editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

The Stressful Email Marketing Tactic That Will Not Die

May 16, 2018 No Comments

Glossier, Reformation, and Seamless have all tapped into it, for better or worse.

Another day, another complaint I feel compelled to lodge against brands in a public forum. Brands feed us, and they clothe us. And yet they betray our trust! Again and again we are forced to reckon with the fact that brands are not our friends. They never have been, and they never will be.

Today I would like to discuss the phenomenon that is brands trying to dupe people into opening their marketing emails by putting “FWD:” or “Re:” in the subject line. The message looks like it’s coming from a friend or like you’re already engaged in the conversation, which can be incredibly alarming when the subject is something urgent. Here are a few real emails that members of the Racked team have received recently:

A subject line that reads: “Re: Satisfying that craving.”

A weirdly sexual message from Seamless.

A subject line that reads: “RE: YOUR PTO REQUEST.”

What? I didn’t request time off! Is my boss mad at me? A moment of professional stress brought to you by Reformation!

A subject line that reads, “Re: Your Flight Confirmation.”

SHEER PANIC!!! (From Barry’s Boot Camp.)

A subject line that reads, “Thank you for your email. I am out of office until...”

An OOO riff from Glossier

This tactic totally works, especially if you’re not paying close attention to who sent the email. (I often am not.) What makes it doubly annoying is that brands have been doing it for years, and shoppers have been complaining about it for just as long. Yet nothing has changed.

Let’s look at some historical tweets.

Given how clogged most people’s inboxes are, brands have to get clever with their email marketing. Fair enough. And the results can be effective: President Obama’s re-election campaign famously used subject lines like “Wow,” “Rain check?” and “Hey” to get people to click through. (Some people found Obama’s approach charming. The Hairpin compared them to notes from a stalker.) What’s definitely not cute, though, is making your customers feel stressed, dumb, or distrustful. The world is overwhelming enough already.

Perhaps one day brands will go around the bend and over-deliver by sending marketing emails with subjects like, “No rush on this,” “We’re having a sale right now, but you have a week to get to it, so take your time,” and “Would you like to unsubscribe? There is a large link at the top of this email.”

Until then, our cortisol levels will lurch into overdrive, we will angrily tweet, and we will get distracted and forget to unsubscribe.

Feature Image Credit: EyesWideOpen/Getty Images

By Eliza Brooke

Sourced from RACKED

In News

Everything you need to know about the hidden ways Facebook ads target you

May 16, 2018 No Comments

By Dan Ming

Facebook executives often talk about their mission as “bringing the world closer together.” With more than 2 billion users, it’s true that the platform does connect people. But one thing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony highlighted is that simply connecting people is not how Facebook reached a market cap of nearly $500 billion.

At its core, Facebook is an advertising company. In 2017, 98 percent of its $40 billion in revenue came from advertising. It’s not your data that Facebook is selling; it’s your attention.

Facebook’s ad platform translates your clicks and posts into “user attributes,” and places you in certain categories for advertisers. For example, your activity could suggest that you recently had a child, that you’re a Bernie Sanders fan, or that you have an “affinity” for certain racial groups.

One of the most powerful features, “Custom Audiences,” allows an advertiser to target individuals based on offline information such as email address and phone number. An advertiser can upload that data to Facebook, which will match it with its user base to find who that information belongs to. Then there are so-called “dark posts,” a feature Facebook is now changing, which only show up in the news feeds of specific audiences and are completely hidden to everyone else.

Full disclosure: VICE News (along with almost every other major news organization) uses some of these advertising tools.

The tools can be used by anyone who wants to advertise on Facebook, and critics say that’s an open invitation to malicious actors. Watch this video to learn more about how Facebook’s ad targeting works, and why it’s so effective.

Gabriel Connelly and Michael Shade contributed to this report.

By Dan Ming

Sourced from VICE News

In News

Fake Disruption: 3 Companies That Claimed to Change the Game — But Didn’t.

May 16, 2018 No Comments

By Jayson DeMers

We need to all agree on what a ‘disrupter’ is. The more accurately we can describe business concepts, the better we’ll understand our own markets and ideas.

For a while, “disruption” was a powerful word, first used to indicate a company that demonstrated innovation at such a high level, it created a new industry or truly reshaped an older one. Next, tech journalists, entrepreneurs and consumers started using the term to describe any business with a unique idea that had a chance to grow and succeed.

This isn’t to say that these companies weren’t valuable or worth exploring. It just means they weren’t good examples of what it truly means to be “disruptive” or to “change the game.”

Take, for example, the following companies, which have been popularly labeled or touted as disruptive, but aren’t truly as game-changing as we’ve come to believe:

1. Uber

Uber is known as the tech powerhouse that disrupted the transportation industry. Attracting $10.7 billion of funding, and with a valuation of $69 billion as of December 2017, it can accurately be described as an industry leader and an innovative, visionary one at that. So, why can’t we qualify it as a disruptor?

Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who actually popularized the term “disruptive” in a 1997 book called The Innovator’s Dilemma, addressed this question in a recent Harvard Business Review article. He described true disruption as building a business by taking advantage of a low-end market that’s previously been ignored by dominant competitors chasing profits. Alternately, Christensen wrote, true disruption could entail creating an entirely new market — generating customers where there weren’t any before.

Uber doesn’t fall into either category of disruption. It emerged as an alternative solution for taxi services, where customers already existed. Though generally less expensive than a taxi ride, the “Uber” solution is still comparable enough in price that it didn’t open up a new market, and therefore didn’t “change the game” from the ground up.

Another hallmark of disruptors, according to Christensen, is a company that originates as a low-quality alternative, with a gradual transition to a more competitive, higher-quality offer.

Uber came into the field with a high-quality alternative — a better product — which made it a clearly superior competitor. So this third “disruptor” definition by Christensen did apply, either.

2. Google

Technology has provided the groundwork for disruption; its advancements make things cheaper and more readily available, and they simultaneously introduce new products and services that haven’t been explored before. That’s why, when most people think about true game-changing technologies, they think of Google — the world’s favorite search engine.

But Google isn’t and never was a disruptive company. Google wasn’t the first company to invent and capitalize on the search engine model; back in 1990, a search engine called Archie started taking user queries and matching them to websites. By 1993, alternatives were already making use of bots and search crawlers to build indexes of the web.

By the time Google got started, there were already dozens of mainstream options for search, including Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. Google didn’t create a new market; it just capitalized on an existing one by building a better product.

Beyond that, Google isn’t truly disrupting in other areas, either. Email was mainstream by the time Google developed its popular and innovative Gmail product; and even its futuristic ventures, like autonomous vehicles, are built on the notion of improved solutions for existing customer bases.

3. Tesla

Tesla Motors’ approach to business relies on constant, and at times ruthless innovation. Since its launch, it’s been become the most valuable automaker in the United States. It’s unveiled new and affordable models of electric vehicles, and has helped introduce the concept of semi-autonomous driving to mainstream consumers.

In fact, the company is innovating at an astounding pace, is differentiating itself from its competitors and is enjoying a significant level of success as a result — but it still isn’t disruptive.

Tesla isn’t disruptive because its vehicles have been serving a market that already exists. Electric and hybrid cars weren’t new to Tesla; instead, Tesla merely improved on an existing design. Accordingly, existing car purchasers are merely upgrading to Tesla, rather than emerging from a period as non-customers.

Plus, consider the fact that even Tesla’s least expensive model runs for about $70,000, putting it well outside a price range we might consider for a disruptor that’s trying to target underserved portions of the market.

So, think about this: Before you use the term “disruptive” to label a business, carefully consider what that business is really doing. If it’s taking an existing concept and making it better, it has a high chance of access to “disrupter” status. But it isn’t creating a new market. If it’s merely capitalizing on existing customers and giving them more of what they want, it will likely trounce the competition, to be sure. But it isn’t creating customers where there weren’t any before.

In sum, these thoughts on the D-word aren’t an empty exercise: The more accurately we can describe and learn from business concepts like these, the better we’ll understand our own markets and our own ideas.

Feature Image credit: Chris Ratcliffe | Getty Images

By Jayson DeMers

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

4 Reasons Why Companies are Choosing CRM Over Traditional Marketing tools

May 15, 2018 No Comments

By Limesh Parekh

CRM offers the perfect tools for accurately collecting, managing and analysing consumer behaviour data to help in creating impactful marketing strategies

Marketing has been an essential part of business growth and, for decades, businesses have thrived on the age old traditional marketing strategies, executed through sales managers and executives.

With the advent of the digital era, businesses are now equipped with a strong digital infrastructure and insights that is now transforming business processes. CRM or Customer Relationship Management, initially considered as a customer service process, has been gaining popularity as a versatile business development tool, assisting in creation of intelligent marketing strategies that drive sales, business growth and customer loyalty.

Laced with features like smart data, predictive analysis and real time response, the CRM has, over the past few years, transformed into one of the single most reliable and accurate system to drive growth. This has given rise to the term ‘Relationship Marketing’ – a concept that seeks to increase sales by building trust and engaging customers. Relationship marketing focuses on driving consistent business through repeat customers by building a long-term relationship through consistently excellent customer service, understanding the consumer profile and preferences, anticipating their future needs, and offering discounts and special perks through loyalty programs.

CRM offers the perfect tools for accurately collecting, managing and analysing this consumer behaviour data so as to help in creating impactful marketing strategies, Public Relations and Advertising campaigns for engagement not only with existing customers, but also to reach to potential customers, possibly belonging to similar demographic/ geography or similar economic class.

Some key CRM features that are vital for a successful relationship marketing strategy, include:

1. Integrated Solutions:

With versatile applications and features that can be adapted to the latest technology evolutions, CRM is now a part of an integrated process for modern businesses today. With a rise in modern marketing and customer outreach platforms spread across mobile, social media, real time chat support, email, telephonic and face to face, the modern, global customer is almost omnipresent. CRM, with its agile applications and tailor made solutions, facilitates marketing and sales staff to log accurate and real time data across these platforms. This data can then be readily accessed to draw valuable data insights which can be usable while drawing up impactful marketing strategies.

2. Intuitive Data Analysis

Through integrated data collection, CRM has become a goldmine of intelligent consumer behaviour and brand sentiment insights. This information can further be segregated basis demographics, geographical location, purchase patterns and disposable income etc. to draw out campaigns that are more effective and economically viable. Further, through predictive analysis, the results of a particular outreach campaign can be accurately gauged, making the overall marketing strategy simpler, faster and targeted.

3. Automated Operations

With the rise in omnipresent consumer connect platforms, there is a vast amount of data that is logged into the CRM system, through multiple channels, often simultaneously. Further a cloud based operational infrastructure enables this data to be accessed in real time. With an intelligent data process, the information logged is accurately segregated and updated in the system, across all relevant platforms, through an automated process. This helps negate duplication of information and efforts while ensures a holistic record of information is maintained at all times.

4. Measurable

Unlike traditional marketing tools and campaigns which often fail to provide adequate results, CRM supported Relationship Marketing offers measurable success rates and outcomes that can be accurately supported with data like percentage rise in sales through repeat customers, consumer feedback to a new product or service, overall brand sentiment, the enquires logged after a test run for a new innovation etc. Further, CRM can also be of immense help in times of crisis, with accurate, data-backed analysis for reasons of error/ negligence.

Cessation:

With the digital era already being heralded as the 4th Industrial revolution, business processes are becoming extremely automated, integrated and data cantered. While traditional marketing tools continue to play a key role in building brand visibility offline, the digital world occupies almost an equal weight of consumer touch point and engagement. CRM, with its versatile and intelligent applications, is rightly becoming the preferred tool for modern brands to make the right impact and tap its growth potential.

Image credit: Shutterstock

By Limesh Parekh

CEO, Enjay IT Solutions Ltd

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

GDPR – The Email Marketing Red Herring

May 15, 2018 No Comments

By Mike Parry

Have I got your attention? I’m going to say something else controversial, GDPR is not about email marketing! GDPR doesn’t cover email and the ICO doesn’t care how many times you email your data, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, once a day, once a week or once in a blue moon. It simply isn’t relevant. They don’t care when the last time a name on your email list opened an email, it isn’t in their remit. That’s right, GDPR is not about email marketing! It does reference the currently-under-review PECR but more as a make sure you also follow these regulations, which you should have been doing for years now. Now don’t get me wrong, anyone undertaking email marketing must adhere to the data processing principles outlined by GDPR and imho that is a good thing. However, GDPR is about processing personal data not email marketing!

OK so what is it about?

GDPR is about personal data, specifically, “any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified in particular by reference to an identifier”. Confused? Exactly, GDPR is shrouded in confusion and mystery and as such has business running scared, particularly the threat of BIG FINES.

Now the ICO has a job to do in protecting people’s data rights but history suggests it carries out its job in a fair and business friendly manner. Sure, repeat offenders who deliberately flaunt the regulation and don’t try and get their house in order will face its wrath and rightly so but it’s a myth to say that the ICO will come after every business who is trying to follow the regulation with a big fine right off the bat. In fact in its series of blogs GDPR myths the ICO address this very issue stating the GDPR is about citizens not fines.

So when I say GDPR is about personal data and not email marketing I am only being slightly disingenuous. Not once in the GDPR regulations does it state the word email, but it does reference marketing and email does fall into this. However, as mentioned above in a more sensationalised way, the legislation is not about how many times you email your data, or when you decide to remove people from your list or whether data that hasn’t opened an email for x, y or z months should be removed. These things are actually business decisions and fall under best practice not GDPR complianc

Under GDPR you must have a valid lawful basis in order to process personal data and the GDPR regulation clearly states that not one of the six lawful bases is better or more important than the others. However, most lawful bases will require that processing is necessary. If you can reasonably achieve the same purpose without processing then you wont have a legal basis. So if we relate that to email marketing the capture and processing of email addresses is essential for the purpose. That being said it then comes down to your lawful basis for processing that data and for this I will copy and paste directly from the guide to the general data protection regulation GDPR document.

What are the lawful bases for processing?

“The lawful bases for processing are set out in Article 6 of the GDPR. At least one of these must apply whenever you process personal data:

Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.
Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract.
Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations).
Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life.
Public task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.
Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests. (This cannot apply if you are a public authority processing data to perform your official tasks.)

So in conclusion if you wish to continue with your email marketing program under GDPR you either need consent or legitimate interest. Consent is specific consent, not bundled in with other offers, warranties, discounts, member clubs etc.. The act of consent needs to be specified not pre ticked and the user must know what they are getting into. Legitimate interest is where the recipient could reasonably expect you to process their data for email marketing purposes when they gave it to you and the act of email marketing doesn’t violate any individual personal data interests. Please don’t take this the wrong way, I am not saying that GDPR and how you process data isn’t important. I think it is of paramount importance, not only to stay the right side of GDPR but for best practice. What I am saying is GDPR is important across the board and not specifically for email marketers.

Legal Waiver

I would like to point out that this is not legal advice, before undertaking any personal data processing please seek your own legal counsel

By Mike Parry

Sourced from Business 2 Community

In News

The New Age Of Digital Advertising

May 15, 2018 No Comments

By Rob Kurfehs

As of late, headlines have been trending in the advertising world that would make any Luddite proud. P&G recently made the claim that reducing its “digital” ad spending by $200 million actually resulted in greater reach. And Unilever, having steadily reduced its digital ad spending, has taken cuts a step further as an ethics statement against the duopoly of Google and Facebook.

On the surface, this is news that delivers comeuppance against the foes of the old guard. Digital was just a temporary flash in the pan, and worth cutting in favor for other channels.

Fraud, bots, viewability — oh my!

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. What is happening is a sea change in the digital advertising landscape that is long overdue. Lax analytics, murky viewability, and targeting that never delivered on its promise are all symptoms of a system that has been high in profit, but bankrupt in efficacy. In addition, increasing fake traffic and bots underscore the need for further development in the underlying technology in digital advertising.

So, when two of the largest CPG conglomerates in the world are featured in the news for cutting ineffective digital ad spending, it’s actually good for digital. It pushes ad networks to clean up their act and encourages agencies and buyers to up their rigor and demand transparency.

Viewability is one of the biggest concerns in digital, and there is some absurdity that it’s an issue that hasn’t been solved in the year 2018. Granted, some networks have been more proactive on this subject, such as Google with its Active View technology. There are varying levels of transparency on this issue, but we can and need to do better. Social doesn’t fare much better, and Facebook made headlines last year for a lack of viewability in its video ads. Advertisers deserve more transparenc

There’s more to digital

Fraud and viewability aside, brands also must think beyond display. Now more than ever, the efficacy of banner ads is being questioned. Modern digital advertising can offer engagement and precise targeting beyond the wide-swath approach. The ability to weed through promising ad tech and wasteful gimmicks will be an important role for media buyers.

Creative also needs to re-align to these opportunities. The matching luggage approach of copying and pasting a campaign across myriad units has limited efficacy. Through data and ad tech, we can and should tailor our advertising and experiences to specific audiences and platforms. Content and creative should be contextual to the place it’s being seen. An ad should feel different on Instagram vs. a display ad on Amazon. Instead of blanketing advertisements, think of what value a brand can provide to the audience: a fun game, a useful utility, or simply a good laugh. Digital has the power to make a profoundly direct connection.

A brave new world

The advancement of cognitive technologies and programmatic further underscores the need for better checks and balances. AI will not only streamline programmatic but enable tailored creative and messaging to audiences on the fly. Someday, AI-driven ads may be able to anticipate a consumer’s purchase consideration, as well as their wants, needs, and interests, serving messaging that’s one-to-one in a way we can only dream of now. But as the old adage reminds us: garbage in, garbage out. These technologies will not solve digital advertising’s problems and can only help if a strong foundation is in place.

Digital is going nowhere. We will see digital budgets continue to increase and eclipse traditional. The world continues to move toward digital, and the way we consume content is increasingly moving towards streaming and multi-device. The reality is, Unilever still spends 120% more in digital media than it did in 2012. What we’re seeing from large brands is a temporary — and much needed — protest against a flawed system that just happens to have limitless potential in the future.

By Rob Kurfehs

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

How to Find Your Brand’s Social Media Voice & Tone

May 15, 2018 No Comments

By: Matt Solar

More than ever, consumers seek authentic brands with a clear mission, voice, and tone. Strategically developing these features is vital to reaching and connecting with your audience. Every brand has a unique story and way of communicating that can be honed and practiced over time.

Here are a few steps to help your brand find an authentic social media voice and tone, and why it’s so important to do so.

What Is Voice & Tone, Exactly?

Voice and tone are similar, but it’s helpful to think of them as separate concepts. Your brand’s voice should remain consistent across all communication platforms. Tone, on the other hand, might differ across social channels depending on the audience and special circumstances.

Voice: An expression of your brand’s personality; adjective(s) to describe your brand’s communication style
Tone: How your brand’s voice is applied. Can differ across social media channels and situations.

Why Voice & Tone Matter

While consumers appreciate hearing about special deals and new products, they also want to know what your brand represents. Having a unique voice and appropriate tone will help to communicate your values and mission. Essentially, your social media voice will tell your brand’s story.

Perhaps the most important reason why voice and tone matter is the humanizing effect on your brand. Audiences need to feel comfortable engaging with you online and clearly prefer speaking to “real people” over robots. Your brand’s voice will help to form connections, develop trust, and build a rapport with consumers. In turn, visitors are more likely to share, comment, and like your posts.

Your brand’s social media voice should be a recognizable feature that sets you apart from the crowd. Don’t get lost in a sea of content by posting salesy material that doesn’t form connections or tell your brand’s story.

Finding Your Voice & Tone

The best way to discover your brand’s voice is to develop a brand persona. You can do so by answering a series of questions while keeping your audience in mind. Sit down with your team members and stakeholders to answer the questions below. For each, brainstorm a list of adjectives that you’ll use afterward to create guides.

Question 1: What are our values?

Question 2: What sets us apart from similar brands?

Question 3: How do we want to be portrayed? What reputation do we want?

Question 4: Who are we creating content for? What does our audience look like?

Question 5: Why are we on social media? In terms of value, what do we want to offer our audience?

Question 6: How does our audience communicate with us and others on social media? What language and tone do they use?

Question 7: What don’t we want to be described as?

Example Voice Adjectives: Empowering, Direct, Nurturing, Inspiring, Geeky, Playful

With your adjectives in hand, select five or six that stand out. Congratulations, you’ve found your brand’s voice!

Using a template like the one created by Gather Content below, create a few models for your team to reference when posting to social media. You want to demonstrate how your brand’s voice can be applied in various situations. Notice how tone is coming into play here as you give context to your brand’s voice. Using the negative words (written down from question seven), form examples your team should avoid.

To identify the situations that require a specific tone, first, note the differences between the social media channels you’re on. For example, your tone will be more professional on LinkedIn than on Twitter. Next, identify the appropriate tone to use in special circumstances, such as when answering questions, responding to criticism, or retweeting customers.

As you can see, voice is your brand’s personality while tone varies with context. Your brand can remain consistent across social media channels and beyond by creating voice and tone guides for your team. If your brand outsources content creation, the guide can easily be shared with freelance writers as well.

Examples of Brand Voice & Tone

Let’s look at three brands to see how they’ve developed their voice and tone across social media.

Mint by Intuit

Mint is a personal finance app used to manage funds, create budgets, and view credit scores. Across all platforms, their voice is helpful, personal, and compassionate. They often highlight and address the struggle of their audience (young adults and professionals) with a light-hearted approach. Mint also has a dedicated support account on Twitter and frequently hosts live money chats on Facebook.

Calm

Calm is an app that provides meditation techniques and suggestions for improving mindfulness. Across their social media channels, they use an inspirational and motivational voice. They frequently post quotes with soothing imagery on Facebook and Twitter. To engage their audience, Calm provides well-being tips and created a hashtag (#YearOfCalm).

The Honest Company

The Honest Company provides baby, home, and personal products free of toxic ingredients. They use a helpful, inspirational, and family-oriented voice across their social media channels. Since their primary audience is concerned mothers, they frequently provide tips and suggestions about parenting.

Conclusion

In just a few simple steps, your brand can find a unique and authentic social media voice. Develop guides that your team can reference to remain consistent across platforms. Do you know of a brand using voice and tone effectively? Let us know in the comments and share tips of your own!

By: Matt Solar

Sourced from Marketo

In News

Email Marketing Essentials for every small business

May 14, 2018 No Comments

Sourced from MARKETBL

Email marketing provides the most direct line of communication to your target market. Your email database is full of potential and current customers as well as possible future customers; or at least it should be, especially in light of GDPR. This database should then essentially be warm leads, providing an ever-growing pool of warm leads which should be easier to convert in in the future and provide a cost-effective source of sales as your small business grows. So the question is, what do you need to know for your business to benefit from all of the best outcomes of an effective email marketing campaign?

Build Your Email Lists

The first port of call is to build and develop your email list, after all the basis of a successful email marketing campaign or strategy, are the recipients. However, it’s not enough to blindly build up the number of email addresses on your list; you need to ensure the quality also.

You can do this by segmenting your lists or splitting out into separate lists the email addresses you collect. Segmenting your lists will allow you to keep track of the sources of emails, whether they’ve come through an ebook campaign or are past customers. By segmenting these lists out, you’re able to ensure members only get emails that are targeted and relevant to them.

Above all ensure you receive Opt-in consent from all members of any lists if you’d like to avoid a potential 20 million euro fine when the EU GDPR kicks in. Seeking Opt-in, which is essentially informed consent of joining an emailing list also helps to improve the quality of your list, as your campaigns will be viewed by only those who are actively interested in your business and what you offer.

Software

Pick the software you use for your email marketing wisely as switching can be a hassle and can damage your brand consistency, as well as leading to errors such as duplication.

The best option for small businesses would be MailChimp as it offers an easy interface and has a very shallow learning curve. Of course, the main reason many small businesses use MailChimp for their email marketing is the cost. MailChimp is free for up to 2,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails a month.

The downside is however once you start to grow your email lists the costs can begin to jump quite rapidly; though this may not be so much of an issue for you at that point. The other aspect to consider is appearance. Many MailChimp templates can look repetitive and can be recognised as a MailChimp template, even by the casual reader. The monotonous look is something of a casualty of MailChimp’s success; so many businesses use the service that it’s now highly recognisable. Consider opting for custom HTML templates that you can have designed for your business.

Auto-Responses

When users opt-in for your email lists, they should receive an email notification. Auto-responses can help to reduce your unsubscribe rate as users have a reference point. Within the auto-response, you should detail the reason they subscribed and what they can expect. These automated emails help them to remember and reference why they signed up, and the fact that they did sign up.

Sticking to the activities you outline in this opt-in is also very important as you do not shock your audience with your emails or their regularity. This avoids situations in which recipients of your emails feel they have been misleading.

Email Design

Good visuals keep readers engaged with the content and message of your emails. People naturally respond more positively to well-designed pieces of content. So nailing down a quality design for your email campaign that sells your brand as reliable and well-put-together as well as making clear what’s on offer.

Think about the flow of information and the logic of the order in which data you deliver. Consider the story you’re attempting to telling with each email and the best way of doing so. The visual design has a large part to play in setting the tone of the message that is received.

Also, Make sure Calls to action are clearly discernible. Within most emails, you’ll have multiple ‘calls to action’, some of which will be softer conversions. Making this evident in the design is essential. Conversions that will offer your business the most value need highlighting the most provided this makes sense in the context of the campaign.

Email content

Providing value should be the foundation of every email campaign. Recipients need an incentive to review the email and ideally convert into a sale. You can offer value by sharing your content, providing discounts and free or exclusive services. The key here is making membership to your businesses email list seem worthwhile and desirable. This keeps recipients opening future emails and paying attention to the contents of them as a pose to unsubscribing.

The primary goal of most email marketing campaigns will be to sell your product or service, so by all means, do so, sell! Selling is to some degree expected by most users, but don’t be too forceful with this. Make it clear as to why readers need what you’re selling but don’t be repetitive. If you convey your message well enough, readers will recognise if they need what you are offering.

Timing (Frequency)

Scheduling is also crucial to email marketing. Setting out what day of the week or month you launch your email campaigns will help with regulating the frequency of them. You will be walking a fine line between staying in regular contact with your mailing list to nurture them as leads, and not saturating their inboxes, which often leads to poor feedback and unsubscriptions.

A default frequency of weekly tends to be touted to small businesses but keep in consideration how much content you currently have and your capacity. It is vital to avoid being repetitive, and at times to keep up with a weekly newsletter message and material can get reused to the point where they become monotonous and mediocre.

A/B Testing

The best way to improve your email marketing campaigns is to test them. And where conversions are at stake, testing every element of your emails to find out what works and what doesn’t can help to transform a poorly performing campaign into a successful one.

Test everything from the Subject line of your emails to the mobile responsiveness. Remember 61% of emails get viewed on mobile devices.

Try A/B testing some of these components of your emails:

The Subject Line
The Offer/promotion or Call-to-action
The Layout of the email
The Design of the mailer including the images or colours used
The Level of personalisation. E.g. Using generics Vs First name’s.
The Content formats; e.g. written or visual content
The Headline of the mailer

Consistently testing all of these aspects of your email campaigns will allow you to pull together a better campaign in future; resulting in what will be your ultimate format and campaign. This feeds directly into the final essential aspect of email marketing.

Analytics and Measuring

There’s no use tinkering and testing your email marketing campaigns if you’re not gathering and measuring the analytics. These key indicators, like the number of opens or click-throughs, will help to benchmark and assess the success of each campaign. Making changes and testing needs to be based on the analytics collected and measured purely.

Do not underestimate how important it is to measure every action and change in your email marketing campaigns, these activities are numbers based at their core after all, so keeping this in mind will be the deciding factor in making your email marketing campaigns a success.

Final Thoughts

You’re now equipped with everything you need to know to run effective email marketing campaigns for your small business. Like anything in business remember to keep up to date with the latest new tools and methods to keep at the forefront. We highly recommend you review the General Data Protection Regulations to ensure you avoid any potential fines and keep your email marketing activities completely compliant.

As always, Happy Small Business Marketing!

Sourced from MARKETBL

In News

6 Ways to Exceed Your Content Marketing Clients’ Expectations

May 14, 2018 No Comments

By Will Blunt

Are you providing tangible and consistent value to your content marketing clients?

Unfortunately, most agencies aren’t.

They are good at selling the benefits of content and mapping out a strategy, but when it comes to execution their attention waivers. They’re either getting distracted and moving onto the next opportunity, or they simply don’t know how to get results.

Being ready to deliver value and actually delivering value are two very different things.

When it comes to the crunch, if your agency is not providing consistent results to your clients, then they will lose interest.

You need to regularly refine and improve the way you execute. It’s about creating WOW moments for your clients and exceeding their expectations time and time again with exceptional service, unprecedented results, and continuous optimization.

Below are six vital components of execution that will keep your clients humming in excitement just like day one, all year round!

1. Deliver results

via GIPHY

“No sh*t sherlock”

You probably just muttered that to yourself. And for good reason, it’s not rocket science to suggest that delivering results is an important part of client retention.

But what is interesting, and something a LOT of agencies get wrong is understanding how to deliver the kind of results that will prevent your clients from ever questioning their investment with you.

This is where the sales conversation and strategy development phase are so crucial. Both you and your client need to have a succinct definition of what success looks like. There can’t be any grey area.

If you have accurately quantified what the client cares about, then delivering results becomes a lot easier. This allows you to document clear expectations that align with your experience and ability to deliver results, because it’s something you have done before with similar companies.

Your goal should be to create an environment where the only possible outcome is a positive one for your agency. If the client has higher expectations of results than what you KNOW you can achieve, then say goodbye. Don’t work together. Wish them luck with someone else, and focus on backing winning horses.

Don’t assume you know what a client wants and why they are paying you because most of the time your assumptions will be off the mark. Ask the right questions and create a shared meaning for success.

By delivering outcomes directly associated with the things your client is drawing a budget for makes retention a no-brainer.

2. Create a cadence for reporting

Whatever you do… don’t go silent.

via GIPHY

Without a doubt this is the most common reason agencies lose content marketing clients. You settle into an engagement and after a few months, it all becomes a little easier, because your processes are in place and humming along nicely. You’re publishing regular content, building assets, and the train is in motion. Things are looking good from your perspective.

But the client stops hearing from you. Radio silence.

Even though the engine is on in the background, the lights are off and the client is in the dark. They start to question why they are paying you. “What exactly are they doing for us?”

By the time they bring this concern to your attention, it’s too late. You’ve lost their engagement and they have already found an alternative way to approach their content strategy.

This is exactly why you need a regular cadence, at least monthly, of reporting back to the client. They want to know about the results, yes, but they also want reassurance about exactly what they are getting from their investment.

You need to create a repeatable reporting process that shows the client resource allocation, content output, and relevant outcomes. This report should closely relate to the initial contract and agreed definition of success for the engagement.

If you’re looking for a tech solution for this, Klipfolio offers a custom dashboard that connects data and enables regular client reporting.

3. Make informed decisions

via GIPHY

Your clients want insight, not just activity. They want to be confident that the people executing their marketing strategy are in it for the long haul and dedicated to growing their business almost as much as they are. They want thought leaders, not project managers or pencil pushers.

To fulfill this desire you need to be proactive. Don’t wait for them to come to you with ideas or important updates to their strategy, get ahead of the game.

Before you send them that report every month use the data to develop insights of your own. Look for gaps in their strategy, opportunities for improvement, and areas that need your attention.

Come to them armed with industry insight, knowledge of the latest marketing trends, and specific recommendations as it relates to their unique situation.

Let them know that you are doing everything possible to get them to the end of the rainbow. Surprise them with insight, inspire them with success stories, and delight them with action.

Then you will be a strategic partner, not just a service provider.

4. Automate and optimize

via GIPHY

According to the Aberdeen Group, nearly 70% of best-in-class companies are currently using (or implementing) marketing automation.

For your agency to grow, automation and optimization of your client delivery is essential.

Automation helps speed up and improve all sorts of tasks that can enable growth. According to one report by Redeye and TFM&A, the benefits of marketing automation include:

Taking repetitive tasks out of marketers hands, allowing them to focus on new/more exciting projects (36%)
Better targeting of customers and prospects (30%)
Improving the customer experience (10%)
Better email marketing (9%)
Reduction of human error in campaigns (8%),
Lead management (4%) and multichannel marketing (3%)

Embracing marketing automation is an easy way for your agency to scale the marketing efforts of your clients, as well as save on time, energy, resources and skills.

You get better results and keep your clients happy with less effort. Perfect!

5. Add additional value

via GIPHY

By automating and optimizing a portion of your clients’ marketing activity, you create space to add additional value.

Now you have time to be proactive and brainstorm ways you can strengthen the bond you have with your clients. This is the icing on the cake.

Here are some ideas for adding value to your clients that don’t take too much effort but create a lot of social currency:

Call them up at least once a month to check in, see how they are, and ask if there is anything else you can do for them.
Seek out helpful articles about their industry and send them 3 to 4 takeaways that relate to their business.
Provide out-of-scope advice and guidance about their other marketing activity.
Introduce them to people in your network that could provide mutual benefit or opportunity.
Recommend their product or service to relevant friends, families, and colleagues.
Take them and their team out for lunch or send them a gift certificate to strengthen your relationship.

Each of these things is fairly small but they all contribute to a well-rounded relationship with your clients. It’s no longer a transaction, but a partnership. Partnerships are hard to break.

6. Extend your services

via GIPHY

Once you have onboarded a client and are exceeding their expectations, it’s time to start thinking about extending your services.

By extending your services, you not only increase the revenue you receive from a client, but you also become further entrenched in their organization. The more value you create for your clients, the less likely they are to churn.

An extension of your services may be providing additional content marketing solutions. For example, if you are simply managing their social media accounts, there may be an opportunity to start writing blog content, producing videos, or building links. Alternatively, you could diversify your services by offering AdWords management, SEO, or web design.

Of course, how you go about extending your services will depend on the makeup of your agency. For some agencies, you will already have the resources, processes, and infrastructure to provide additional services immediately. For others, you will need a way to satisfy additional demand. This may be through hiring more team members, outsourcing to freelancers or contractors, or finding a white label service solution.

Once you lock down a process for resourcing the extension of your services, it will be much easier to replicate with other clients.

That’s how you retain clients, increase revenue, and grow your agency.

By Will Blunt

Will Blunt is the Founder of FlypChart.

Sourced from Flypchart

In News

Asos lauds effect of Instagram Stories as it reduces marketing spend

May 14, 2018 No Comments

By Jennifer Faull

Asos has singled out the performance of Instagram Stories in its marketing mix, saying the number of people viewing its content on the platform has almost doubled in just six months.

The online retailer today (11 April) reported stellar sales for the six months to 28 February, noting a 10% rise in half-year profits to £29.9m as sales jumped 27% to £1.13bn compared with the same period in the previous year.

On a call with analysts, chief executive Nick Beighton praised the Instagram-effect, saying the Facebook-owned platform was now more popular among its core 20-something customer base than Facebook and as such the business had maintained its investment in its “relevant, emerging content formats” including Stories.

The brand’s content on the site was viewed over 30m times while videos were viewed more than 52m times, up from 40m in the previous half of the year.

Asos was one of the first to experiment with Stories ad formats when it launched last January and has become a brand that many benchmark against when it comes to successfully harnessing the Facebook-owned app’s offering, with Instagram itself using the retailer’s strategy as a case study in order to lure other brands to the platform.

“When we recognise technology that can help our business, we fold in pretty quick,” Beighton said.

Now that its convinced on the value of Stories, the current tool under the spotlight is Instagram’s shopping-enabled adverts, which launched widely at the beginning of this year.

“On one level [Instagram Shopping] could turbo charge the experience for 20-somethings but on another level it could be a real threat,” admitted Beighton.

“We do know Instagram is one of the biggest channels for our customers, it’s much bigger than Facebook, so I’d go with the positive and think about how we can make it more intuitive and friction free for our customers.”

Its experiments on the digital channel come amid a wider review of its marketing costs. It didn’t give an exact figure but as a percentage of sales it stood at 5% versus 5.3% in the previous period. The savings were made as a result of “digital marketing efficiencies and a higher return on advertising spend,” said Beighton.

Though admitting the brand is on “every conceivable marketing channel”, Beighton said it is venturing offline, especially in other European markets. In the UK it ran its first out of home campaign to launch its Face and Body and Activewear lines while in France it took to TV and cinema for the first time with promising results.

“The combination of TV and cinema aren’t immediately relevant to the 20-something market in the UK but they are in the French market. But it’s an experiment,” he said.

In the US meanwhile, its PPC ad spend is under scrutiny with Beighton saying the rates “are up pretty dramatically” on various terms, though he didn’t go into detail on how it would mitigate that cost.

Overall, he said continued investments are enabling strong engagement levels across its customer base. Site visits increased by 25% year-on-year; average order frequency improved by 8%; average basket value increased by 2% alongside a 10 base point improvement in conversion.

Active customers are now at 16.5 million, representing a 17% increase since last year.

By Jennifer Faull

Sourced from THE DRUM