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5 Copywriting Tips to Increase Landing Page Conversions

May 13, 2022 No Comments

Given the notably low typical landing page conversion rate, the need to drive more traffic to your site is critical, and there are proven and inexpensive ways of doing it.

According to the email marketing platform Campaign Monitor, the average landing page conversion rate across all industries — the number of people who will sign up, purchase or convert on your offer — is a measly 2.35%. So, the hard fact is that you must drive more and more traffic to boost sales, and qualified traffic costs a pretty penny.

With ad costs rising and SEO becoming increasingly competitive, it’s best to tap into the lowest hanging fruit first: existing landing pages with existing traffic.

Here are five copywriting tips to do just that, and in the process increase your landing page conversion rate to 10% or more — five times as many conversions, and without buying more ads.

1. Speak to an audience of one

The best landing pages are highly specific and hone in on a single sector of an audience or market. They speak directly to their true desires and wants.

With broad landing pages, by contrast, you’re speaking to everyone, and “everyone” isn’t a good target market, unless you’re selling water. It’s far better to cater to multiple audience types and market segments by create unique landing pages for each.

For example, let’s say you sell small business insurance. Small businesses are quite a broad market, and could be within any type of niche, from a local bakery to a hair salon to an online digital marketing agency. Trying to create a single landing page that speaks directly to the pain points of all of these businesses is impossible. The resulting copywriting becomes too generic and broad, and the reader doesn’t connect with the message.

So, develop unique landing pages for each segment and craft copy aimed at its specific needs.

2. Control cadence and flow

Each line of copy on a website has two goals: sustain attention and drive a desired action (such as buying, filling in contact information or downloading a guide). Cadence and flow are powerful tools to help achieve those goals.

When writing information on your landing page, you want to include a mix of sentence lengths and structures, and vary the depth at which you expand on ideas. A good example is the “hero” section of a landing page (the main headline and image above the fold), which should be catchy and contain a compelling value proposition. It’s short, sweet and to the point. (“Get groceries delivered in 10 minutes or your money back.”)

As you move further down the landing page, you can start to expand to include more detail, including explaining how your service works in terms anyone can understand. Walk them through the process of your business so they are clear on what to expect when they do convert and sign up with you. The goal here is to blend compelling language while addressing as many potential customer questions as possible.

3. Include immediate social proof

Social proof is critical on a landing page, but that doesn’t mean being limited to just generic quotes from customers. There are countless ways to include valuable and subtle social proof signals that fuel conversions, and they are necessary in order to build trust and confidence.

Consider adding social proof directly in the hero section of your landing page, so it’s one of the first things that users see when they land on your site. Here are a few additional thoughts:

• Is your landing page a software company? If so, and under your call-to-action (CTA) button, share how many companies signed up this week to use your software. This creates instant FOMO.

• Include logos of companies and brands that use your product or service.

• Include third-party reviews/stars from sites like G2, Capterra, Google and Yelp.

• State how many customers you’ve served and helped this year, or over the company’s lifetime.

4. Minimize CTA risk

A CTA (“sign up now”) moment is intimidating because it implies extra work to be done for the customer, rather than immediate value. It has associated risks, not least the possibility of signing up but not enjoying the service. There’s also a money risk if you are trying to get direct sales from a landing page. These contribute to hesitation, which reduces conversion rates and closed sales: People start to second-guess whether they really need, want or could benefit from what you offer — and in an age of distraction and short consideration spans, a few seconds of hesitation often results in a missed opportunity.

To address these problems, surround your CTA button with positive reinforcement statements like:

• “No credit card required.”

• “Free trial for XX days.”

• “30-day money-back guarantee.”

• “Free forever until you upgrade.”

All of these reassure users that they’ll be covered even if things don’t work out as they had hoped.

5. Get specific with copywriting

The biggest mistake I see on landing pages is the overutilization of broad statements rather than specific results backed by customer data. For example, which statement are you more likely to believe?

A) “Get a better night’s sleep, guaranteed!”

B) “9 out of 10 customers improved their sleep quality by 65% in 7 days.”

Specific data is far more interesting and impactful than broad promises. So, wherever you can, change blanket statements into data-driven ones that sell your product or service for you. To efficiently gather such customer specifics, speak to them — survey them in exchange for free products and utilize the feedback to improve the perceived value on your landing page.

By Jeremy Moser

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Report: The state of personalization in email marketing in 2022

April 21, 2022 No Comments

By Jeeng

Given its privacy-oriented, opt-in nature, email is entering the spotlight as a tool for publishers to directly communicate with their readers and own more of the traffic that goes to their sites. As with all channels in the marketing mix, however, customers have expectations when it comes to personalization, context and relevance

However, given the increasing availability of utilizable, first-party data combined with advancements in machine learning and natural language processing, publishers are empowered to deliver personalization beyond a simple salutation to better serve their readers, drive loyalty and optimize the email newsletter as prime real estate for monetization.

To highlight the ways in which publishers are currently using personalization in email and how they plan to evolve their strategies, Digiday and Jeeng surveyed nearly 90 publisher representatives. This report delves into the results, and in conjunction with expert insights, provides an overview of the changing role of email personalization for publishers and how companies are adapting accordingly.

Download this new report to learn:

How personalization is evolving for publishers
How publishers are approaching personalization challenges
What outcomes are achieved with an optimized personalization strategy
Where personalization is heading in 2022 and beyond

Download Here

By Jeeng

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

7 Cold-Email Marketing Strategies That Will Heat Up Your Sales

April 19, 2022 No Comments

By Himanshu Agarwal

Email marketing can be highly profitable, but your success depends on the tactics you use.

There’s no question that email marketing is one of the most profitable routes to take for marketers.

For every $1 spent on email marketing, the ROI is between $45 to $32. That isn’t surprising since the majority of consumers check their email ten times a day, every day. What’s more? Of those consumers, the ones who actually buy products marketed via email spend 138% more than those who don’t receive email offers.

With this in mind, companies that want to get a leg up on the competition should turn to the following strategies for maximum success.

1. Show you care

Believe it or not, something as simple as addressing customers by name can make them more likely to engage with your emails.

When Experian Marketing Services compared generic, cookie-cutter promotional mailings to personalized ones, they found that personalized emails have 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher click rates per person. What’s more, according to Harvard Business Review, personalization can deliver five to eight times the ROI on marketing spend — and boost sales by upwards of 10%.

People don’t want to feel like nameless faces in a sea of customers; they want to be respected. If your brand isn’t willing to go the extra mile, your competition will step in to fill the gap.

2. Data is power

Remember back in 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was gathering mountains of private, personal information on millions of people? Morality aside, the NSA saw data for what it was: a key to power. While you don’t need to go to such extremes, the principle remains the same. The more you find out about the person or business, the more knowledge you can use to your advantage to build a relationship or secure a sale.

At Outreach Chimp, we draft hyper-personalized cold emails for businesses looking for guest blog placements by studying their website analytics using SEO data providers like MOZ, Ahrefs and SerpStat. The motive is not only to pitch our services, but also to provide valuable information about their website’s shortcomings and suggestions for improvement.

This may sound like a lot of work for a cold outreach campaign, but with automation and the use of application programming interfaces (APIs), it takes minimal effort to achieve major results.

3. Write click-worthy subject lines

Every competent marketer knows the marketing mantra: “Provide value. Solve problems.” Nobody likes clickbait, and if you use it, prepare to never have your emails opened again.

Subjects such as “10 Ways To Shock Fat Off Your Body in Five Minutes!” are grounds for being labeled as spam, and although your email may actually be useful and highlight ways to eliminate fat in a short amount of time, the subject line cheapens the content within. If the title of your email reads like a headline out of the National Enquirer, People or BuzzFeed, people won’t open it — and rightfully so.

4. Be mobile-friendly

Today, everybody has a mobile phone; some people have three. In 2014, data from the U.S. Consumer Device Preference report revealed that 65% of emails were opened on phones. Now more than ever, it’s important to make sure your emails are suitable for reading on such devices.

5. Target your list

The Data & Marketing Association discovered that segmented email campaigns delivered a 76% increase in revenue for marketers.

By segmenting your subscribers, readers or buyers, you can hone in on their demographics and sort them according to criteria. For example, if 10 of your subscribers open emails about optimizing SEO keywords, you can assign them a special category. This category means they will receive only SEO-related emails, specifically tailored for them, while the other segmented subscribers receive a different set of emails.

Targeting your list with specific promos and offers related to the segment in your lists is important. Gone are the days where we could cast a wide net and know that at least 10 out of 100 people would bite the bait.

6. Test everything

Without testing your messages, subject lines or any other aspect of your emails, you won’t know what works and what doesn’t.

Studying these metrics is called A/B testing, and it’s an invaluable tool every email marketer should know. You’ll also be able to test which subject lines get your emails opened or not, which is great information to have. Now, this doesn’t mean it’s a universal fact — hence the importance of testing everything.

Analysing the numbers for inbox rates, open rates, bounce rates, reply rates and unsubscription rates can help you make your email campaigns more effective.

7. Follow up within reason

Let’s imagine that this is a perfect world. The emails you send out have a 65% open rate (I said perfect, not unrealistic), average reply rates and an above-average subscription rate.

People are buying the products your emails are promoting. Now, let’s say you start to add an email or two every couple of days. Although the numbers dip a bit, you’re still sending emails to “get your name in front of their face” and become as relevant as Coca-Cola. In a matter of days, your emails aren’t opened at all; dozens of people quickly report them as “Spam” or send your work to the trash.

What’s the solution? Email follow-up tools, which you can use to set up reminder emails on a schedule that provides value without annoying your customers.

In the old days, we gave cold emails the benefit of the doubt. We might not have known who the sender was or how they got our email, but as long as they pertained to our interest, it didn’t matter.

But that’s no longer the case. Today, hyper-personalized emails that add value are key in attracting and retaining customers.

Feature Image Credit: Pavel Muravev | Getty Images

By Himanshu Agarwal

Sourced from Times Union

In News

Businesses get the message – email is crucial to successful marketing

April 14, 2022 No Comments

By Michael Nutley

Many businesses turned to email to connect with their customers when pandemic measures sent so many people online. Now with increased privacy concerns for marketers and a need for joined up omnichannel marketing, email is about to be catapulted back into the limelight, finds a new report.

Email marketing in 2022 is more important, more integrated and more mature than ever, but email marketing teams still need to be faster, more efficient and better at personalization. Meanwhile the biggest concern marketers face – privacy – is also email’s biggest opportunity.

That is the snapshot of the discipline provided by a new report, Email In 2022 – The Trends, Behaviors & Benchmarks Driving Email Forward, published by email sending and deliverability platform SparkPost.

The report puts email’s growing role in the context of the recovery in business activity. It found almost a third (63%) of marketing leaders globally saying their budgets reflect pre-Covid levels. However, the pandemic has left its mark. Priorities are shifting, says the report, in that advertising and wide-net marketing efforts are too much of a gamble for organizations. Instead, businesses are investing in branding, CRM and email marketing. Content remains as high a priority as it was last year.

Email shines during lockdowns

Businesses certainly turned to email when pandemic measures sent so many people online.

“Email became a critical tool for organizations of all kinds to contact various stakeholder audiences with the combination of flexibility, speed, precision, and low cost not available through other modes of communication,” says George Schlossnagle, email evangelist and founder of SparkPost.

This crucial role continued into 2021. Three-quarters of marketing leaders (76%) say their email marketing program made a positive impact on the business in 2021, compared to 58% in 2020. And email’s increased importance is reflected in a greater maturity in the way it’s measured. Almost three-quarters (70%) of leaders said they changed the way they measure email marketing last year, compared to half (51%) who said the same thing in 2020.

Just as importantly, the pandemic also accelerated the integration of email with other marketing channels. Almost everyone who took part in the 2021 survey (95%) said their email marketing was aligned with other marketing disciplines, compared to half the respondents in 2020.

Intriguingly, this acceleration has happened despite the massive switch to remote working at the same time. Despite the fact that only 10% of the world’s companies are fully back in the office, almost everyone surveyed said collaboration is the same or better (98%) and that communication is the same or better (96%) than they were before remote working became a necessity.

Greater integration also ties in with the growing importance of an omnichannel approach to marketing. This means talking to customers on the channels they prefer and breaking down the silos between channels in order to deliver a coherent, consistent customer experience across every touchpoint. This is ‘absolutely the future of marketing’, the report says, particularly with the impending demise of the third-party cookie and the rise of first-party data.

The future is private

Indeed, privacy and data are the biggest concerns for email marketers in 2022.

“What we’re seeing now is only the beginnings of a paradigm shift that will continue to drive marketers to rethink data collection and usage practices,” adds Schlossnagle. “Changes in privacy regulations and a shift in consumer perception of personal data are big factors in marketing leaders’ commitment to investing in earned and owned marketing channels.”

The report found that the biggest concerns for respondents were the fear of existing digital marketing assets being unusable in the future; the threat of having to overhaul existing systems; and the need to re-do things from scratch.

More specifically, email marketers are most worried about Apple’s iOS 15 changes (a medium to high concern for 81% of respondents), Google’s third-party cookie tracking (77%), and government regulations and the deprecation of app tracking data (both 72%).

Email returns to centre-stage

Despite these concerns, the report predicts another impact of these changes will be to thrust email marketing even further back into the limelight. Companies leaning more heavily on first-party data and on the channels that are closest to their known customers – like email – creates an opportunity to build better profiles. In turn, these will drive longer term loyalty and engagement, leveraging audience behaviour on the company’s own website or app.

Email has the ability to be the glue between consumers and brands.

“The demise of third-party cookies puts a tailwind behind channels that leverage first-party data – email being the most pervasive,” says Schlossnagle. “We should all be gearing up for more investment in email and SMS because owned data is about to be more valuable than ever.”

Budget pressures demand greater efficiency

All this talk of a bright future for email marketing comes with a downside. The resources to support all this extra work haven’t necessarily arrived just yet. Two-thirds (69%) of leaders say their teams are busier than ever, but only 5% of respondents report having higher budgets in 2021 compared to 2020.

The result is even greater pressure for marketers to be more efficient – email marketers included. It’s one reason for the push for closer alignment of channel teams. Another effect is the increase in the proportion of companies bringing email marketing in-house. In 2020, just over half (55%) of leaders said they relied on agencies for their email marketing. Last year that fell to under a third (29%).

In addition, one of the key trends identified in the report is the increasing use of email design systems. These are pre-created and optimized selections of HTML templates. As the report explains, all the coding is done before marketers start creating an email – which means you can crank out high quality emails quickly. But it also notes that ‘there are clear opportunities for faster, more intuitive martech solutions, streamlined email marketing processes, and improved collaboration between stakeholders within the marketing team.’

One thing is clear. Email has long been seen as boring and unfashionable, but the current convergence of such trends as more time being spent online, increased privacy concerns and the need for joined up omnichannel marketing are just about to catapult it back into the limelight.

To explore this and more findings from SparkPost’s Email In 2022 – The Trends, Behaviors & Benchmarks Driving Email Forward report, click here.

By Michael Nutley

Sourced from The Drum

In News

6 Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2022

April 13, 2022 No Comments

By Ahava Leibtag

Email marketing is one of the most personal forms of digital marketing. In the wise words of Henry Ebarb, CEO and co-founder of Eightfold, “Getting access to someone’s contact information is about as close of a touch point as you can get to your customer.”

When users opt in, your organization interacts with them on a deeper level. Email makes it easier to gain trust, build loyalty and, most importantly, keep a steady flow of patient appointments.

Learn What NOT to Do in Email Marketing

Because it’s so important, how can you ensure you don’t make mistakes that break trust between your brand and your audience? Here are some of the top email marketing mess-ups to avoid this year.

Mistake #1: You Don’t Have a Targeted, Defined Audience

One of the first steps to any new email marketing campaign is to have a product or service to promote, as well as a defined audience for that product or service. Automation tools allow you to segment your subscriber list based on specific attributes, like age, gender and interests. Fleshed-out content, personalization and workflow will come later.

Once you know what product or service you’d like to promote, you can segment your list and define an audience to target. For example, to promote the COVID-19 vaccine, UCLA Health sent emails on a rolling basis to specific patient populations. They worked with population health to prioritize and invite the highest risk eligible patients first. Messages were segmented based on language preference (English vs. Spanish) as well as patient portal activation (active vs. inactive).

The campaign was a massive success; the unique open rate for the vaccine invitations was consistently above 60%.

Mistake #2: You Don’t Use Personalization or Automation Tools

Does your email marketing strategy begin and end with e-newsletters you send to a broad audience?

No single newsletter could possibly meet the needs of all subscribers. What’s the most efficient method of delivering the right content to different audiences? How will you know if you were successful? When you commit to marketing automation, the answers are at your fingertips.

Marketing automation uses tools and data within your CRM to deliver custom content based on your audience’s interests. Automation makes it possible to:

Respond quickly after someone subscribes by sending a welcome email.
Schedule content delivery so that you don’t have to manually coordinate every newsletter release.
Personalize messages by including the user’s name in the greeting.

Mistake #3: Template Design Isn’t a Priority

Do you recreate your emails from scratch each time you send one? Or maybe you use a generic template that doesn’t match your brand style or stand out in any way?

One mistake that some email marketers make is not prioritizing custom template design. You can streamline your email marketing efforts by taking the time (and budget) to create well-designed, professional templates. Then, you can run A/B tests to see which design templates resonate best with audiences.

This year, ditch the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) template builders, which have limitations and restrictions. Custom template creation gives you unique content blocks that look crisp and clean, yet on-brand.

Mistake #4: Your Emails Blend in With Your Competition

When it comes to email marketing, how bold are you?

When trying to stand out, simplicity rules. You have few words and little time to demonstrate that your email is worth a click. A thoughtfully-crafted subject line and snippet along with a good mobile experience can slow your subscriber’s roll so that they absorb every juicy detail.

Here’s how:

Start with a short, compelling subject line: Your subject line should create a sense of urgency without feeling spammy. And you have only 25 to 50 characters to do it. A busy subscriber will likely scan past “[Organization Name] Spring Newsletter.” But, “How to Feel Your Best This Spring From [Organization Name]” will likely pique their interest.
Write an enticing snippet: This is the first line of text after the subject line. Leaving it blank could result in an error message. Instead, use this small window of opportunity to share an interesting fact, summarize your email or highlight a new offering. It’s just one line, so be concise.
Use mobile-friendly design: Users are often opening your email on their phone, so keep things tight and clean. Succinct content and smart use of headers make for easy reading. And don’t go overboard with images. When they don’t display correctly, images become big white gaps that detract from your content.

Mistake #5: You Don’t Have Enough Content to Distribute Through Email

Once you’ve enticed users with your exceptional topic and easy-to-read format, they’ll expect regular emails from you. It can be challenging to keep developing fresh content — especially if you’re managing newsletters on multiple topics. But you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

How to feed the content beast:

Get personal: Introduce the people behind the products and services you offer. Staff interviews are easy to pull together and make for compelling content. This information may already exist in staff bios or clinician profiles, and all you need to do is summarize.
Repurpose existing blog and web content: UCLA Health has perfected this process. “We partner with our content editor to determine which pieces to repackage for email. We then write a headline, adjust copy, and add a call to action. The information goes into our template, and we resize images. Then we’re ready to send,” said Anne Machalinski, senior manager of marketing at UCLA Health.
Riff off newsletter articles that performed well: Compile a “Top 10” list at the end of the year highlighting popular articles. And write articles with follow-ups.

Mistake #6: You Set It and Forget It

Some newsletters will be more successful than others. Analytics provide valuable insights into what’s resonating with audiences and where there’s room for improvement. This information is available in real time, so check early and often — and be responsive to what the data shows you.

Jennifer Coffman, email marketing manager at Cleveland Clinic, told me, “If you’re not managing the campaigns and understanding the behaviours and overall data, it can affect your relationship with your audience and your company’s reputation. Don’t set and forget.”

Pull It All Together

In 2022, it’s time to rethink your email marketing initiatives. It’s time to ditch the common mistakes above and take your email marketing to the next level. Make this the year email marketing has the biggest impact for your business.

By Ahava Leibtag

Ahava is the president and owner of Aha Media Group, a content strategy and content marketing consultancy founded in October 2005. Ahava is passionate about content and prides herself on tackling the toughest content projects — from healthcare to higher education to hip-hop (seriously).

Sourced from CMS Wire

In News

How To Improve Your Email Newsletter In 2022

March 9, 2022 No Comments

By John Turner

Email marketing is a great way to touch base with your audience, provide product education and keep existing customers engaged with your brand. If used correctly, this strategy can help you build trust and increase sales, which will help you grow your brand for years to come.

It’s no surprise that email campaigns continue to flourish, despite new marketing channels like social media making waves in countless industries. Globally, it’s estimated that more than 4 billion people use email, and that number is expected to rise over the next few years.

One of the best ways to continually provide value to your readers is with email newsletters. Newsletters contain helpful information about your company, as well as content designed to appeal to your audiences’ goals and pain points.

I believe business owners across all industries can benefit from email newsletters. So today, I’m going to share several tips you can use to improve your newsletters and see more success with your email marketing strategy in 2022.

Include plenty of value-packed content.

The mistake I see many business leaders and marketers make is they use their newsletters to push product promotions and little else to their audience. As a result, subscribers who are not ready to make a purchase may leave before they fully grasp what you’re trying to say.

As a general rule, I suggest using a 60/40 split when creating newsletter content. This means that 60% of each newsletter should focus on adding free, value-packed content to your readers. Typically, this includes links to blog posts, exclusive lead magnets and even free online courses. The other 40% is for promoting new products, offering discounts on existing products and offering things like paid online courses or events.

People who subscribed to your list want more than a discount on their next purchase. They want to get to know and trust your brand. Top-notch content allows you to put your knowledge and expertise on display, which is bound to win over subscribers who have yet to buy something from your site.

Look for micro-personalization opportunities.

Personalization can make or break your marketing campaign. Don’t believe me? Consider this: 91% of shoppers are more likely to shop with a brand if they deliver personalized content and offers.

In many cases, you can add personalization to your marketing strategy by creating broad segments that define the various traits of your target audience. For example, a sporting goods store would create segments for people based on the type of sports they enjoy. But you can go beyond personalizing newsletters based on broad segments. Now, it’s possible to add micro-personalization to your newsletters. Let me show you what I mean.

My team and I often customize newsletters for our subscribers based on factors like their birthday or how long they’ve been subscribed to our company’s email list. Imagine your readers’ surprise when they see a discount they can use during their birthday month just for subscribing to your list. These micro-moments help you build rapport with your subscribers, which means they are more likely to read future newsletters and take advantage of special offers.

Prioritize accessibility.

Another hurdle many business leaders face when developing email newsletters is they don’t focus on accessibility. If subscribers cannot read your emails from their device of choice, they are less likely to engage with the content inside your message.

A majority of smartphone users check their email from their devices, so mobile optimization is a must. The good news is that there are plenty of quick and easy ways to make your emails more mobile-friendly.

For starters, I suggest using a single-column format. Multiple columns can make your newsletter appear too busy and complicated. As a result, many people will choose to back out instead of trying to decipher your newsletter.

You’ll also want to make sure that buttons and links are easy to click and use on mobile devices. Imagine trying to take advantage of a promotion, but you can’t tap the button because of how it’s placed in the email. Odds are, you would feel frustrated and may think twice before navigating to the online store that sent you the message.

I recommend testing your email campaigns on multiple real devices. Emulations can give you some insights, but testing in a real environment is the best way to check the accessibility of your emails.

Gather feedback from your audience.

The last tip I have for you today can help you gradually improve your email newsletter. Customer feedback is how many companies evolve over time, and email campaigns are not an exception to this rule.

When you’re crafting your next newsletter, consider adding a feedback form so readers can share their thoughts with your team. You can learn so much from your visitors, but you have to ask first.

You’ll want to focus on questions that are relevant to the format, style and content of your newsletters. If you’re willing to ask the right questions, you can find countless opportunities to grow and evolve your campaigns.

One of my favourite questions is, “What would you like to see in future newsletters?” The answer to this question helps me learn more about my target audience while giving me some ideas I can use in the future. After gathering enough feedback, you’ll have the information you need to shape your newsletters to match your readers’ needs, pain points and goals.

Over to you.

Email newsletters are one of the most consistent and powerful ways to engage with your audience and grow your brand. The advice offered here will help you get more value from your campaigns, which can lead to increased trust, new engagement opportunities and more sales. Use the tips I’ve provided with your own internal industry knowledge to create irresistible email newsletters that make your subscribers eager for your next message.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By John Turner

Sourced from Forbes

In News

A Definitive Guide to Creating Your Automated Email Marketing Workflow

March 9, 2022 No Comments

By Grace Lau

In a world of ecommerce and distanced online marketing, it’s essential to retain as much contact with your customers as possible. Going into cold calling or having your customer queries on call waiting is not enough.

Haven’t you ever wondered if it would be possible to send emails en masse to your customers without sending them manually? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to do it automatically?

Well, that’s where an automated email marketing workflow can change your life.

What is an Automated Email Marketing Workflow?

It’s a wordy phrase, but essentially what it means is using the implementation of RPA to send out automated marketing emails in response to specifications that your customer meets. So, for example, if they sign up to your mailing list, they might get a “Thanks for signing up! Here’s what’s next…” email.

Some more examples are:

“Some tips to get started.”
“We’d love your feedback on….”
“Thank you for your order!”
“Your order has been shipped.”

Do you see the pattern? In every case, the customer completes an action, such as making a purchase or creating an account, and a corresponding email is sent.

As you can imagine, this is extremely useful for brands that operate predominantly on online platforms. Our world is so fast-paced that holding your buyer’s attention, or getting them to make a repeat purchase, can be really difficult. However, Investing in custom SEO services (accelerateagency.ai) or a solid automated email marketing workflow can go a long way towards improving your customer retention rate.

This article is a step-by-step guide to making the best campaign you possibly can, so read on to find out how.

Image Credit: Unsplash; Thank you.

1. Decide Your Goals

The first step to planning your campaign is deciding what you want to get out of it. But, more importantly, what are your customers going to get out of it?

Do you want them to:

…buy something?

…learn something?

…read something?

…fill out a form?

…sign up for something?

Once you decide what you’re trying to get the customer to do, working out what actions need to be taken will be much easier.

Now might be the time to break out one of those project planning tools that everyone goes on about. Remember, that for a campaign as big and complex as this, planning is absolutely crucial, and will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.

2. Criteria and Actions

These are the two most essential steps to building the foundations of your automated email marketing workflow campaign. Think of it like this: criteria are at the customers’ end, and the action is at your end of the communication flow.

For example, a criterion could be the customer clicks “confirm” on a newsletter sign-up page. The met criterion would trigger a corresponding personalized action, such as a confirmation email being sent to the customer’s contact.

This is where using a CCaaS platform can really come in handy. This collects data regarding your customer base, letting you know which tasks and actions are completed most often on your website. Which pages are the most popular? What is the most travelled path on your website? How long do customers stay on each page? CCaaS platforms are your best friend when it comes to answering these questions.

Answering these queries gives you a great head start in constructing a set of standards for your workflows. You can tailor your approach and target those areas most often by learning where customers are landing and what they do most frequently. This will increase your customer engagement and drive sales and conversions.

Image Credit: Unsplash; Thank you.

3. Frequency

Congratulations, you’ve done the tricky part. Now you get to make the fun decisions, like how often you’re going to send the emails and what they’ll look like.

Are you going to make sure the customer gets an email every time they complete an on-site action? This might not be the best idea, especially if they’re a frequent user of your site.

Too many emails in a short period of time will get annoying and cause customers to unsubscribe, or even stop buying from you altogether. Not to mention that those emails could end up in the spam folder, and nobody will get to see all your hard work at all.

Instead, consider designing your criteria to be met every other time they complete an action, or once per week, per month, and so forth. This way, your customers won’t be bombarded with several emails a day yelling at them to complete steps they have no interest in completing. Goodness knows there’s enough of that on the internet already.

4. Designing Your Emails

Here’s where you can flex those graphic design skills. It’s essential to make sure your emails are visually attractive and functional; otherwise, a scenario like the one described above could happen.

Luckily, there’s a whole host of campaign templates out there to help you with your design. Here, we also have some simple tips to ensure your emails are the prettiest ones out there.

Colours

Make sure to incorporate the colour scheme that you use for your website into your promotional emails. That way, customers will immediately recognize them as yours before they even read them.

Don’t Crowd It

If someone is receiving a workflow email, chances are they already know who you are and what you do. So don’t waste valuable space, including a bio of you or your company – get straight to the point and tell them what they need to know.

Fonts

It sounds obvious, but you wouldn’t believe how much of a difference a good font can make. Ensure the typeset you use for your campaign is readable, a good size, and accessible. Don’t forget, people with learning differences are just as likely to receive emails as everyone else – in this case, selecting a sans serif font such as Arial is advised as it appears less cluttered.

Also worth bearing in mind is that non-native English speakers may also be on your mailing list, so keep your language clear and engaging while not overly complicated.

Image Credit: Unsplash; Thank you.

5. It’s Time for a Meeting

So, you’ve done the math and drawn up your designs – what now? Well, here is where it would be beneficial to video call your team, so they can look at your plan and see what can be improved. A fresh pair of eyes can do a whole lot more for progressing your campaign than looking at it over and over again yourself.

You can also use cloud PBX services to make sure that people in every department can be contacted, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you find the best conference call service for you.

Some things to consider during this meeting:

Does the campaign appeal to every member of your team? For example, different age groups, gender, or interests?

Is there enough information in your email? Too much? Is the goal clear?
Does everyone agree on the appearance of the email? If not, why not? Is it personal taste, or has there been a mistake somewhere?

Collaborating in this way can take your campaign to the next level.

6. Test

Now things are getting serious. Your workflow ideas have passed the board meeting, and now it’s time to test. But what should you be looking out for?

First, you’ll need to decide on a testing method. You can either do this internally or by using free email marketing providers. Whichever you choose, there are some things you should bear in mind:

Does the frequency feel right? Should you send them more often? Less often?

What feedback are you getting from your test subjects? Listen to them and adjust accordingly.

Keep track of your analytics. For example, how many people complete the actions laid out in the email? How many people are converting because of them?

Of course, you can never really know what your workflows will be able to do for your business until you push it out into the real world. Luckily, that’s the next step.

Image Credit: Unsplash; Thank you.

7. Go Live

This is it. The campaign is finally ready to be launched. There’s nothing more to this step other than to watch and wait, which can be nerve-wracking but also highly gratifying. It’s always a bit scary when something you’ve worked hard on goes out into the world. But remember: the work doesn’t stop here.

Monitor your campaign closely, especially during its first few weeks. Is everyone who’s supposed to be receiving the emails receiving them? Are customers doing what you need them to do? How are these marketing workflows influencing your statistics? Tracking this would also help reduce churn rate.

8. Enjoy The Results

You’ve done it. Pat yourself on the back. All your hard work has paid off, and all your loyal customers are enjoying receiving well-thought-out, professional emails.

If all has gone to plan, your automated email marketing workflow will be increasing your engagement and conversion rates. By reminding customers of current deals, member benefits, and sign-up perks, you can be sure that customers will remember your brand and return to you again and again.

And Then They Clicked “Open”

Your campaign will need regular updating to ensure that your customers are kept abreast of all new offers and information coming their way, but that’s where having an RPA system implemented can be so helpful – you already programmed it to do all that stuff for you. You can even add sales process automation to make things easier for your sales team.

Ultimately, these sorts of marketing workflows are all about informing people, letting them know what’s on, inviting them to receive better deals and customer perks, and giving them an all-around great experience. Good luck!

Feature Image Credit: MockupEditor-com; Pexels

By Grace Lau

Director of Growth Content

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Here is her LinkedIn.

Sourced from readwrite

In News

The 10 Best Email Marketing Campaign Examples to Learn From

February 17, 2022 No Comments

By Harikrishna Kundariya

Email marketing has been a leader in the marketing domain since its inception, and no other marketing channel has been discovered that is so cost-effective. Email marketing started way back in 1978, and since then, it has been widely used by businesses to promote their products and keep in touch with their customers.

Before diving into the best email marketing campaigns, you should have a quick look at email marketing. It will help give a clearer picture of the ideas discussed below.

What is email marketing?

In simple words, email marketing is a process used by companies to promote their goods and services over the mail. Today, email marketing has grown from just promotional emails to personalized emails, and it has become the centre of customer interaction. It is one of the best return on investment marketing strategies for companies. Hence no matter what new strategies arise, this one does not diminish.

Time for some quick facts and statistics about emails and email marketing.

In 2019, every day, 296 billion emails were sent.
Email Marketing has the highest return on investment. For example, every $1 you spend behind email marketing gives you a return of $42.
Email marketing is vital for the success of a business, it has been admitted by 78% of marketers.
Email engagement is used to track content performance across channels, and 90% of people believe this.

Now, you know what email marketing is and some eye-opening facts about email marketing. So here are some of the best email marketing campaigns that you can learn from.

1. Uber

Uber is a leading ride-booking and taxi application that operates in multiple countries. Uber has significantly benefited from its email marketing campaigns. Its email campaigns are really straightforward and simplistic.

It keeps the call-to-action(CTA) very clear, and the newsletters don’t take much time to read. They deliver all the essential news effortlessly that helps get their point across. In their personalized emails, they share journey maps that make customers feel special.

Learnings From This Campaign

What you need to learn here is that content matters, and a proper CTA is equally important. While creating email marketing templates and newsletters, you should focus on providing quality content to your audience rather than experimenting with catchy colours and photos.

2. Netflix

Who uses technology better than Netflix, which originally is based on Node.js development services. Its marketing teams always come up with fresh ideas that go on to become a trend in the industry. There are many such examples, and here is one of their email marketing campaigns.

Netflix started a campaign to target an audience that was not active on their platform. With its AI and machine learning technologies, it was easy for the firm to identify such users. Then Netflix started sending personalized emails to every customer based on their viewing history and likes. This campaign helped Netflix grow its active user base by bringing people back to the platform.

Learnings From This Campaign

One of the key learnings of this campaign is that taking care of your users is key. Sending personalized emails and notifications develops a sense of commitment and connection between the users and your brand, and when this is done, you can grow exponentially.

Another thing worth mentioning is that you should get help from technology as much as possible. This will help you uncover hidden data and insights which are worth taking action on.

3. PayPal

PayPal is a leading payments processing platform for global transactions. It is an online service that charges some money to help you transfer money from one part of the world to another. PayPal is an innovative company, and it is constantly thriving to make its products the best. Here you’ll see an email marketing campaign from PayPal.

PayPal introduced the new “checkout with PayPal” feature. This feature was integrated into many online e-commerce stores and other offline stores too. But to make it popular, the company’s marketing team resorted to email marketing. The emails were sent to all subscribers of its promotional campaigns, and it was a significant hit.

PayPal focused on providing value to the user, so they concentrated on showing the benefits of this new feature in their marketing campaign. They never promoted the features in the campaign; it was all about how customers could benefit from using the new service.

Learnings From This Campaign

Instead of marketing the features of your products, you should consider highlighting the benefits to the customers. More people will use the features if you deliver value straightaway. This helps customers determine whether a service is worth their efforts or not.

You can quickly drive more customers to use your products with value showcasing. It is a humble and straightforward way of marketing new offerings.

4. Starbucks

Starbucks sells coffee, but there are brands that sell even better beverages than what Starbucks offers. What fuels Starbucks’ business is its innovative marketing strategies and tactics.

Starbucks sends newsletters and promotional emails to its customers regularly, and these emails are filled with colors and enticing graphics of coffee and other beverages. This makes people drool over the offerings and drives more people to their stores.

Learnings From This Campaign

Email marketing is not just plain words. You need to enrich it with images and catchy content. With the right combination of design and marketing tactics, you can increase your product sales, and Starbucks coffees are the prime examples of this.

5. Uniqlo

Uniqlo is an online eCommerce website that deals in a variety of products. It aggregates users’ email IDs for login, identity verification, promotional emails, and meaningful order updates.

Uniqlo ran a unique email marketing campaign where the company sent emails to users about price updates for items in their wish list or carts. This campaign reduced cart abandonment, a common problem in the eCommerce industry.

Learnings From This Campaign

For eCommerce companies, cart abandonment is a significant problem, and keeping in touch with customers helps reduce this. Plus, this provides customers a feeling of savings when they find out that the prices of their liked items have decreased, and they can buy them now.

6. Airbnb

Airbnb started humbly, and it polished its services through user reviews. Airbnb ran an email marketing campaign where it asked people to take a survey about their services.

In this campaign, Airbnb reached out to their customers and gave a survey link to each of them with the email. The email template was simple, starting off with thanks and then a perfect CTA for the survey. Many customers took the survey, and the marketing campaign was really successful for Airbnb.

Learnings From This Campaign

If you want to grow your business, being open to customer feedback is the best way. As emails have high opening rates, you get more customer feedback, and the more feedback you get, the more you can work on the betterment of your brand. It establishes a connection between the brand and your customers.

7. BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed is a content-centric business, and who knows emails better than they do. BuzzFeed uses email marketing to generate traffic to its website.

It increases traffic with email marketing by providing beautiful snapshots of the content and artistic imagery. It raises curiosity in the email reader’s mind and then carefully places a CTA to redirect traffic to its website.

Learning From This Campaign

You should use email marketing with a good CTA to increase website traffic if you run a content-centric website. To do this, you first need to have an organic mailing list so that you can drop emails to the right audience instantly. When your website traffic increases, your domain authority also increases, and you start ranking higher on search engine results page.

8. Headspace

Headspace is a mindfulness and meditation app that has garnered quite a popularity with the covid-induced lockdowns and stressful environments. With its domain, it follows calm colors and simplistic visuals. This same brand identity it follows in its emails.

Headspace runs email marketing campaigns with simple images, and it solely focuses on the power of its products. It showcases the power of its features through its welcome emails. The welcome emails are full of soothing colours and graphics that provide a premium feel to new users.

Learnings From This Campaign

Sticking to your brand identity is essential. It helps people visually distinguish your brand. People receive hundreds of promotional emails every day, so to help them identify and interact with your email, you need to fashion it according to your brand identity. You can use the colours and graphics that your branding consists of so that it looks more appealing.

9. Mint

Mint is a finance tracking application from Intuit, which is a global brand. The platform helps people track everything about their money, starting from saving to investing. It is like a one-stop-shop.

Mint runs an email marketing campaign where they send personalized birthday emails to their users. Though it is a small gesture, it goes a long way. Mint does this with the help of automated email drip campaigns and their customer’s data.

Learnings From This Campaign

Making your customers feel special on their birthdays is a great way to increase brand loyalty. Mint does not provide any marketing information or a CTA in such emails; it solely wishes the customer a happy birthday without any business expectation. But this makes a lasting impact on the users, and the product grows because it looks more personalized to the user.

10. Withings

Withings is a health-tracking application and platform aimed at helping people achieve their health goals. It follows a reward-based approach, and it rewards people based on their goal completion percentage.

Withings has an email marketing campaign where the company sends personalized emails on the achievement of every milestone. This helps the users stay on track and be motivated for their health choices.

Learnings From This Campaign

Interacting with users and rewarding them for their achievements goes a long way. It is one of the simplest and most effective methods to keep users active with your product. You can set up an automated email campaign for this task, and it can keep sending emails to your customers forever.

Wrapping up

Before you start an email marketing campaign, it is good if you can have a look at some successful campaigns. This helps you brainstorm and include things in your marketing campaign to make it more effective.

This article provides a round-up of the best email marketing campaigns with their learnings. So be sure to use these learnings in your email marketing campaigns to help your business grow.

By Harikrishna Kundariya

Harikrishna Kundariya, a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies. His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and ChatBot.

Sourced from Jeff Bullas

In News

Pre-Launch Marketing Strategies

February 14, 2022 No Comments

By Faith Walls

Marketing your business begins even before you illuminate that ‘open’ sign. Setting up a pre-launch marketing strategy is one of the best things you can do for your brand. The worst case scenario is launching your business only to realize you have failed to rally the appropriate audience for your services. Entrepreneurship is an uphill battle and requires someone who is comfortable with rejection and does most of their thinking outside the box. If you eat failure for breakfast (and you might have to, if that budget is small enough), then tackling the hefty job of marketing a new business should be no problem for you.

It is no secret that many businesses fail within the first five years of operation (upwards of 80%). You can set your company up for the highest chance of success by being proactive instead of reactive in the marketing world. Planning your pre-launch marketing strategies is equally as important as filing your DBA or purchasing insurance for your company.

Create a Social Media Editorial SOP

Having a social media plan is crucial to the success of your business. This determines where your energy and efforts should go in terms of digital promotions. Your social media marketing plan is the cornerstone of your organic and paid online advertising. Content marketing consistently generates up to three times more leads than per dollar versus paid search marketing. Establish a clear SOP (standard operating procedure) regarding social media so that there are no gaps in your team’s efforts. It is ideal to have a designated content creator. This of course falls to you if you are currently the sole employee within your business.

Content organization software such as Sprout Social and Later offer cross-platform scheduling and community management options. Here you can simply plug in the pre-established content and queue it up for a later date. Additionally, keeping a spreadsheet of proposed content allows you and your team to plan in advance and make edits within a single working document. Here you can write post copy, link to the approved images, include appropriate links, and manage hashtag lists.

Plan for Email Marketing

Email marketing ROI (return on investment) is one of the highest-grossing digital media tools today. Consumers benefit from consistent company updates and promotions delivered right to their inboxes. In a 2021 business survey, 59% of consumers reported that brand marketing emails impact their purchase decisions. Having a setlist of email recipients allows you to notify existing customers of sales and special discounts. Email marketing also generates increased traffic to your website, as you can easily link your page to copy and image blocks within the newsletter.

Schedule a Launch Event

It’s true that in this day and age, most of your pre-launch marketing efforts are likely geared towards the digital space. However, there is a significant benefit to promoting your services within your local area. As your business opening day draws closer, consider planning a pre-launch event to generate even more local interest.

By Faith Walls

Sourced from HEY Socal

In News

9 Proven Ways to Make Business Emails More Enticing

December 6, 2021 No Comments

By Shirley Stark

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

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

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

A guide to crafting the best business emails

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

1. Create an Irresistible Subject Line

Image Source

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

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

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

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

2. Make the Customer Feel Important

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

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

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

3. Create and Provide Value

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

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

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

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

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

4. Check Your Email Domains

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

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

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

5. Nail the Right Frequency

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

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

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

6. Include Button CTAs

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

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

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

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

7. Visual Appeal Matters a Lot

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

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

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

8. Segmentation is the Key

Image Source

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

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

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

9. Mix up Your Content

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

Infographics
Offer-specific emails
Emails that tell a story

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

Wrapping Up

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

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

By Shirley Stark

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

Sourced from Jeff Bullas