the marketplace.”

And here’s where the confusion begins: Ries and Trout flip-flop between two different definitions of positioning:

1. Positioning a brand in a marketplace;
2. Positioning a brand in people’s minds.

These are related, but different activities. What happens in someone’s mind is not the same as what happens in a marketplace. ‘We try harder’ and ‘uncola’ are not parts of a market, they are ideas that brand owners want to establish in our heads.

Philip Kotler is pretty firm in his point of view on which of these two activities is best described as ‘brand positioning’. As he explains in his 2017 book, Marketing 4.0:

“Since the 1980s, brand positioning has been recognized as the battle for the customer’s mind… Brand positioning is essentially a compelling promise that marketers convey to win the customers’ minds and hearts.”

That’s good enough for me. There are as many definitions of positioning as there are brand consultancies, but I’m happy to go along with the intention expressed here. It’s about hearts as much as minds.

It’s about belief.

The precise form of this belief can vary significantly. Over twenty years ago, I was told that a brand positioning is best expressed as a vision, mission, and set of values. Years later, it became popular to distil these into an ‘essence’ or a ‘brand DNA’. Subsequently, ‘brand purpose’ reinterpreted brand positioning for a generation in search of a deeper form of meaning. In reality, these are all variations on the same theme.

They are all about establishing a belief about a brand in people’s minds.

None of these describes strategy, although I’ve noticed that ‘brand positioning’ and ‘brand strategy’ are frequently used interchangeably. I find it helpful to think of them as distinct.

Here’s why:

Strategy suggests an analytical, insight-rich, data-informed, logical process. In broad terms, it’s about deciding where to play and how to win. Brand strategy comes in many forms, but I’ve always found it helpful to think in terms of the 5Ws:

WHO: Which groups of people do we want to prioritize?
WHY: What are the most powerful motivations and attitudes we can appeal to?
WHERE: Where are the best places for us to reach them?
WHEN: What are the most important moments and occasions to focus on?
WHAT: What competing offers exist, and how can we improve upon them?

If you don’t have a clear idea of who you want your brand to resonate with, why they should care about it, where and when you need to be available to them, and what competing offers you’re up against, then you don’t have much of a strategy. When someone talks about ‘positioning a brand in a marketplace’, then I tend to think of brand strategy, not brand positioning. It’s the part of my work when I expect to be wading through data, facts, and insights. It’s when I expect to be spending my time scrolling through Excel spreadsheets. The result should be a laser-sharp definition of what a brand wants to achieve and how it intends to get there. This is the realm of KCQs, KPIs, and BHAGs.

Brand strategy is a dispassionate, rational process.
Brand positioning is the opposite.

A solid brand strategy is necessary, but not sufficient if you want to create a great brand.

It’s not enough simply to set out which parts of a market you want to compete in, or who you want to appeal to, or which of their unmet needs you intend to fulfill. This gets you to something like Marty Neumeier’s ‘onlyness’ statement for Harley-Davidson:

WHAT: motorcycle manufacturer;
HOW: that makes big, loud motorcycles;
WHO: for macho guys (and macho wannabes);
WHERE: mostly in the United States;
WHY: who want to join a gang of cowboys;
WHEN: in an era of decreasing personal freedom.

It doesn’t exactly grab you. When I look at it, I wonder, ‘what’s the point?’ This is more compellingly articulated in Harley-Davidson’s mission statement:

“More than building machines, we stand for the timeless pursuit of adventure. Freedom for the soul.”

That’s a statement of belief. Although the two are clearly related, it’s more than a simple summary of the brand strategy, because it involves a creative leap. Without this, it would be as dry and uninspiring as a brand onion.

Great brand positioning is an antidote to indifference.

In contrast to brand strategy, positioning a brand is a creative act. It’s based on imagination, not insight; inspiration, not analysis. This is the part of my job where I spend time listening to people: What motivates them? What makes them proud? What inspires them? What are their hopes for the future? What does sustainability mean to them? How do they define success in its broadest possible sense? This part of the job is about understanding the future people want to create and the role they would like their brand to play in creating that future.

Brand positioning and brand strategy play complementary roles. Without a brand strategy to back it up, brand positioning risks being a hollow statement of ambition. Without a brand positioning to make it sing, brand strategy can descend into dull, lifeless drudgery. I’ve seen examples of both. There are organizations that love the fun part of coming up with a beautiful, bold promise, but shy away from the dirty, difficult task of working out how exactly that’s going to be delivered, to whom, and how. There are also organizations that create intricate brand onions, wheels, bridges, or platforms, but are utterly bereft of a creative expression that people can actually care about and believe in.

Trying to pin precise definitions on vague marketing concepts is generally a fool’s errand, but I’ve found the distinction between brand strategy and positioning is a helpful way to make sure when I’m speaking to a client that I’m fixing the right problem. Sometimes the issue is a lack of creativity. Sometimes it’s a lack of rigor. Often, it’s both. I’ve also found the distinction is a helpful way to critique my own work: Is the positioning ‘idea’ compelling enough? Is the strategy sharp? Is there an appropriate balance of rigor and creativity?

One final thing worth mentioning is that the relationship between brand strategy and positioning is similar to the relationship between a chicken and an egg: It’s not obvious which comes first. I’ve noticed that B2B brands tend to lead with positioning, while B2C brands lead with strategy.

“Brand positioning and brand strategy play complementary roles. Without a brand strategy to back it up, brand positioning risks being a hollow statement of ambition.”

For example, when Google says it wants to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’, it’s not describing a strategy. It’s making a promise with the expectation that this statement will establish a firm belief in the minds of its employees, its investors, its customers, and the rest of the world. The role of brand strategy is to translate the positioning into a concrete activity that stretches the brand into specific areas and specific audiences: maps, news, academia, communication, hardware, and beyond.

On the other hand, when Guinness shifted its brand strategy to focus on occasional drinkers, the brand team realized that the positioning would also need to change: The brand’s emphasis on ‘waiting’ was seen as a barrier to consumption for this group. The result was a shift of positioning and comms that moved away from ‘good things come to those who wait’ and instead repositioned the brand to celebrate people with the character and confidence to stand out from the crowd.

Honestly, I don’t think it matters which comes first. What matters most is that a brand’s strategy and positioning are mutually supportive: A clear strategic direction, married with a compelling positioning that’s capable of inspiring strong creative execution. Great brand strategists seamlessly bring together the analytical and the imaginative. This is how they do it.

Feature Image Credit: cottonbro

By Nick Liddell

I’m a brand strategist with over 20 years of experience. I began my career at Interbrand, where I led their brand valuation offer, and have subsequently developed and spearheaded the consultancy teams at M&C Saatchi Clear, Dragon Rouge, and The Clearing. I’m a member of the Superbrands Council in the UK, as well as a regular conference speaker, contributor to marketing publications, and author of two books on business, branding, and sustainability.

Sourced from Brandingmag

In News

How to bootstrap and scale your SaaS startup the RIGHT way

December 2, 2021 No Comments

By Saravana Kumar

As the founder of a bootstrapped start-up, people often ask me how I decided on which funding route I’d take when there are so many options for founders to consider.

While I don’t have a short answer to this, there’s one thing I can say: your choice of funding needs to be based on the nature of your business and the product you are dealing with.

he exact type of your business can be determined in a number of ways, but I find ‘Red Ocean’ and ‘Blue Ocean’ can be quite helpful. Coined by acclaimed business theorists, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne to classify all market strategies, Red Ocean refers to when there are a lot of competitors and you need a substantial amount of money to survive in it. Whereas Blue Ocean refers to a very niche market wherein you might see a lower growth rate but survive with considerably low investment.

While being helpful, there is of course no hard and fast rule to this theory — it’s often purely situational.

Our first product, BizTalk360 falls within Blue Ocean (no competitors, focused segment, and low customer acquisition cost) while our latest product, Document360, falls under the Red Ocean strategy. With that product, we’re competing against companies like Zendesk, Freshdesk, Confluence, Notion, and so on, so we end up spending a lot on customer acquisitions for this product.

Now that I’ve given you a bit of the background on where I’m coming from, let’s dive into what made me ultimately decide on going the bootstrapping route.

The decision to bootstrap

The initial product idea for BizTalk360 was seeded at the Microsoft Global MVP Summit in Seattle in February 2010. The first version of the product was very well received by MVPs in 2011, which led to me to officially launch the start-up the same year. Within a year, we onboarded 65 customers.

As we started to launch new products, we sort of banked on the success of our previous products and reinvested the revenues into the company to fund them. All our products have their own engineering, marketing, and sales teams working on improving the products and acquiring customers.

Today, our parent company kovai.co has 1500+ customers. We have not had to seek external funding since all our products are generating revenues.

Great products will sell

When we launched BizTalk360, we knew that we still had a long road ahead. Building the product was not much of a challenge since I have the required technical know-how. Selling the product was the tricky part as I didn’t have much experience doing that.

I started blogging very early in my career. My blog used to be very technical in nature as I specialized in a particular domain which is the BizTalk server and gradually I was able to build an audience of 15,000 followers.

When I developed BizTalk360, the blogs helped me get my first customer (a casino) all the way from Hong Kong, which was completely unknown to me until that point. While my blogging activities might’ve landed us the first customers, it was the value of the product itself that kept customers loyal.

So no matter how good your acquisition is, the retention will always come down to quality.

Scale at the right time

In my opinion, most start-ups fail due to premature scaling. That’s why knowing when to scale your start-up is one of the most crucial decisions you’ll face as a founder.

Most entrepreneurs just assume that once their product has been successfully launched, it’s time to scale up. But that’s not how it works. The product has to be periodically monitored and improved to make sure that it is not being overtaken by competitors. Your product needs to scale up along with your business.

Since our flagship product, BizTalk360, is a niche segment, we were able to be the market leaders right from the beginning and still continue to do so. The product matured completely in about fives years and the goal was all about maintaining the product, taking care of existing customers, and adding new ones. We then decided to diversify and move to new products, we simply replicated what had worked for us in similar situations.

Another thing you should do is structure your work model and business process. You should have systems in place to effectively monitor the stakeholders and processes in the organization.

But once you actually pinpoint problems through that monitoring, you need to react to them the right way. Many start-up founders think that just hiring a person can magically solve all their problems, but let me be clear: it doesn’t work.

For example, hiring a Sales Manager when your product isn’t working properly is a rookie mistake. You need to be extremely patient and persistent in the process. Ensure that your product is a market-fit product before you consider scaling your start-up.

Scaling your start-up might seem tempting sometimes, but nothing is better than the slow, steady, and organic growth of your start-up.

Check your finances — cash flow, sales, expense, and revenue — before deciding whether you want to scale up. It’s easy to overlook certain aspects when you are trying to manage multiple things at the same time. Even then, you should have an elaborate financial plan with forecasts for the future.

The bottom line is: take time to lay the groundwork before taking your start-up to the next level.

By Saravana Kumar

Founder & CEO, Document360 Saravana is a Microsoft BizTalk server MVP since 2007, blogger, international speaker, and active community member in the BizTalk area. Before founding Document360, he founded two other enterprise software companies: Biztalk360 and Serverless360.

Sourced from TNW

In News

On CRM: The Hype About Data-Driven Decision-Making Is Not Being Matched By Reality

December 2, 2021 No Comments

By Gene Marks

“Clearly, for too many companies, the hype about data-driven decision-making is not being matched by reality.”

Those are the words from Sovan Bin, the CEO and founder of enterprise data platform Odaseva. He had more to say in this press release:

“More than three-quarters of large enterprises admit that they’re lacking fundamentals in data management, and this is preventing them from unlocking the full value of their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) data. And yet, most enterprises – 64 percent – expect that the number one benefit of CRM data is an improved customer experience. There’s a clear disconnect here – and it must be addressed by rethinking data strategies, so CRM data becomes useful and actionable.”

What prompted his statement?

It was this study that his company commissioned from research firm Forrester. It found that 78 percent of enterprises report gaps in their data management that prevent them taking full advantage of their data and 64 percent said they find it challenging to actually move CRM data to platforms where it could be valuably used. Half of large enterprises worldwide (47 percent) feel they cannot rely on their CRM data to provide a single source of truth regarding customer data.

For the past few years CRM platforms have been stressing data, data, data. They’re using AI (Artificial Intelligence) as a marketing tool to lure companies into the enticing world of being able to predict what customers and prospects will do in the future based on their prior behaviour. But the reality is not living up to the hype. Why?

Odaseva’s Bin believes it’s for two big reasons. The first is that the majority of enterprises lack the basic foundations of data management. The other is that security concerns are limiting companies’ ability to truly leverage their data. Forrester’s research recommends that business invest in more skills training, improve their “data continuity” and step up their security.

I’ve learned to take these “commissioned” studies in stride because there’s always an agenda behind the findings. Odaseva is a data platform, so obviously a narrative where data is the problem and needs to be improved serves the company’s best interests.

But the findings do match what I see. Most of my clients complain about the integrity of their CRM information and I can’t think of one that would rely on their CRM system’s data for analysis of customer behaviour, let alone sending a simple email campaign, without some human oversight. The AI tech is just not there yet. And it’s going to take some time – and bigger strides – to achieve even those goals.

CRM systems are merely cloud-based databases. It’s as simple as that. At the very least, any organization that wants to get a satisfactory amount of ROI from their CRM system needs to invest in both people and tools to ensure that the data in the system is accurate, complete and can be relied on by sales, marketing and service teams. Security is also of prime concern. And then it’s about the questions: what behaviour do we want to predict? What data do we need to predict this behaviour? What’s our confidence in these predictions? How can we leverage these analytics to grow our sales?

Figuring out the answers to this question will be of primary concern to successful companies using good CRM systems in the future. But it will time and investment. Not making that investment merely creates a mess of data that is unusable…and will certainly hurt a company’s longer term value.

Feature Image Credit: Stephen Chernin/Getty Images

By Gene Marks

I was a former senior manager at KPMG and since 1994 the owner of the Marks Group PC, a 10-person customer relationship management consulting firm based outside Philadelphia. I’ve written six small-business management books, most recently “The Manufacturer’s Book of Lists” and “In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Cash: Simple Lessons From Smart Business People.” Besides Forbes, I formerly wrote for The Washington Post and the New York Times and now write regularly for The Guardian, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Inc., Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and Fox Business. I make no compensation from the number of people who read what I write.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

The Atlantic jumps on the paid newsletter bandwagon with nine new emails for subscribers

December 1, 2021 No Comments

By Sarah Scire

What are we going to call this? The Great Rebundling? The Atlantic is rolling out subscriber-only newsletters, editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg announced Tuesday, bringing the work of nine writers under the magazine’s single paywall.

The nine writers are Jordan Calhoun, Nicole Chung, David French, Xochitl Gonzalez, Molly Jong-Fast, Tom Nichols, Imani Perry, Yair Rosenberg, and Charlie Warzel. The Atlantic is giving a free year-long digital subscription to anyone who subscribes to any of the writers’ existing newsletters — whether that subscription was paid or not, confirmed executive editor Adrienne LaFrance.

LaFrance was less forthcoming about compensation structures (no word on whether writers who bring in more subscriptions will earn more) and whether the writers will have the same editorial freedom they’ve had as independent writers (“The Atlantic is a writer’s collective, and a place where all writers are encouraged to pursue their preoccupations and curiosities. That’s true for our staff writers and it’s true for this group of contributing writers.”) Nick Catucci, a senior editor at The Atlantic who oversees newsletters, will be the writers’ “key creative partner” and each post will get copyediting help, too.

We’ve seen a number of major news outlets scoop up newsletters writers in a bid for new subscribers, as Recode’s Peter Kafka laid out recently. Sociologists Tressie McMillan Cottom (“Essaying”) and Zeynep Tufekci (“The Insight”), for example, took their talents to The New York Times, which has put about a third of its newsletters behind its paywall.

Charlie Warzel, who left The New York Times to launch his newsletter Galaxy Brain, threw back the curtain on his decision to leave Substack in an illuminating last post.

Over seven months on Substack (I did not take a deal with the company) I made considerably less than I did working at the Times (this will be the line people quote, I guarantee, if they quote anything from this post). I grew this puppy from 0 subscribers to over 16,000. On the paid side, I got over 1,400 of you to shell out. Due to monthly subs and some generous founding members, I did manage to crack the six-figure annualized revenue number ever-so-slightly (of course I didn’t do this for a full year). Not bad! But also far from the kinds of first six month numbers of the TOP TIER ‘STACKERS.

He lays out a few reasons for why things didn’t work out as well as he’d hoped on Substack. (One is that he failed to do enough “grievance blogging.”) A couple more that caught our eye:

I’m not a trade publication and not niche enough. Many of the best, most profitable newsletters are based off a very legible beat of some kind. They’re obsessive on one thing or act as a new style of trade publication. Their value is very clear to subscribers and, if you pick a niche where people can expense you for their jobs…giddy up!

I reached my Twitter promotion ceiling. This varies by the Substackers I’ve talked to but my experience is somewhat similar to what Casey Newton wrote recently. A lot of my paid subscriber growth came after getting Twitter shares. If there’s one thing that I don’t love about my personal Substack experience, it was that it still seemed to be anchored to Twitter, a platform that I owe so much to and have just the grimmest feelings about. Alas.

A subscriber’s open rate, Warzel found, didn’t line up with their willingness to pay.

A lot of the people who opened my emails the most did not pay for the newsletter … A lot of the people who paid for the very expensive ‘Founding Member’ subscription tier hardly ever opened the emails. One billionaire signed up for Galaxy Brain early on and then…like…a day later disabled their email. Curious!

Warzel, who reported “modest” growth every single month and a subscription churn around 3%, also wondered if he’s not pulling the plug a little too early. “There’s an argument to be made that if I was very patient for a few years, I could be sitting atop a one person (or multiple person) newsletter empire, making more than my market value at any publication,” he noted. “I think this is possible!”

By Sarah Scire

Sourced from NiemanLab

editor

Learn how to implement B2B marketing automation to effectively streamline your marketing efforts, save time, and keep your teams in sync.

What is B2B marketing automation?

Why should businesses use marketing automation?

B2C automation inspiration for B2B marketing automation

Case study: Monzo’s #YearInMonzo personalized automated marketing emails

Case study: Monzo’s Year in Monzo personalized automated marketing emails

Case study: Monzo’s #YearInMonzo personalized automated marketing emails

Case study: Monzo’s Year in Monzo personalized automated marketing emails

Case study: Spotify’s annual Wrapped campaign for listeners and artists using data automization

Case study: Spotify’s annual Wrapped campaign for listeners and artists using data automization

Case study: Spotify’s annual Wrapped campaign for listeners and artists using data automization

B2B marketing automation example: Slack

Different types of marketing automation

Marketing automation vs. CRM: what’s the difference?

B2B marketing automation vs. Active campaign management

When did B2B marketing automation start?

Why is B2B marketing automation important?

How does B2B marketing automation work?

How do you choose B2B marketing automation software?

How much B2B does marketing automation cost?

In summary

By Francesca Nicasio

Sourced from techradar.pro

A guide to crafting the best business emails

1. Create an Irresistible Subject Line

2. Make the Customer Feel Important

3. Create and Provide Value

4. Check Your Email Domains

5. Nail the Right Frequency

6. Include Button CTAs

7. Visual Appeal Matters a Lot

8. Segmentation is the Key

9. Mix up Your Content

Wrapping Up

By Shirley Stark

Sourced from Jeff Bullas

Video Transcription

What is a flywheel?

Set goals

How to achieve those goals

1. Incentivize sign-ups

2. Segmentation

3. Content promotion

4. Incentivize sharing

5. Keyword research

Bonus: turn your best emails into content

The pace of digital change in business shows no sign of slowing in 2022. The latest research from MuleSoft identifies 7 key digital transformation trends that will shape the future of work in 2022 and beyond.

Future of work built on connected, hybrid experiences

The composable business matures

The rise of business technologists

Hyperautomation unlocks digital value

Security‑by‑default is a must‑have

The rise of hybrid, distributed ecosystems adds complexity

A single source of truth becomes key to the data‑driven business

By Vala Afshar

Sourced from ZD Net

The Yours to Make initiative includes an installation at London’s Saatchi Gallery created by digital artist and curator Zaiba Jabbar using Reels

By Aimee Dawson

Sourced from The Art Newspaper

Sourced from BUSINESS INSIDER India

Avis: we try harder. Seven-Up: the uncola.

It’s about belief.

Great brand positioning is an antidote to indifference.

By Nick Liddell

Sourced from Brandingmag

The decision to bootstrap

Great products will sell

Scale at the right time

By Saravana Kumar

Sourced from TNW

What prompted his statement?

By Gene Marks

Sourced from Forbes

By Sarah Scire

Sourced from NiemanLab

Avis: we try harder.
Seven-Up: the uncola.