editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

24 Email Marketing Stats Every Business Owner Should Know (Infographic)

April 19, 2018 No Comments

Email marketing is the cornerstone of many marketing programs.

Email marketing is the cornerstone of many marketing programs. It can make engaging with and retaining customers much easier with high-powered tools like automation and personalization. And using mobile-friendly email templates ensures that no matter what device your customer uses to view them, your emails will always look great.

Campaign Monitor has created an infographic, “24 Email Marketing Stats You Need to Know” to help you understand just what value email marketing brings to a small business. For example, for every $1 spent, email marketing brings in $44; for one of the highest ROIs of any marketing tactic.

Personalized messages bring results

A high ROI is fantastic, of course, but with a powerful marketing tool like this, there are even better reasons for email marketing. By using an email service provider, you can create emails that are personalized for each customer, helping them to connect with your business.

The more your customers engage with your business and emails, the more likely they are to purchase from you. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26 percent more likely to be opened. And personalization doesn’t stop at the subject line.

You can add images and content that are specific to each reader to keep them interested in what your business offers. The more you can send emails that your customers want to see, with information that they’re looking for, the more likely they’ll stay your customer. Using data you already have about them can help you to personalize emails a little bit more. Keeping your data updated, by using signup forms or surveys, can help you collect the information you need to do this.

Automation saves time and engages customers

Automation, creating a series of emails once and sending them out automatically when certain criteria are met, can help keep customers coming back for more. Sending out welcome emails, reminder emails, VIP emails or even birthday emails can help to hold your customer’s attention, and lead to sales.

As a matter of fact, automated emails can generate 320 percent more revenue than non-automated ones. Using automation and personalization together can make marketers’ lives a little easier since they need to only create an email once to have each person get the version they need, and sent when they need it.

Since email open rates increased to 68 percent on mobile devices in 2016, it’s important to make sure your email can be read on any device. Just about everyone has a mobile phone and reads their emails on it these days. The easiest way to do this is to use a template that’s already set up to work on mobile devices. This way no special coding is needed and your customers will have an easy-to-read and useful email. Plus, you’ll still be able to use personalization and automation, the end device won’t change how they work.

Email marketing stats worth knowing

From personalization and automation to a high ROI, email marketing can make staying in touch with customers a breeze. And, it will help to not only convert leads to customers but help retain the customers you already have. For more useful and fun email marketing stats and tips, check out the infographic below.

Feature Image credit: juststock | Getty Images

This story originally appeared on Bizness Apps

By Kimberly de Silva

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Google Knows Literally Everything About You – Here’s How To Delete That Data

April 18, 2018 No Comments

By Thomas Tamblyn

Take back control of your information with these easy steps.

Google, just like Facebook, collects a lot of personal data about its users. While many of us might have put that thought to the back of our minds, this week one web developer reminded us of the true extent of Google’s great data grab with this eye-opening Twitter thread.

The post went viral, unsurprisingly, given that the details it contained: Google tracks every journey you make, it logs every video you watch on YouTube, and it even knows your tastes.

It doesn’t actually send any of this data outside of its own four walls. Instead, Google hordes it all so it can learn more about you, and better target the adverts you see and the services you use.

If the thought of a single company having all that information in one place makes you uncomfortable, then not only can you stop Google from tracking your every move, but you can also delete all the previous data it has been collecting on you. (Alternatively, you could download it (although we wouldn’t recommend it).

How to see everything Google collects on you

Since 2016, Google has allowed every user to see all of this information through a privacy website called My Activity. This will show you a timeline of every interaction you’ve made through one of Google’s apps – whether it’s watching a video on YouTube or asking for directions through Google Maps. Prepare yourself, it’s a bit scary.

Click here.

Stop Google saving every search you make

Google uses a lot of the data it collects to help it work faster – that’s why when you start typing in Google Search, it seems to instinctively know what you’re looking for. This can be useful, but comes with a tradeoff: Google records and remembers every search you make through Google, Google Now or even Google Maps. It doesn’t share this with anyone, but stores it for its own services.

To stop Google recording every search head to My Activity by clicking here. Now click on Activity Controls on the left-hand side of the screen.

You’re now in the main settings screen. The first setting is called Web & App Activity. Turn this off and then click on the word Pause. Also untick the box below that says Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services.

Stop Google tracking your location

Google tracks everywhere you’ve been either from devices where you’ve signed in to Google Maps or through an Android device. Users with iPhones or Apple devices will find that Apple automatically limits this tracking considerably so you won’t have the same terrifying map of locations as Android users.

Head to My Activity by clicking here. Now click on Activity Controls on the left-hand side of the screen. Scroll down and you’ll find Location History. Turn this off and then click on the word Pause.

Stop Google tracking which smartphones you use

Google stores information about every Android device that you sign into, the idea being that it can better recommend apps and services the next time you have a new device.

Head to My Activity by clicking here. Now click on Activity Controls on the left-hand side of the screen. Scroll down and you’ll find Device Information. Turn this off and then click the word Pause.

Stop Google recording your voice

Every time you say ‘Ok Google’ to your phone or smart speaker Google saves that request so you can go back and review it or delete it. Google says that it saves these in order to improve the way your devices respond to you.

Head to My Activity by clicking here. Now click on Activity Controls on the left-hand side of the screen. Scroll down and you’ll see Voice and Audio Activity. Turn this off and click Pause.

Stop Google tracking every YouTube video you watch

When you’re using YouTube Google is recording every search and every video that you watch. The idea being that it can better recommend videos you might enjoy watching.

Head to My Activity by clicking here. Now click on Activity Controls on the left-hand side of the screen. Scroll down and you’ll see YouTube Search History and YouTube Watch History. Untick both of these boxes and click Pause when each box appears.

Stop Google creating a profile of you for advertisers

Google shares surprisingly little with advertisers in terms of your personal information. Rather it uses all of that information to create a rough anonymous profile of your interests. It is this info that is then used to target ads for products you might like. To see your advertising profile click here.

You can also turn off ad personalisation or tweak your own interests if you’re not happy with the adverts that you see. You can also scroll down and change your profile which will usually be a gender and a rough age range.

Download all your Google data

Soon to be everyone in the EU’s legal right, Google already lets you download all the data about you that it currently holds. While this might make interesting reading, once the data is on your computer it is now arguably less secure than it was before, so treat it with care.

Start by clicking here.

You can now pick and choose the type of data you want to download and in what format.

Delete all the data Google currently has on you

This is, remarkably, pretty easy.

Head to My Activity by clicking here. Now head to Delete activity by. Simply click on the date range and select All time. Now click Delete.

To delete all the location data Google has on you head to your Timeline by clicking here. In the bottom right-hand side you’ll find a rubbish bin, click on it and then click I understand and want to delete all location history.

To delete all the device information being collected on you click here. Now on the right-hand side click Delete All.

By Thomas Tamblyn

Sourced from HUFFPOST

In News

Importance of Email Marketing in Mobile App Development

April 18, 2018 No Comments

By Harnil Oza.

Email marketing creates awareness for your app leading to downloads

You’re reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

There is no doubt you have created a mobile app with fascinating features! But what is the essence of such app if it fails in the market? Truth is; you saw a need and created an app to provide solutions to such need. There is no way you can meet this need without app downloads by its supposed users. Hence, the need for result-oriented strategies targeted at driving app downloads and use. To do this, you must include these strategies right into the app development process. This is a key strategy for most top app development companies in the world.

Many factors are responsible for the failure of an app in the highly competitive app market. With these result-oriented strategies, you can surmount the challenges posed by these factors. The right audience and ad campaigns are some factors that promote app downloads and use. The truth is; even with the right audience and robust marketing campaign, you can end up with a failed app.

An amazing result-oriented strategy that can drive app success is email marketing. With the internet, email marketing has become an important tool in mobile app development. For most top app development companies, it is a key tool used during app development to drive app success.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a unique type of direct marketing. Here, you communicate with potential app users via electronic mail. The truth is; any email you send to your existing or potential app users is email marketing. It is sending emails to potential app users to convince them to download and use your app. More so, it entails sending emails with the aim to building relationships between your app and its users. Thus, it encourages continuous app use which leads to app user’s loyalty. Today, most top app development companies use email marketing in driving app downloads. This has helped such developers churn successful apps into the market.

Today, beliefs are that email is on the verge of collapse due to social media. This is far from the truth as it is one of the most used marketing tools in the world. Here are a few advantages email marketing offers your app over conventional marketing:

-Trackability of the exact ROI of your email campaigns

-Ability to reach massive potential app users from all over the world

-Opportunity to segment your mail list and emails

-Reach out to current and potential app users via personalized and self-motivated content

With email marketing, you can be creative in churning relevant content at the right time.

Why Email Marketing in Mobile App Development?

Email marketing should be a key component of your app development process. Today, with the rapid increase in using mobile phones, you can reach a wide audience via emails. Here are few reasons to integrate email marketing into your app development process.

1. Low-cost With Huge ROI

It does not cost you much to use email marketing in app development to raise awareness. The truth is; email marketing is cheap. There are printing costs, advertising or postage fees. Whether you do it or you hire an agency to do it, it cost nearly nothing. Hence, the need to use email marketing during your app’s pre-launch, launch, and post-launch. With this, you can reach thousands of potential app users at low-cost with outstanding results. Studies show that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you get about $40 equivalence of ROI.

2. Has Immediacy

Email marketing has immediacy. It produces meaningful results within minutes once sent to potential app users. An app pre-launch mail is a unique marketing strategy you can use for the awareness of your app. More so, a launch mail is an excellent marketing tactic you can use to drive app downloads and use. A post-launch mail is relevant to keep app users updated about changes in your app. Such emails will create a massive sense of urgency for both current and potential app users. Thus, convinces them on the need to take immediate actions to download and use your app. This is why most top app development companies cannot do away with email marketing.

3. Easily Targeted

Email marketing creates awareness for your app leading to downloads. The truth is; this unique marketing strategy solves all the intrinsic troubles of non-target campaigns. With email marketing, you can send emails to your chosen audience. In fact, by segmenting your email contact, you have control over who sees your mail. You can easily target potential app users using relevant demographics. With this, your messages get across to the right potential app users with ease. The truth is; you can send personalized messages to a target audience for app downloads and use. Thus, results in a higher conversion rate in form of app downloads and use by your target audience.

4. Highly Easy to Share

Emails are highly easy to share. Using email marketing gives you the privilege to send messages that can be shared with ease. With emails, app users can share your emails to convince loved ones to download and use your app. All this can happen at the click of a button by app users. Today, most top app development companies use email marketing because it’s easily shared.

5. Global Access

Email marketing gives your app campaigns access to a global audience. With emails, you can reach thousands of potential app users across the globe in seconds. Although social media can help you reach a global audience, it does not show who reads your content. Most top app development companies fancy email marketing because it gives access to a global audience.

6. Ease to Measure Results

You cannot ignore the role of analytics in measuring the success of your marketing campaigns. Unlike email marketing, conventional marketing tools give uncertain and estimated results. With email marketing, you get accurate and helpful metrics. It gives metrics such as open rates, retention rates, and click-rates. This gives you insights into the interests and behaviors of app users. Email marketing helps you to monitor and fine-tune information derived from app users. This is why it is an integral part of app development for most top app development companies.

How to Maximize Email Marketing for Mobile App Downloads and Use

It is possible to maximize the performance of email marketing for your app. To achieve this, you should do the following;

1. Fine-tune your email so it gets delivered to and opened by potential app users.

2. Fine-tune your email so potential app users can read and act upon it.

Feature Image credit: Shutterstock

By Harnil Oza

CEO, Hyperlink Infosystem

Sourced from Entrepreneur India

In News

6 Email Metrics You Have to Track

April 18, 2018 No Comments

By Robert W. Bly

If you track nothing else, be sure to track these numbers to find out how effective your email campaigns are.

The following excerpt is from Robert W. Bly’s book The Digital Marketing Handbook. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | IndieBound

There are half a dozen key metrics that you should keep track of to determine how well your email marketing messages are working and how much money you’re making from them.

Bounce rate

A bounce is an email that doesn’t get delivered to the recipient because the email address you sent it to isn’t valid or active. The cause can be a typo in the email address, a change in the recipient’s choice of internet service provider (ISP), or closing down a domain, server or email account.

On a well-maintained email list, the bounce rate should be small — ideally, about one percent or less. MailChimp, a large email services provider, tracked millions of emails and found the typical bounce rate was around a little under one percent. A bounce rate of eight percent or above means either the list is old and outdated, or you have a quality problem with the list or possibly your method of email distribution.

Opt-out rate

Every time you send an email to your opt-in list, some of the people on the list will decide they no longer want to get email from you and will opt out or unsubscribe, which simply means they’ll ask you to remove their name and email address from your list and send no more emails to them. For this reason, unless you’re constantly and proactively building your elist, these opt-outs can cause the size of your elist to shrink by as much as 25 to 30 percent a year.

So, in addition to continually building your opt-in elist, you must work to reduce your opt-out or unsubscribe rate, defined as the percentage of your subscribers who opt out of the list each time you send an email to it. Ideally, your opt-out rate should be 0.1 percent or below. That means if you send an email blast to your list of 5,000 subscribers, a maximum of five and preferably fewer will opt out from that single email.

Open rate

The open rate is the percentage of people receiving your email that click on and open it. According to Constant Contact, open rates can range from five percent to 20 percent, with the average being around 10 percent to 15 percent. Mine varies from eight percent to 25 percent depending on which of my lists I’m sending to.

Some marketers feel the open rate is very important. For each email I send out, I’m much more concerned about the next three metrics: clickthrough rate, conversion rate and gross revenues.

Clickthrough rate

The clickthrough rate (CTR) is the percentage of people receiving your email marketing message who respond to your offer by clicking the hyperlink to reach your sales page for more details and possibly to order. Typical CTRs range from one percent to five percent and sometimes more for each email blast. And a study from Marketo found that text emails on average produce 17 percent higher clickthrough rates than HTML emails.

Conversion rate

The conversion rate is the number of prospects who reach or land on your sales page and accept the offer, whether it’s to download a free special report, register for a webinar or buy a product.

Depending on whether you’re trying to generate a lead with a free offer or sell a product, the conversion rate on a landing page can be anywhere from one percent to as high as 80 percent or more. If you’re selling a $29 ebook and get a five percent conversion rate, then for every 100 people who clicked on your email hyperlink and went to the landing page, five bought the product and 95 did not.

Gross revenues

The gross revenues are determined by four factors: the size of your elist, the price of your product, the clickthrough rate, and the conversion rate. Let’s say your elist currently has 10,000 names on it and you’re selling them a $39 product; for today, the list size and product price are both fixed.

You could increase your gross sales by improving either the CTR or the conversion rate, but if you boost both, it has a multiplying effect that can take your revenues from modest to spectacular. For instance, if you send an email to a list of 10,000 subscribers with an offer of a $39 product, when the CTR and conversion rate are each one percent, we get only 10 orders for $390 revenues on the email.

If we can boost either CTR or conversion tenfold from one percent to 10 percent, our sales from the email go from $390 to a respectable $3,900. But, if we boost both clickthrough and conversion from one percent to 10 percent each, we multiply our results a hundredfold and make a whopping $39,000 in sales from a single email.

Feature Image credit: PeopleImages | Getty Images

By Robert W. Bly

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Google’s ‘Speed Update’

April 18, 2018 No Comments

By Tony Palazzo

Website loading speeds on mobile devices will now be used as ranking factors in Google search results. Here’s how to take action and protect your ranking.

Earlier this year, Google announced a big change to the way they factor search rankings. For the first time, website loading speeds on mobile devices will be used as ranking factors in search results.

Of course, anytime the Google wizards announce an algorithm update, search professionals like myself scramble to learn all the ins-and-outs so we can preserve our clients’ hard-earned search real estate. While the so-called “speed update” isn’t as earth-shattering as previous Google changes, you should be aware of ramifications that could begin July 2018, and be ready to take appropriate action if you value your Google ranking.

What is the speed update and what does it mean for businesses?

Site speed has always been a Google ranking factor, because Google knows web users will quickly abandon a page if it takes too long to load. So what’s new about this speed update? Previously, site speed was based only on a site’s desktop version. With this update, speed will now be a ranking factor for your mobile site as well. This means that mobile sites delivering slower load times may see a decrease in mobile organic rankings on Google.

While this may not sound like a big deal, remember that more than half of all search traffic occurs on mobile devices and consumers are increasingly making major purchases from their phones and tablets. So even if you don’t see major traffic from mobile yet, you will soon.

It’s also possible that this change won’t end with mobile organic rankings. Google could roll this same methodology out to Google AdWords mobile ads at some point in the future. This would mean that a slow mobile site may hurt your quality score, and you’ll have a harder time getting your ads to rank at the same cost. Therefore, if your site relies on Google traffic and AdWords campaigns, you’ll definitely want to pay attention to this update.

How can companies avoid punishment for a slow-loading site?

If companies want to avoid punishment for a slow-loading site, they should first start by testing the existing version of their mobile site. Google’s testmysite tool will scan a mobile site and test it against a standard 3G connection. Then it will grade the site’s loading speed time and provide a report on other factors affecting the test results.

If your mobile site performs poorly, you should make adjustments based on the testing feedback. The easiest place to start is by compressing site images using tools like tinypng.com. You can also minify Javascript and CSS and leverage browser caching to reduce site load times.

Other methods of improving mobile site speed include removing unnecessary plugins, hiding unnecessary videos or images on mobile, and reducing server response time. Developers can also use Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project, which is an open-source initiative enabling the creation of mobile pages that load nearly instantly across devices and distribution platforms.

If improving a site’s mobile speed isn’t possible before the July update and businesses start seeing organic rankings decrease, they may want to focus on Google AdWords, using mobile-specific ads. However, this may only be buying time, as Google Adwords could follow suit in the future with increased weight on mobile site speed.

Other considerations

It’s important to remember that this latest update will only affect a small percentage of sites and won’t have any effect on current algorithms or rankings for desktops. But, designers and developers should always be thinking mobile-first regardless if you’re B2B or B2C. This update serves as an excellent reminder of that principle.

In my day-to-day work with Logical Position, I’m often reminded of the old saying, “the only constant is change.” Even minor updates like this speed change require adjusting our methods to ensure we’re continuing to deliver great results for our clients. It’s a method towards success no matter what industry you’re in.

By Tony Palazzo

https://www.logicalposition.com

Tony Palazzo is Vice President of Operations & Marketing of Logical Position, an Inc. 500, Premier Google Partner headquartered in Oregon with offices nationwide. The agency offers full-service PPC Management, SEO and Website Design solutions for businesses large and small, and was ranked as the third best place to work in America by Inc. Magazine.

Sourced from business.com

In News

Do bloggers need to do everything? Blogging Update

April 17, 2018 No Comments

Sourced from An Historian About Town

I try not to blog too often about blogging, as it is for an incredibly small audience, and I don’t think that I am an authority on what you should or should not be doing on a blog. However, sometimes a question strikes me and if it sticks for long enough, I will share it here to hopefully open up a discussion. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the proliferation of bloggers that have a store on their blog, and a course, and an e-book, and a YouTube channel, and services, and this, and that, and and and- is this becoming the norm for bloggers? And are we expected as bloggers to have all of these things?

I know, I know, the first instinctive response is “Your blog is what you want it to be”, which is theoretically true but if you are at all interested in growing your blog isn’t actually the truth. I would guess that you have to be incredibly lucky to only have your blog with no social media (and no participation in groups) to grow with any steady rate. (Sidenote: I, like 98% of bloggers, like to see growth with my blog. I don’t care if it’s only 0.2% growth, but if we are going to put 20+ hours a week into this, I think we would all like to see a little something in return.) So, if we do need to diversify, what is it that we need to be doing?

I’ve noticed more and more and more bloggers starting YouTube channels. To me, a blog and a YouTube channel are two distinctly different mediums, and get at very different audiences. But am I going to appear like I am lacking to general readers if I slowly become only one of a few who hasn’t started one? I still don’t feel incredibly comfortable appearing physically on my Instagram or in Stories, but I am trying to push myself in that area. However, a full blown YouTube channel is much out of my comfort zone, and quite frankly, far out of my monetary and time budgets. The pride I have from my little only community is amazing, and has gotten me through some very tough times as of late, and I would hate to think of it slowly dying off because I didn’t evolve as a blogger. However, is blogging to YouTubing a natural evolution? And is YouTube even as big as it once was? (Is anything, really?)

I also don’t know where to draw the line for social media, right now. I’m actively working on Pinterest, and I’m actually seeing growth. Not a ton, but enough that it feels like I’m doing some things right (and actually enjoying using Pinterest like I used to)! I’ll probably never pay someone to run my Pinterest, or one of those boosting services, but maybe I can build more of my own traffic through it. I also feel like I’m still okay with Instagram, even though most people rage about the new algorithm more than Canadians gripe about snow. I’m never going to have an entire feed of the same “theme” but I enjoy what I post, and that’s what is most important to me. Realistically, I can’t dedicate the time needed to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Stumble Upon, and Flipboard to truly succeed- do I just stop using them altogether or sporadically share and post on them as I have been?

One of the most difficult parts of blogging for me is the lack of feedback- I can get a sense of what people like (or dislike) from the number of views, comments, likes, emails, messages, etc, but that is just a feeling. I do put up a poll every so often to see what readers what to see on the blog but that’s more for when I have too many ideas and just need help deciding which direction to go in. I’m determined to give more feedback to bloggers when I enjoy their post or series, because I think that is feedback we can all use.

This also leads me into my blogging goals for the next few months! I don’t share on Twitter anymore, because unless you are a magical unicorn, you probably aren’t actually getting traffic from there. I’m going to try and thoughtfully share the post to the best network (ie, Pinterest for recipes, Stumbles for style tips, Flipboard for more conversational pieces, etc). I also am going to continue trying to interact with and share posts from bloggers that I might not normally converse with- in every blogging group I’m in, it seems that most people continue to interact with the same few people. I might not be interested in a parenting guide but maybe someone who follows me on Pinterest is! I also am going to be working on diversifying my traffic away from blogging groups. I very much enjoy blogging groups and I think that the bloggers I have met in them are some of the best people on the internet, but strictly traffic-wise, it’s not sustainable. The day you stop participating is the day that your traffic will fall, and I’m okay with that at this point. It’s lovely to see higher traffic on the blog but if people are only going there because it’s in a thread and they have to, is it genuine traffic?

Cute puppy because… just because!

I know that there are a lot of thoughts in questions in this post, and that most people will skip it! Bloggers, how do you feel about all of the expectations of blogs nowadays? And what are your spring blogging goals?

Sourced from An Historian About Town

In News

Conversations and Email Marketing: What’s the Relationship?

April 17, 2018 No Comments

By Courtney Sembler

As humans, we’re always having conversations: with our co-worker, friend, partner, or even with our leads and customers. The conversations we have shape our professional and personal lives.

Having great conversations is what inbound marketing is all about: attracting the right visitors to your site, engaging with them, and nurturing them through their customer lifecycle. Your emails shouldn’t be any different. Having a great conversation is as much a part of email marketing as your subject line. So how do you create a relationship between your email marketing and your conversations?

What Are Conversations?

Conversations are everywhere. Think about the last conversation you had and where that conversation took place. There aren’t many places in our world today where we don’t have conversations. We communicate through multiple channels, such as phone, email, Facebook Messenger, and text.

So what exactly is a conversation? Generally, a conversation is defined as an oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas between two or more parties.

But as technology is evolving, there are more ways we are communicating. So the conversation definition needs somewhat of an expansion. A conversation is an interactive communication between two or more parties.

You might think conversations only occur in newer technology such as messenger and chatbots. But never leave email out of the equation. To send highly engaging emails your contacts want to interact with, those emails need to be human. There is no better way to be human than to have a conversation.

So what are the ways you can create great conversations with your contacts through email?

Want to learn more about conversations? Check them out here.

How Do You Create Conversations in Emails?

Two ways to have great conversations in your emails include:

Send email based off behavior.
Create conversational email copy.

Send email based off behavior

Behavioral email means sending targeted emails to your contacts based on their actions and behaviors.

Behavioral email focuses on the idea that every interaction a user has with your company should have an expected and appropriate reaction.

By looking at all the interactions and your prospects’ responses, you can start to develop a sense of your contacts’ behavior. Each person in your contact database will tell you, by their actions, how often you should send them email.

Create conversational email copy

The biggest piece of advice I can give for creating conversational emails is to be human. This means keeping it real and sometimes uncomfortably honest, using words you’d use in everyday language. Write copy that sounds like it came from a human.

Remember that your email is going to a human, so the language you use should reflect that.

Instead of trying to sell your products or services (which you know are great), spend time in your emails giving recommendations, interviews around subject areas that you have, or tips and tricks of how to do something you know your contacts will love (based on their behavior).

Sign your email with a name that your contact might recognize. It doesn’t have to be “xoxo,” but a simple “Thanks, Court” will go a long way.

Want more tips on writing email copy? Check it out here.

What Are HubSpot Conversations?

So how can you organize your conversations in HubSpot? One of the most important aspects of email marketing is understanding that your emails don’t live in a bubble.

Your contacts engage with all types of content you create on every channel you use. It can become overwhelming to keep track of and understand all the types of conversations you are having.

And because email marketing continues to be a powerhouse in your inbound marketing strategy and continues to evolve, understanding where your emails fit into the conversations will be extremely important. A well-positioned conversation will be more engaging than a well- designed email with tons of bells and whistles.

This is where HubSpot comes in.

HubSpot Founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah states:

“With Conversations, we’re going beyond a single solution, like site chat, to build something that centralizes all of a business’ communications with customers and prospects into one collaborative environment.”

He is referring to the new HubSpot conversations tool. The tool is designed to help you organize and keep track of all the conversations you’re having across multiple channels.

What can you expect from the product? Conversations will be different from the other conversation tools on the market today. The key difference is that you’re going to be able to tie all of these conversations directly to your CRM.

Multi-channel: Conversations unifies conversations from Facebook Messenger, onsite chat, social media, email, and other messaging outlets into one shared inbox.
Tied into a CRM: Rooting messaging into a CRM enables companies to have the full context of past interactions wherever and whenever they may have taken place.
Scaleable with chatbots: Conversations will enable companies to build chatbots without needing technical skill and scale responses to match high- volume inquiries.

Your inbound marketing strategy should focus on being human, helpful, and holistic. There is nothing more human than having a great, contextual and timely conversation.

Want to learn more about HubSpot Conversations?

Check it out here.

By Courtney Sembler

Sourced from HubSpot

In News

How Can Your E-Commerce Business Leverage The AI Trend?

April 17, 2018 No Comments

By Stankevicius MGM

AI-powered email marketing tools are revolutionizing the way email is built.

Business owners would agree: email still holds the crown as one of the most valuable ways to connect to customers. And rightfully so, as, according to the Direct Marketing Association UK, for every $1 spent, email marketing generates $30 in revenue. However, approaches to email campaigns remain largely outdated. The result: the more emails users receive, the more they are ignored, which has led to a decline in email use, at least among millenials.

Thus, AI has emerged as an increasingly important part of email marketing for businesses across the globe. And thanks to AI, email marketing is getting a revamp which solves many challenges that e-commerce business owners have been facing.

In today’s era of micro-personalization and increasing data protection demands, e-commerce business owners find it difficult to adapt to the ever-changing rules of email marketing. Too often, in order to maintain the competitive edge, entrepreneurs face the need to hire additional help such as marketing assistants or agencies. Now, with a new generation of smart and simple AI tools that support most e-commerce platforms, an e-commerce business owner can supercharge their email marketing campaign single-handedly. Instead of learning new rules or bringing on board new hires, AI does the work for the e-commerce business owner.

Here’s how AI raises the bar for e-commerce email marketing.

Predictive Personalization

Personalization means to email marketers what the Holy Grail would be to Indiana Jones — rare, elusive, seemingly unattainable. Not anymore, thanks to AI.

AI helps the business owner to identify the behaviors and events that should trigger email-based marketing communications, determining which offers will produce the desired results.

This level of personalization would be all but impossible to achieve without AI. “Machine learning helps AI-based email tools to understand what is most meaningful for a specific audience,” says Igor Solovyov, founder and CEO of Triggmine, an intelligent AI-powered email marketing platform.

Powerful Ambition

Triggmine’s goal, among others, is for the platform to segment and target audiences using “natural language technology to select the words for subject lines, body copy and calls-to-action. This way, the message not only sounds like it has been written by a human, but is also consistent with the language generally used by the e-commerce business”. While that ambition is certainly powerful, it is not unwarranted. When tech research firm Gartner gave its predictions for tech in 2018, its first was that machines would play a role in writing copy because of the unique insights big data can provide. Intelligent AI-powered email marketing platforms like Triggmine’s are paving the way for a revolution in the way E-Commerce is practiced.

Seeing the potential of AI for the E-Commerce business owners that they work with daily, Triggmine made the decision to switch to AI due to the speed, precision and specificity that an AI platform can provide its customers. For small and medium business owners who don’t have time to handle their marketing activities, this allows business owners to focus on running their business whilst optimizing their marketing campaigns, for minimal effort.

AI tailors messages for various segments of an email list and delivers suggestions precisely for a particular niche or person. AI-powered email applications use big data to suggest the type of content that complements each stage of the buyer’s journey. By analyzing behavior and clickstream, AI essentially replaces the function of not just the copywriter, but the marketer too.

Time It Right

For years, marketers have recognized that when they send emails has meaningful impact on open rates and click-through rates.

For example, an email recipient in Paris might be less likely to open an email that is delivered in the dead of night because the send time was optimized for subscribers in the U.S. Central Standard Time zone. For this reason, some email marketers segment their subscribers in an effort to ensure that their emails are delivered to each segment at a good time.

Besides, the attention span of customers is so short that if the message arrives in customer’s inbox at the wrong time, it gets buried or even deleted straight away. AI combats this peculiarity in a certain way. By determining when a particular customer is most active online, AI can judge when there is a higher chance of the customer reading and acting on the message. The AI-powered marketing tool then acts even more intelligently: instead of emailing large segments of email list, it optimizes send time on a per-subscriber basis. Doing this manually would be nearly impossible, but it’s easy work for AI.

Historically, email marketing has been mostly manual, strongly oriented towards campaigns. With the arrival of AI, email is laser-focused and single user-oriented. This of course begs the question, what‘s the next frontier for e-commerce email marketing? The answer is clear: optimizing the mobile experience. According to recent studies, by 2020 there will be 6.1 billion smartphone users worldwide. That’s nearly as much as the current population of the earth!

For this transformation, marketers need a helping hand and what will be better than a smart robot? Artificial Intelligence tools such as Triggmine are fundamentally reshaping different marketing channels such as email marketing — and there’s more to come.

Feature Image Credit: Courtesy of Stankevicius MGM

By Stankevicius MGM

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Use Microblogging to Promote Your Personal Brand

April 17, 2018 No Comments

By Personal Branding Blog

Bite-sized content is becoming more popular with online audiences on both mobile and computer devices. Creating unique and eye-catching images opens the door for converting leads into sales and growing your social networks with organic methods.

Which platforms work the best for microblogging posts? After conducting the right target market research to learn how to best meet the needs of that audience your brand’s next strategy should be to meet your audience where they are at.

Social media has become a leading powerful brand building tool, and has the potential to build more authority as well as create a high level of influence that increases subscribers and sales.

Give Your Personal Brand a Boost with Microblogging

Here are several places you can share your message in an attractive format:

Twitter – When people think of microblogging they first come this social network. This is a place where chats, video, and engaging conversations take place. Easily build your social footprint, and attract more interested visitors to your website as well.
Instagram – This social network began as an image sharing platform for teens and has quickly grown to a premier place for sharing viral photos and videos as well as stories and live broadcasts. With the right branding you can attract a loyal audience who will be more likely to make a purchase.
Tumblr – If your branding is centered around art and creativity then you will love this micro content website. The focus is based on interest and niche groups which makes it very easy to hone in on the right community. This place is geared toward a younger crowd and those who are both crafty and artistic.
Pinterest – Establish your brand as a go-to resource by sharing articles, infographics, videos, and photos. By creating multiple boards you can attract a niche community in different categories as well as connect with other brands who have a network that can be drawn into your own profile.

Microblogging is a golden opportunity to expand your publishing efforts for your personal brand. With these social media platforms it is possible to grow your community through organic methods in addition to advertising.

By Personal Branding Blog

The Personal Branding Blog offers branding and career advice from Dan Schawbel and his team of experts.… View full profile ›
Read more at https://www.business2community.com/branding/use-microblogging-promote-personal-brand-02032612

Sourced from Business 2 Community

In News

How Startups and Established Companies Can Partner to Drive Innovation

April 16, 2018 No Comments

By Jeremy Goldman

A Chief Digital Officer and a startup founder speak up about how to win at the innovation game.

If you’re an established company, how can you partner with startups to drive innovation? And if you’re an innovative startup, how do you identify established companies to partner with? Those are some of the burning questions in the innovation community.

If you’re an established company, you’ve simply got to pay attention to startups. In the market, there’s a big disruption to how enterprises do business, how they operate, and how they execute their marketing strategies.

“It’s a consumer revolution, so we have to think what’s next,” says Martin Aubut, the Chief Digital Officer of L’Oréal Canada. “What’s next is services, it’s how we bring the best experience across channels, it’s data…”

Startups, Aubut explains, can help established firms move faster towards a world the enterprise can imagine, but is not always equipped to bring to life on its own. Alone, an enterprise might be able to get somewhere, but it will take much longer due to the bureaucratic nature of most large organizations. An enterprise + startup partnership can go faster because of the energy, passion, and entrepreneurship that the startup brings to the equation. Aubut cites the L’Oréal buzzword of métier (loosely translated to professional competency), and says that startups have certain things within their métier that enterprises just do not. In many ways, these partnerships can help enterprises become faster, leaner, and more agile.

I met Martin Aubut alongside Marie Chevrier, founder and CEO of Sampler, as they co-presented at the Path to Purchase Summit in Chicago. Sampler, a company devoted to changing how brands distribute samples, has partnered with a number of big companies over time as it has gained traction in the marketplace. On that front, Chevrier is the person to talk to about which established companies are best for startups to partner with.

“What we’re seeing is that…there needs to be a mindset of innovation,” says Chevrier. “There needs to be a mindset of wanting change and realizing that change is coming whether or not they participate or not.” To that end, Sampler is always looking out for executives who are open minded about new ways of doing business.

More than just lip service

Of course, some companies may simply say that they are dedicated to innovation because it feels like the right thing to do, but then when push comes to shove, aren’t as devoted to driving innovation. Chevrier feels L’Oréal was an ideal partner because their innovation mission became a company-wide mission. The company has been crystal clear from top to bottom that they would be innovating with startups. They even enlisted the company’s rank and file to vote on which startups should be selected for partnerships.

Where Chevrier sees it go wrong for some innovation partnerships is in the friction points between an executive deciding that the organization needs to try something, and the actual execution of that something. Some of the departments you have to deal with in between, like procurement, may be blockers. These blockers are missing the point, according to Aubut, who believes that entrepreneurship is at the core of evolution. An organization evolves in one of two ways. Either people change at the point where they start to feel the pain acutely; or, some organizations evolve to the point where change becomes part of their DNA. Aubut thinks L’Oréal is the latter type of organization, an organization that didn’t wait to create a technology stack and foundation to deploy innovation across the institution. “We’re more than open. We want to create the future with those organizations now.”

Finding the right partners

Aubut may look like a company man, but he wasn’t always the guy you’d find in an established business. He was an entrepreneur himself when he met the CEO of L’Oréal Canada at the time who told time that the company wanted to own digital beauty, he immediately understood that the company was looking to be bold. When they start to move, they move. Aubut appreciated that the company had entrepreneurial values, with very clear goals and focus about where they wanted to go. And, an openness to take a calculated risk on hiring outside the beauty community: “I’m not a cosmetician,” Aubut jokes.

To Aubut, there are a few traits that make a startup a good partner. First, the startup must first have the attitude of solving problems and being solution-oriented. The founder and their team must have the right attitude to make sure that the entire organization understands that everyone has to work together to make something exceptional. Furthermore, the organization cannot be scared of trying new things and being agile and able to adapt to the organizations they’re partnering with. That seems to describe Sampler to a T, as it has added different product lines to solve problems better.

If you enjoyed this piece, you might enjoy listening to my whole interview with Chevrier and Aubut on my podcast, FUTUREPROOF. It’s all about innovation and the innovators creating the future we’ll all soon be living in. If you enjoy, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your pods.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Jeremy Goldman

Sourced from Inc.