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Why You Don’t Actually Need Money to Make Money

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By Kim Walsh Phillips.

Here’s how to stop going into debt to grow your business.

“It takes money to make money.”

It’s a very frustrating phrase. Where am I supposed to get the money I need to make the money I need? Is there some sort of vault I am unaware of?

While I have incredible, hard-working, get-er-done parents, a trust fund or “gift to get me started” was impossible for us. I didn’t have any savings, and I didn’t have investors. I mean, you would have been out of your right mind to invest in my debt-laden company.

So, where was I supposed to get the money I needed to make the money I needed?

I chose credit cards.

Over ten years in business, working harder and harder, I went deeper and deeper into debt. I funded my marketing, business development and operations on plastic and overdraft protection.

I was totally broke … and there are a lot more fun ways to be totally broke than working all the time.

When my daughter was born, everything changed.

She was a colicky baby (meaning the cute little thing was a devil child who cried all the time). But, I discovered if I swaddled her tightly, put her in the pack-and-play and pushed it against the refrigerator, then the vibration would put her to sleep.

So, she’s finally sleeping and I start going through my mail. I find a letter from my bank saying they aren’t going to cover my overdraft any longer. The bank had been sold and from that point forward, whenever there wasn’t a deposit to cover a check I had written, it was going to bounce. Even if that meant payroll.

As my daughter slept peacefully, I started to cry.

Now I wasn’t just a failure for myself, I was a failure for her.

I couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t keep living on the edge of my house of cards. I couldn’t keep waking up at 3:00 a.m. to check my bank account that had rolled over, to find out how much deeper in the hole I had gotten.

In the moment with that tear-stained letter, I did the only thing I knew to do. I am a woman of faith and in that moment, I chose not to crumble and instead to pray. Pray for something different.

I had to find a way to grow my business profitably and stop going deeper and deeper in debt.

It was then that everything changed.

You see, we are all taught the traditional way of marketing.

You run an ad to a lead magnet to get a lead, and then you sell something. Whether it’s online or in person, your money is made in the final step.

The problem with this model is that you have to carry the expense of steps one and two. And if the sale doesn’t happen in step three, you are in trouble.

What I needed was a way to self-fund my marketing so before the prospect got in the room with me, I was already covering my expenses.

Nothing like having your back against the wall to make a radical change …

The missing piece was a profit-driven marketing model. By adding in an offer on the thank-you page after the lead collection, I could self-fund all of my marketing. By offering something for sale, not only would my marketing pay for itself, but I would be serving my prospects even more.

Think about it…

This person just raised their hand and said, “I have a problem. I think you can solve it. And I trust you enough to give you my contact information. Can you do something for me?” Yes. Yes, I could.

I could offer them something more in this very moment than a simple thank you. I could sell them something that could get them to the finish line more quickly and solve their pain, fix their problem or give them pleasure. A course, a consulting package — even recordings of the webinar they just signed up for.

I started by using a webinar as the lead magnet and simply sold webinar recordings as the Profit Maximizer. And it started to work.

Not only were my ads paying for themselves, but they were generating a profit.

At first, it was just a few extra dollars a day, but within a couple of months, my marketing was pulling off an extra $3,000 to $5,000 a month in profit. That was enough to cover our office rent and pay for my assistant, which in itself lifted a huge burden.


As I scaled our results, our profits increased further. When I sold my marketing agency at the end of last year (so I could focus on our social media coaching and training business), we had brought in more than $1.1 million in profit outside of client revenue.

The good news is, this doesn’t just work for my business.

Whether online for offline business, affiliate marketer, professional service provider, retail store, attorney or network marketer, a profit maximizer gives the power to the business owner to scale at will. This can turn your marketing from an expense to a profit center.

I know I didn’t go through the dark times by accident. It was so I could tell others that it doesn’t take money to make money.

By Kim Walsh Phillips

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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What You Can Learn About Success From Malcolm Gladwell

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By Bryan Collins

Malcolm Gladwell’s popular books include Blink, Outliers, and The Tipping Point. His work is often cited by people both inside and outside of the business world.

It seems as though Gladwell has been successful for years, but he spent his early career struggling to earn recognition for his work.

Even if you’re not a writer like Gladwell, you can can apply Gladwell’s approach to help your products, services and ideas succeed too.

Test Your Ideas

Gladwell spends hundreds of hours talking with and emailing other writers about ideas he wants to use for future books. He also speaks in public about ideas from past books and explores new ideas on his “Revisionist History” podcast.

While speaking, for example, he gauges his audience’s reaction to figure out what’s interesting or boring. Gladwell also uses arguments from his audience to improve the quality of his ideas.

This practice of publicly testing ideas helps Gladwell learn how to articulate himself more clearly and concisely. He’s also able to decide to expand on or cut from future works.

In his Masterclass, he says, “The act of explaining an idea to somebody else is a really good way to figure out how to tell the story.”

You can test business ideas by emailing peers and asking for feedback, by showing early versions of your work to customers and by getting iterative feedback rather than waiting until you’ve finished your product or service.

Make It, Then Promote It

Gladwell’s debut nonfiction book, The Tipping Point, is one of his most famous works. In this book, he explains how little things can make a big difference.

Gladwell uses Pareto’s 80/20 principle as an example. This law states 80%of the work is done by 20% of the participants.

However, The Tipping Point wasn’t a huge success. . .at least at first.

Gladwell said, “The book didn’t do well at first. . .I got it in my head that if I kept touring and I kept giving talks about it, it might revive. I basically did endless promotions for two years.”

The Tipping Point eventually entered the New York Times best seller list as a paperback and, according to Gladwell, “that’s when it was a successful book.”

It’s fine to work on your product or service in isolation until it’s good enough to release. But your work doesn’t end there.

Spend time meeting your would-be customers. Promote your product or service in the right places. Exercise patience until your marketing strategies take hold.

Hand Shake via Shutterstock

Avoid Excessive Ownership Of Your Product

Gladwell was surprised by which ideas caught on from his book Outliers, notably the idea about mastery of a skill requiring 10,000 hours—or ten years—of deliberate practice.

He said he found himself in a curious position whereby the book’s ideas and arguments were often misconstrued by others.

Gladwell said,

Once you’ve written something, it no longer belongs to you. It belongs to your readers. When your readers buy your book, they really buy your ideas and your ideas become theirs.

When someone buys your product or your service, you might be surprised by what your customers or followers use, like or dislike. You can get in front of this issue by recruiting beta, or first, customers.

A beta customer will provide feedback privately about your product or service before it’s released. A reviewer, however, will write their thoughts on Amazon, Trustpilot or elsewhere after you release your product.

You can address the first type of feedback immediately and the second type over the long-term. It’s up to your to decide which responses to address and which to pass on.

Feedback via Shutterstock

Your Tipping Point

Gladwell is a successful business writer in part because he understands what his audience struggles with and wants. He’s able to take ideas from different industries and package them in a unique way that appeals to his audience.

Even if you’ve no ambition to become a business writer, you can use little elements of Gladwell’s approach and make a big difference for your product, service or ideas.

By Bryan Collins

Bryan Collins is the author of The Power of Creativity. He writes about topics like productivity and leadership. He lives an hour outside Dublin in Ireland.

I’m an author and a writer who covers topics like creativity, productivity and leadership. As well as blogging, I write nonfiction books and create practical courses for new writers. I live an hour outside of Dublin in Ireland, with my wife and kids. Over the years, I’ve wor…MORE

Sourced from Forbes

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Create An Online Portfolio With These 4 Website Tools

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By Susan Gilbert 

Give Your Online Portfolio a Boost with These Website Tools

If you are an entrepreneur or own a small business then it is important to have a professional quality online portfolio. Sometimes a full website development package is just not in the budget. Thankfully there are shared hosting services that can help you quickly create something that stands out to your niche. Does your business visibility need a boost? Use these great resources, and let me know how these work for you!

1) Showcase your accomplishments – Wix

Highlight your professional accomplishments with this easy-to-use drag and drop editor. With Wix, you can get started for free to create an amazing website for your business. Use this software to design a one page portfolio or add on more pages for things like customer testimonials, service offerings, a blog, and more.

2) Manage your creative profile – PortfolioBox

Would you like graphic design, website hosting and an eye-catching portfolio all in one place? Then you will love PortfolioBox. This is a simple way to create a online presence that looks professional, and includes features such as eCommerce functionality, galleries, videos, blogs, and more.

3) WordPress portfolio themes – WPVKP

Improve your WordPress website and choose from a large list of portfolio themes. These WordPress portfolios will inspire you to create something great, many of which are free to download. Check out this blog post to choose from a large selection of high quality themes that are simple, clean, and include a responsive design.

4) Simple mobile ready websites – Weebly

Create a mobile-friendly website in just minutes. With Weebly it is easy to create a blog, store, or just a company website. This is a great resource for real estate agents, consultants, accountants, ect. Their software includes many different mobile-friendly templates that you can customize through their simple drag and drop builder. With this resource you can have an online website up and ready in one hour.

Hopefully you will find these website resources useful to your small business.

By Susan Gilbert 

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Sourced from Business 2 Community

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Push or Pull Marketing – Which Drives Better Brand Consideration? [Infographic]

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Research recently undertaken by Mention Me in conjunction with OnePoll discovered that consumers have a clear preference for certain types of marketing when it comes to discovering new brands.

By a significant margin, consumers prefer “pull” types of marketing over “push” methods – in fact, 71% expressed this preference. In simple terms, “pull” marketing are those methods which enable a consumer to discover the brand for themselves, such as search engines or recommendations, while “push” techniques seek to create consumer demand by advertising directly to the individuals through methods like email and direct mail.

In addition, the research highlights a mismatch in terms of the newly emerging marketing channels, such as Influencer marketing, and consumer trust. While many retailers are spending considerable time and effort building influencer strategies, it appears that those efforts could be better placed focusing on other forms of endorsements – namely, reviews and referrals.

According to respondents, these options are trusted 3x more than endorsements by bloggers and YouTubers.

The media preference varied by sector, but showed similar patterns, as shown in this infographic – Push vs Pull Marketing.

Push vs Pull Marketing

 

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Sourced from Social Media Today

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Preparing for the takeover: Google voice search SEO strategies

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By Jason Hall

Whether or not you’ve embraced it, voice search is here to stay and it looks like it will be the next biggest trend in social media. In 2014, 41% of adults surveyed said they use voice search at least once a day. By 2020, 50% of all searches will be by voice search.

Google controls the lion’s share of the search engine market and it is essential to optimize your website.

Speech and type patterns are different

Think about how you perform a search when you’re typing your query rather than speaking. When you’re typing, you’re more likely to use a shorthand and leave out superfluous words. Conversely, when you speak, you’re more likely to speak in a complete statement.

For example, when searching for the best restaurants in New York. In Google, you will type “best restaurants NYC”. However, with a voice search, you will ask “What are the best restaurants in New York City?”

Google and other search engines have been working on improving the programming and machine learning that pick up speech patterns. What this means is that while you may need to enunciate to get Google to understand you at first, it should soon become familiar with your accent.

Long tail keywords are crucial

While the days of short tail keywords are well behind us, voice search makes targeting the correct long tail keywords more important than ever.

Marketers can optimize both types of search by using conversational, long tail keywords. The new keywords are very specific because they are being searched by people further down the buyer’s journey.

Instead of writing a blog post called “10 Home Decor Trends for 2018”, write for a more targeted audience with the post “10 Vintage-Inspired Home Decor Trends for Small Apartments”.

How to use Google voice search SEO Strategies

With regular search SEO, being within the first ten results and displayed on the front page of the search engine results was enough. Voice search makes this game more competitive because now all SEO and SEM marketers are aiming to have their content returned as the featured snippet that is displayed above the first organic result. The featured snippet typically displays the text from your site answering the question and an image.

How is the featured snippet generated?

There are two parts to how Google builds the featured snippet to display at the top of the search results.

Part of it is based on the same elements dictating your position in a search engine results page regardless of the type of search being conducted. This includes your domain authority, backlinks, social media engagement and more. This is to say that building a high-quality site that is fast and secure is still important.

The other half is based on how Google reads the content on your website. It ranks the text on your website based on the size of the font. Titles are the most important and then subheaders formatted in H2.

When performing a search, Google is looking for pages with the relevant keywords in the titles, subheaders and URL along with an authoritative, speedy and secure website for delivery as the featured snippet.

Use trigger words in your long-tail keywords

Keep in mind that people who are searching by voice are either in a rush or on-the-go. To get your content into that answer box, you need to use these popular “trigger” words when creating content. These phrases should appear not just in your post title, but in subheadings, the URL and meta descriptions as well. The most popular trigger words in voice searches are “how”, “what” and “best”.

Use tools like Google Trends and Google Suggest for ideas about what content you can generate based on these trigger words and keywords that apply to your site. When creating your posts, try to answer a question up near the top of the post and then follow it up with a relevant, well-researched, easy to read and informative post.

Think about how and where you want Google to display your content

Google prefers that voice search results are short and easy to read. At the same time, it seems to prefer long-form content (over 1000 words) as opposed to short-form content. Confusing, I know.

It comes down to the type of questions that are being asked. For search queries that have a simple or clear answer, Google wants something that is brief and accurate.

In order to catch both the Google Home and Chrome users, think about how to structure your posts so that Google can find an answer users can click to find more detailed information. Stick with simple vocabulary and shorter sentences to maintain readability.

It may be daunting to hear all the digital marketing pundits talk about how voice search is going to disrupt everything we know about search engines. It’s important to remember that voice SEO is still just SEO.

Now you know what Google is looking for when choosing what to select for its answer box and how to use Google voice search will put you be in a better position to take advantage of this new trend.

By Jason Hall

Jason Hall, founder, FiveChannels

Sourced from The Drum

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Why the worlds of brand and trade marketing must unite

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Collaboration between brand and trade marketing teams is critical for long-term success, says contributor Andrew Waber. Here’s how to make this tactical and strategic alignment a reality.

There seems to be a massive shift in the way successful brands allocate dollars and other resources to their online marketing efforts.

For example, in 2017, coworkers and I analyzed some advertising activity from P&G showing that hundreds of millions of dollars of its online ad budget had moved to trusted e-commerce channels rather than on sites and approaches typically used for brand marketing.

According to P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard and The Wall Street Journal:

The ad dollars were pulled back from a long list of digital channels but also included reducing spending with “several big digital players” by 20% to 50% last year (2017).

These are significant changes. Driving purchases through online media is increasingly reliant on retailer sites.

This transition in the overall market landscape necessitates a change in how companies fundamentally organize their marketing. Doing well on Amazon and other online retailers today requires brand and trade teams to work closely together in order to drive long-term success.

Misalignments

At a high level, brands simply can’t afford misalignment between the information on the product page and the brand promotion (done on sites such as Facebook) that lead customers to that page.

Ten years of Google conversion optimization proves that words in ads must match words in titles as closely as possible, or the ads may suffer high bounce rates. Consumers will notice the shift in vocabulary and abandon the landing page, driving down conversion rates.

Amazon Marketing Service (AMS) placements need to be associated with popular terms and be relevant to consumers. With consumers increasingly using sites like Amazon for research purposes, on-site promotions impact other sales channels, as well.

Market mix models have shown that AMS spend — which is often allocated to trade teams to handle — drove in-store sales in non-Amazon locations like CVS. If you’re a brand marketer, this means you should consider reallocating dollars from TV ads and treat budgets for promotions like AMS as brand dollars in today’s environment.

We’ve seen some larger companies already utilizing this fluid idea of what constitutes brand and trade dollars in relation to AMS and similar ad products.

There also needs to be alignment between the trade and brand marketing teams when it comes to promotions outside of Amazon’s universe. For example, if you launch an ad campaign on Facebook that drives traffic to an Amazon product detail page but that product happens to be out of stock when the Facebook ad campaign is running, then your product is punished by the A9 search algorithm which takes into account “page views when out of stock” in its ranking criteria.

If you get traffic when you’re out of stock, then your Amazon search rankings could suffer for months. In short, you are spending money on a campaign to drive traffic to an Amazon product detail page, and actively doing your brand harm in the process!

In traditional brand marketing, local in-stock rates typically don’t directly impact the larger strategy. The trade team might have to worry about this when campaigns are run in-store, but the brand side of the house never has to. On Amazon, and increasingly on more retail websites, you really have to care. The two work in concert.

Trade teams are in the business of identifying what sets of products are worth promoting or offering at one store versus another based on customer profile, (on Amazon and other online retailers). These decisions are executed primarily via the product page.

Algorithms are powerful

The algorithm, which bases decision-making on factors like relevancy and product page robustness, holds all the power here and isn’t like a chain store buyer you can “wine and dine” to improve shelf placement. Instead, brands need to address customer segments via the product title, imagery, keywords and so on.

Additionally, the fluid nature of these online retail sites necessitates continual adjustments to meet consumer needs on a near-daily basis, rather than monthly or quarterly. This can be done by direct data connections or measuring each channel with third-party analytics. Trade teams are best served by helping guide the brand marketing teams when and where these changes need to be made.

Speed to market is both hard to execute and increasingly important if you want to outflank competitors in today’s marketplace. Collaboration between brand and trade marketing teams is more critical than ever; they need to make this tactical and strategic alignment a reality in order to maintain success over the long term.

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Sourced from Marketing Land

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Flying close to the sun: SEO tactics that may get you burned

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The temptation to take the “quick and easy” route is everywhere, and SEO is no different. Contributor Stephan Spencer shows how going black- or gray-hat might sound good initially, but in the end, like Icarus, you may get burned

What kind of risk are you willing to take for better rankings and more organic traffic?

For many years now, there has been an ongoing debate in the search engine optimization (SEO) world about whether “black-hat” or “gray-hat” tactics — that is, techniques that attempt to achieve quicker results by flouting the search engines’ guidelines — are acceptable.

While many commentators take a moralistic tone around this issue, I prefer to look at it in terms of risk. If you are willing to risk a Google penalty for the possible payoff of quicker or better rankings, then go for it! Just don’t be surprised when Google gets wise to what you’re doing and your traffic takes a nose dive! Doesn’t matter if it’s months or years later; expect to pay the piper.

Steering clear

Personally, as someone who works with a lot of large corporations with much at stake, I steer well clear of black-hat and gray-hat techniques.

For anyone working on a domain they don’t want to go down in flames, there’s simply no way to justify gambling with a site’s authority and reputation in such a reckless manner. In the SEO world, there are plenty of people willing to take the risk. Many SEOs I know make the point that what is considered gray-hat and black-hat may be subjective, depending on the industry you are operating in.

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]

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Sourced from Marketing Land

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What You Need to Understand About Content Intelligence

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In the wake of disruptions brought on by technology and competition, both B2B and B2C companies have seen their operations turned upside down. According to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), only 12 percent of the companies that were on the Fortune 500 list in 1955 were still on that list in 2016. AEI shares that most of these companies were victims of market disruption, innovation and creative destruction.

With companies feeling more pressure to find ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors, marketing teams are tasked with finding solutions that help create successful content strategies and unique customer experiences. One of those solutions is content intelligence, a game-changer that is getting a lot of attention for its ability to revolutionize the way you do marketing.

Here are 5 things you need to know right now about content intelligence to make sure you’re prepared to gain a competitive edge:

Artificial intelligence and content intelligence are not the same

While artificial intelligence can play a role in providing the data needed for a content intelligence strategy, it is not content intelligence. The end goal of content intelligence is to provide you with insights about a broad range of data related to your target audience. Through the data and insights provided, you will have better insight on what it takes to write the right type of content to connect with each specific audience — and when and how to deliver it.

There are different types of content intelligence platforms

However, they function as technology solutions that are able to deliver insights on content and messaging to ultimately drive better marketing results. It’s likely that you are already using content intelligence. Applications, such as Google Analytics, provide you with data insights based on the traffic coming to your company’s site, including which content topics people are responding to the most and which pages lead to conversions. Advanced content intelligence platforms have been emerging in recent years that provide insights and data to help give you with a clearer, multidimensional picture of how to create, deliver and fine-tune your content and how to best spend your marketing dollars.

Content intelligence is now a necessity

More advanced forms of content intelligence are continuing to arrive. Many marketers are reporting that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to reach and connect with their target audience. However, the key is not to create more content. The solution is to give people exactly what they want — and exactly when and where they want it.

With content intelligence — through data gathered from many different sources (not just a few), you’re able to develop a more intimate relationship with every individual. You’ll be able to “get” them and “get to them.”

Time and place are everything

The data insights you gain from a marketing strategy fueled by content intelligence helps solve a critical issue of timing and place. This is an area where many marketers fail. Your marketing team is probably producing great content, but does it matter when the right people are unable to find it?

Content intelligence platforms can help you answer the critical questions: Where do you place your content at a time where your audience is most likely to see it? What are you offering? Sharing? Promoting? With comprehensive data insights, you don’t have to throw a wide net in hopes of catching the right users.

More metrics lead to a greater ability to measure your content

With a strategic marketing plan based on more relevant metrics, you’re in a better position to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. You’ll be able to respond in real time to changes that need to be made. By utilizing insights and analyzing what is working, you’re positioning yourself for success and increased conversion rates.

As the content intelligence industry continues to evolve, adoption of the right solutions will be key to marketers getting the most out of content strategies. Reaching your audience is becoming increasingly difficult in a landscape that has become inundated with content. Armed with a content intelligence platform, you can gain the critical insights you need to win the battles coming your way.

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Sourced from MARTECHSERIES

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5 Ways You Can Use Data To Send More Relevant Emails

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By Stephanie Burton 

Data is powerful. Companies that use data to send smarter campaigns outperform their competitors by 85% in sales growth, according to research from McKinsey.

In the world of email marketing, data gives marketers the power to personalize emails that drive conversions and ROI.

While most marketers know the value of data, collecting and using it can be challenging. Between complicated data collection programs, siloed information, and sporadic automation practices, putting data to good use is hard.

Fortunately, by selecting a modern email service provider (ESP), you can gain access to a host of tools that turn customer information into actionable intel. Ready to learn how? Here are five ways you can use data to send more relevant emails.

1. Encourage subscribers to use a preference center.

You need to know your subscribers in order to deliver relevant emails. You need to know their likes, dislikes, birthdays—you name it. The more information you have, the better.

So, how do you go about collecting information? Data collection is an ongoing process, but you can start by setting up a preference center.

An email preference center is designed to help you learn more about subscribers so that you can provide them with the content they want. You can ask questions, encourage subscribers to select the kind of content they’re interested in, and get basic demographic information like age, location, and gender.

Subscribers love preference centers because they let them control the messages they receive, while companies love them because they result in a ton of rich data.

Flight Centre uses a preference center as a core part of their email marketing strategy. The travel company learns everything from the subscriber’s birthday to their most-used airport.

Using the information collected, Flight Centre can send more relevant emails. For example, if a subscriber signed up for the Club Red newsletter and prefers to fly out of Ottawa, they’d receive the following message.

Flight Centre can use the information from the preference center to segment contacts by travel preferences, send deals based on the airport of choice, or curate a newsletter full of travel itineraries based on a subscriber’s age. The options are endless, and it’s all possible thanks to a data-collecting preference center.

2. Dynamically change content to fit subscribers’ interests.

When you have data on your subscribers, it’s much easier to send relevant, valuable emails that they’ll open and click. But, crafting relevant messages can be time-consuming. Enter dynamic content. With dynamic content, you can change an aspect of an email based on recipient.

For example, if you’re hosting a fall clothing sale, you can entice customers to come to your store by showcasing some items on sale. It would be most relevant if the women on your list got pictures of women’s styles while the men saw their own styles, right?

Rather than segmenting your list and creating two separate emails, you create one email and use dynamic content instead. The images and content in the email will dynamically change based on the gender of the subscriber.

For example, Adidas uses dynamic content to send relevant styles based on gender.

3. Send emails based on important milestones.

The more relevant your emails are, the stronger the connection you make with subscribers.

One of the best ways to build a relationship with a subscriber is to celebrate milestones with them. Milestones include a birthday, anniversary, or even a purchase anniversary.

For example, on a subscriber’s birthday, you can send a special promotion. When a subscriber reaches one year as a member, you can send an email celebrating this milestone.

Mom365, a company focusing on newborn photography and parenting tips, sent a personalized offer to a subscriber for her daughter’s birthday. The subject line was hyper-personal, including both the mom’s name (Lisa) and the daughter’s name (Adalyn) and a special offer.

This email couldn’t be any more relevant to the subscriber. It’s a special offer designed to celebrate a milestone.

4. Change your cadence based on email activity.

A lot of email marketing relevancy is based on customer data, but it’s not the only kind of data you can use. You can also track a subscriber’s email activity. If a subscriber opens an email or clicks a link, these actions can fuel your email marketing decisions.

For instance, Personal Creations sent a promotional offer to its VIP segment. Then, based on email activity, the company sent a follow-up email.

If a subscriber opened the first email, a second email was sent giving those subscribers additional time to take advantage of the offer.

Using email automation, the company can set up an automated journey, so when a subscriber opens the first email marketing campaign it automatically triggers the second email to send the next morning.

5. A/B test different aspects of your campaign.

When you create an email campaign, you make a lot of decisions. You pick a layout, craft a message, select a color scheme, add images, create a call to action (CTA), hyperlink text, draft a subject line – the list goes on.

How do you know if the series of choices you made resonates with subscribers? Data to the rescue (again).

You can create different versions of your email and send them to two small test groups. The idea is to see which email gets better response rates and let that data dictate which email is ultimately sent to your subscribers.

You can test nearly everything. Here’s a quick glimpse of things you can test:

  • Subject line wording or length
  • Personalized features vs. non-personalized features
  • Images
  • CTA buttons vs. hyperlinks
  • Layout
  • Copy
  • Tone

Campaign Monitor makes it easy to A/B test your email marketing campaigns. Simply create two versions of your email in the campaign builder and we’ll send the emails to two subsets of your list for you. We’ll gather the results and send the email with the highest open rate to the rest of your contacts.

It’s another great way to use data to send smarter, more relevant emails.

If you need a little help with testing, we’ve got you covered. Check out our A/B testing guide that can help you integrate testing into your strategy.

Wrap up

Email marketing isn’t about blasting messages to every contact on your list anymore. Today’s email marketer is smarter. Today’s email marketer relies on data collection and strategic decisions to send the most relevant, successful emails possible.

By Stephanie Burton 

Sourced from Business 2 Community

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