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The 8 Most Popular Types of Digital Marketing

July 21, 2021 No Comments

Traditionally, brands advertised in the mediums of the day, namely print (newspapers and magazines), television and radio. While those mediums are still used today, the digital marketplace has opened up a multitude of new digital marketing opportunities, including:

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Social Media Marketing
Content Marketing
Email Marketing
Influencer Marketing
Mobile Marketing
Viral Marketing

In this article we are going to take a close look at the 8 most popular digital marketing mediums, and tell you how they can be used to your advantage.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click (PPC) is a digital advertising model that is used to drive traffic to websites. An advertiser typically pays a search engine (Google Ads, Amazon Advertising, or Microsoft Advertising) when the ad is clicked. You have likely seen PPC in action when you search for something on Google.

In the image above you can see the first two results of a search for “CRM platform” are ads. In fact, the first four results are PPC ads.

Brands bid on a chosen keyword or search phrase, which then puts the ad into one of four ad spaces offered by Google, for example. The cost per click (CPC) is based on the quality score of the site and the competition of the chosen keyword. Brands typically use the tools provided by Google Ads to determine their keywords and the CPC.

Nate Tsang, founder and CEO at WallStreetZen, a stock market analysis service provider, said that pay-per-click marketing can be a very powerful digital marketing strategy when it is done by those who truly understand the practice. “You should only do this strategy if you are familiar with it or hire someone who is an expert in this field. Doing it on your own without the proper knowledge can be a waste of money,” said Tsang. “I have seen many brands waste thousands on pay-per-click campaigns because they are leading them to the wrong webpage or not being specific on what the visitor must do on the page. A successful PPC campaign must have a great and straightforward landing page so you can convert your visitors and not waste your budget.”

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art, as it were, of optimizing a website so that when a potential customer searches via Google, or to a lesser degree, Bing or other search engines, the web page will show up at the top of the search engine results pages (SERP). If a brand sells monitor speakers for recording artists, and they have a local store in Cleveland, Ohio, then SEO could be used to bring the website up in the listings by using appropriate keywords throughout the website, in the titles of the pages, in the meta keyword and description tags, and in the various headers throughout the page or site.

This is not to say that the site or page should be keyword spammed, that is, stuffed with keywords without relevant content. Content is still king, and long gone are the days when black hat SEO tactics can be effectively used. Tactics today should include backlinks to the site from all of the brand’s social media presences, and web pages should include relevant content. Content can be created about the topic, as in our example, a page that discusses the various types of monitor speakers and their use, with links to the various monitor speakers the brand sells scattered throughout the page (this is Content Marketing, which we will also discuss). Keyword and Description meta tags are still used, but content relevance is more important today. Also, especially for localized businesses, having a Google business page, which puts a brand on Google Maps, as well as a Yelp business page, will help to pull a brand up to the top of the listings.

Below the PPC ads are the organic (non-paid) results, which also include the “People also ask” section, which features pages in which a specific question is answered by the content of the page (search engine gold — this tactic is heavily used by SEO marketers).

A screenshot of the people always ask section of Google Search — PHOTO: CMSWire

Often, SEO is done through a third-party company that specializes in SEO, rather than an in-house SEO team or the marketing department. SEO used to be fairly simple, but continual changes in Google’s algorithms have made it more of a precise practice that involves specialization.

Ian Sells is founder and CEO of RebateKey, an online rebate provider, and like many marketers we spoke with, SEO is at the top of his list, because if customers cannot find your website, no business can occur. With so many websites out there on every possible topic, it’s challenging to get on top of the search engine results pages. “Being on top of SERPs, that is, being on page one, gives you a lot more traffic since your site gets seen by more eyes. The advantage of this is, while it takes a lot more effort initially, once your site gains the momentum, you don’t have to spend so much on it, unlike in ads where you have to continuously spend,” explained Sells.

Social Media Marketing

As one would imagine, social media marketing is when brands use their social presences, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter, among others, to target their customers. This is accomplished through targeted marketing ad campaigns, “like” campaigns, and posts offering special offers and discounts. Detailed demographic information about gender, ages, locations, times on the site, and more can be used to target specific demographics and groups of people.

“This is actually very powerful since a lot of people are on social media. We’re actually revamping our Instagram strategies as well as our Facebook strategies because we’re seeing the potential of the traffic they bring to our site,” said Sells. “The disadvantage of social media marketing is, sometimes, the engagement stays there. That’s totally useless, if your conversions happen on your site. So you have to make the effort to bring the traffic from your social media handles to your site.”

Content Marketing

We briefly discussed content marketing in the SEO section of this article, when we spoke about creating pages that do not directly sell products or services, but provide information and details about specific subjects that are related to the products or services a brand sells. By providing relevant content that appeals to a brand’s target audience, brands can attract customers to their website, and this content also helps improve SEO for the website.

“Content marketing is broad. In our case, we use several kinds of videos on YouTube, primarily informative ones,” said Sells. “These are helpful to increase awareness about your brand and help people who are interested to get to know your brand, product, or service even more. Sometimes, just a little explanation is enough to convince people to try your service.”

Brad Touesnard, founder and CEO of SpinupWP, a cloud-based server control panel designed for WordPress and he can attest that the right content can be a gamechanger. “We are in the server industry and our most popular blog post compares five of the top server providers. Our experts ran tests on each provider and we shared our results in our blog post. The blog post generated a lot of interest from industry professionals who were eager to see our data,” Touesnard said. “Currently this blog post generates 23.4% of the total search engine traffic to our site and ranks on the first place of Google’s search results for its primary keyword.”

Email Marketing

While many marketers might believe that email is a dying marketing channel, the opposite is true — email marketing is still one of the most effective channels a brand can use. This really shouldn’t be surprising, given the number of email users worldwide. According to a report from Statista, in 2020, approximately 306 billion emails were sent and received each day, with 3.9 billion people using email every day. That’s half the global population! Marketers should take note that according to the DMA Marketer Email Tracker, for every dollar that’s spent on email marketing, the average expected ROI is $42.

Unlike other marketing channels, marketing emails are only sent to those customers who have given permission for the brand to do so — which means they are actually interested in what brands are offering, unlike ads on social media where they do not have a choice but to see ads.

Typically, marketers use email marketing software which allows them to automate the process, send personalized emails, and often includes performance optimization and analytics functionality. By tracking key performance metrics, brands are able to determine which email marketing campaigns are effective, and which ones are not.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is still relatively new, and relies on people who have gained a following on social media either for being entertaining, informative, or being an expert in their field. Influencers typically promote themselves through blogs, videos, and social media posts. Brands look for influencers that are connected to their customers in some way. Perhaps the influencer has a cooking show on YouTube, such as Sam the Cooking Guy. Not only does he sell his own line of cooking utensils and books, but he is sponsored by Catalina Offshore Products and Lars Remodeling and Design. In the case of Sam the Cooking Guy, these two brands recognized that Sam, who has 2.93 million YouTube subscribers, reaches many people who are likely to be interested in their products or services.

“Majority of the videos we have on YouTube by other people are not sponsored. A lot of sellers and buyers really enjoy our products. And to be honest, this is really more powerful than paid ones. People trust other people’s reviews. Videos from influencers or at least people with a following are also helpful. If influencers say your product or service is cool, people who are following them are more likely to try your product primarily because the influencer said so,” explained Sells.

Dave Herman, president of EZ Surety Bonds, told CMSWire that thanks to the constantly changing digital landscape, there are many different types of digital marketing to take advantage of, but not all of them are appropriate or effective for every business. “Influencer marketing is becoming increasingly popular these days as more and more people gain fame and recognition on social media platforms. This is why a lot of businesses are taking advantage of it. While it really helped many brands grow, not every business can get the growth they need from this type of marketing. It is also not as easy as most people think it is. You need to research the right influencer that will represent your brand and ensure that they get the engagement you need to market your products or services.”

Mobile Marketing

It makes sense for marketers to focus on mobile marketing, given the vast number of mobile users. A report on mobile usage from Statista indicated that in the third quarter of 2020, mobile devices accounted for 50.81% of global website traffic. With those kinds of statistics, it’s pretty obvious that mobile marketing can be used to reach millions of customers.

Seth Lytton is chief operating officer at The Detroit Bureau, an automotive industry news publication, thinks mobile is a big opportunity for marketers. “Millions use their phones every hour. Mobile marketing gives you access to millions at once, and many customers have their phones with them at multiple times during the day. You can accurately determine your audience with mobile marketing,” said Lytton.

That said, as Lytton explained, brands must be careful not to overuse mobile marketing, at the risk of losing their customers completely. “On the other hand, many find ads annoying on their phones,” said Lytton. “Some people go out of their way to avoid some advertisements by using ad blockers, and more still get so annoyed with advertisements that they may blacklist the company entirely.”

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing typically relies on social media networks, but unlike social media marketing, the marketing is done by customers themselves, as they spread information on various social media networks about a product, service, or brand with other people. Marketing is thought to be “viral” when it reaches the point where it’s being shared by the general public, not just the brand’s target audience.

An example of viral marketing is memes, which may include funny text written above an image. Crazy Nate created a meme that features the character Nemo swimming in the ocean, next to a box of McDonald’s fries, with the words “Watching Finding Nemo; Why I Want McDonalds” superimposed on the image. McDonalds obviously had no part in the creation of this meme, but one can be fairly certain that they definitely do not mind that it went viral.

Brands such as Wendy’s, Dennies, and McDonalds will often create funny, light-hearted videos, Tweets, or memes themselves, and post them on social media such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other sites. They will then be shared by people who found them to be humorous, and those they shared them with will also share them with others, causing the video or meme to go viral. Here is an example of a Tweet from Wendy’s roasting McDonalds:

Keep in mind that viral marketing is never a certainty — one cannot force something to go viral. Either it goes viral, or it doesn’t. Whatever the case, social listening should be used to monitor mentions of the brand on social media.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are many digital marketing strategies that are available to market a brand. Brands are able to take advantage of their social media presences, and use influencers to spread their message, or they can use the more traditional email marketing and content marketing techniques. PPC and SEO are still extremely useful marketing strategies, and mobile marketing has never played as large a role as it does today. Using a combination of these strategies, digital marketers are able to promote a brand’s products and services, and turn leads into customers.

Feature Image Credit: Adobe

By Scott Clark,

Sourced from CMS WiRE

In News

Why Every E-Commerce Brand Needs to Be All-In on Email Marketing

July 20, 2021 No Comments

By Ross Andrew Paquette,

Email isn’t going anywhere, and it cannot be ignored.

Millions of consumers worldwide use email and its use continues to increase throughout the years. Email is one of the most popular communication channels, and the majority of emails sent daily are business related.

Think of how many emails you receive on a daily and weekly basis — they consume a large part of our life. From notifications to paperless billing — we rely heavily on emails every single day.

Email marketing has continued to be one of the most effective ways for a business to market to its customers. Email is personal and the open rates put your message in front of its intended recipients more than any other channel.

Email isn’t going anywhere, and while SMS marketing may be experiencing industry-high open rates, specifically in the e-commerce industry, email cannot be ignored. Here is why brands need to be all-in on email marketing.

More customizable and personal than social media

E-commerce brands, especially direct-to-consumer brands, love social media. While social media offers a great platform to market to your customers, it isn’t highly customizable or personal.

If a brand has 100,000 followers on Instagram, for example, every Post or Story is broadcast to that entire audience. What if a D2C apparel brand has both men’s and women’s lines? A post highlighting the women’s spring collection is going to be seen by all followers — male and female.

Email, however, allows an e-commerce brand to segment its list based on data. An apparel brand can have a main list that includes all customers, and then segment that into lists according to purchase behaviour.

Sending an email announcing a new women’s line to customers that have previously purchased women’s apparel is going to perform much better than an offer broadcast to the entire list. The same applies to men’s drops.

Email personalization also helps to create a stronger relationship. A post on social media feels generic, whereas an email addressed to the recipient feels more personal.

Highly measurable data

When you take all of the data available to you and break it down, you can make incredible improvements in your future email deployments. You can further segment your list, identifying your best customers and you can also use data to determine the best days of the week and time of day to send messages.

Numbers don’t lie, and when you take the time to analyse your email data, you will find new opportunities and optimize them to improve your overall results. For example, you might find that general newsletters have a significantly higher open rate on Tuesday afternoon, while special offers convert better on Friday mornings.

Access to this data also allows you to send dynamic content within your emails, tailored to each recipient. When you place an offer for a product they were recently viewing on your website in front of them, they are more likely to convert than they would be if it was just a generic blanket offer designed to appeal to the masses.

Consumers have instant access to their email via mobile devices

Mobile devices have the majority of consumers’ email at the tip of their fingers. You don’t have to wait for them to get home or to login to their email on a desktop or laptop. They are notified as soon as that email hits their device.

Whether or not they open your email immediately depends on several factors. If they are busy, they are going to ignore their email until they have time to dive in. A strong Call to Action in the email subject, however, can potentially get your emails opened very quickly.

Most consumers are glued to their mobile phones all day and all night — from the morning when they wake up until it’s time to go to sleep. Even while working or preoccupied, most will at least glance at their notifications.

Email gives you instant access to the majority of your customer base. Remember, you aren’t the only brand vying for their attention. Strong email subjects to draw high click-through rates are important, as is conveying your message within the first few sentences.

The right offer can trigger an immediate action, which is the beauty of email marketing. A consumer could have no intention of making a purchase, but they become intrigued with your offer, and the next thing they know, their credit card is out and they are completing a transaction on your website from their mobile device.

Cost-effective

Online marketing costs are skyrocketing for e-commerce brands. Facebook ads are becoming increasingly popular, therefore driving costs so high that it’s forcing many brands to look for additional channels that provide a more affordable acquisition cost.

Email is hands-down the most cost-effective, as the hard costs to deploy messages are minimal. Customer emails are collected when they make a purchase and via opt-ins on-site. While there is a cost associated with every email address added to a list, that is a one-time cost.

That email list turns into an asset that becomes more valuable as it grows. Large e-commerce brands can send email marketing offers weekly or bi-weekly and generate a substantial amount of revenue each time without the customer acquisition costs that come with Google Ads and Facebook ads.

By Ross Andrew Paquette

Founder and CEO of Maropost

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

Why Email Marketing Is Crucial For Businesses

May 14, 2021 No Comments

By Marcel Sattler

Email marketing is still relevant in 2021, and it will likely continue to be in the years to come. Why? Because you can monetize your list of contacts.

With email marketing, in contrast to Facebook Custom Audiences or Google Ads targeting, you don’t have to build your business on rented land. Maybe Facebook will turn off the Custom Audiences feature tomorrow, or Google will restrict targeting options. If you build your business exclusively on third-party systems, you run the risk of losing revenue sources.

That’s why your email list is a treasure. The contacts are your contacts, and you can contact them whenever you want (until they unsubscribe) — for free.

Drawing on my own experience with email marketing, here’s my advice on who it is for, what tools you can use and how to get started.

Who Is Email Marketing For?

Email marketing makes sense for most businesses, whether you have a Shopify store or are a local dentist. Why? Because it is an easy and cheap way to get in contact with your customers and leads.

Consider these two cases in more detail:

• A Shopify store: Let’s say you have a small range of baby products and have generated many sales in the last few years. Now you have a new collection of baby shoes in different colours and sizes. You already have a lot of customers who are happy with your products. They are exactly the right audience. Leverage your previous sales by sending out a few emails to the people who’ve already purchased from you. You will likely get sales without spending anything on advertising.

• A local dentist: If you collect email addresses from your customers, you can get in touch and boost your sales dramatically. Maybe you offer a new bleaching service and want to make it public. The best way to do so is to email clients who already trust you.

As you can see, email marketing can work for just about any kind of business. It can be effective for B2B marketing too.

The Connection Between Your Audience and Your Business

In my experience, no advertising method is as effective as an email in your customer’s inbox. You can build trust by sharing valuable content, generate engagement by sharing insights from your company, or sell more by sending great offers.

One of the many significant benefits is that the audience already has a connection with you. Your contacts already gave you their email addresses — maybe during the purchasing process or in exchange for a white paper or another goodie.

Trust can be the key to boosting sales. If customers were happy with their previous purchases, why shouldn’t they buy another product from you?

Let’s jump back to the Shopify store with the baby products. Maybe a young mother purchased a bathtub for infants in January. It makes sense to show her your collection of infant rompers in February and shoes six months later.

With this logical understanding of your audience, you can turn your email list into money.

Email Marketing Software

There are a lot of email marketing tools out there. There are fantastic free tools and also complex and expensive tools.

I’ll be completely honest: If you are a consulting business and have 50 clients, you likely don’t need email marketing software. It may be enough to manage your contacts in Outlook or Gmail and send out messages from your personal inbox. You can use the BCC field to send emails to your crowd without letting them know who else is getting the email.

If you have a large contact list or need additional features, I recommend using tools like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign or HubSpot.

To choose the right email marketing software for your business, make sure you have the end in sight. What’s your main goal for your list? What would you like to accomplish in two to three years? Perhaps you would like to automate your lead generation and send out many emails in a special order to your contacts or automate birthday and Christmas wishes for your clients. No matter what ideas you have to boost your business, there is a tool for you.

The Best Time to Start Email Marketing

Do you already have a thousand ideas on how you can boost your sales, push your customer engagement and leverage your business with email marketing?

The best moment to start is right now. The sooner you start, the faster you will see results.

Maybe the automation stuff above sounds overwhelming to you. Do not let that distract you. Start small. Just collect email addresses, and send out your first message after collecting 100 or 500. Get familiar with the tools and your crowd.

Email marketing is a process that never ends. And the best moment to start this process is right now.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Marcel Sattler

Marcel Sattler is an entrepreneur and founder of an agency. He is the brain behind many profitable brands with his sustainable strategy. Read Marcel Sattler’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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How Your Business Can Succeed With Email Marketing

February 3, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from IssueWire

Jeremy McGilvrey Gives Tips for How Small Business Owners Can Grow Their Customer Base with Email Marketin

If you’re among those who think that email marketing is past its prime, then think again. Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is still one of the most successful digital marketing strategies used by companies such as Amazon and HubSpot.

Statistics have revealed email marketing is a lot more successful than SEO, paid search (PPC), social media marketing, and affiliate marketing.

Many successful small business owners use email marketing to grow their customer base. You can either choose to outsource your email marketing or select a staff member to execute it for you.

With the right techniques and the correct use of the data, you can achieve success with email marketing. Let’s dive into some tried and tested email marketing strategies.

I’ll also discuss how these methods can drive leads to your small business.

3 Email Marketing Strategies:

Email Marketing Segmentation

Some businesses are unable to succeed with email marketing because of their lack of segmentation. Segmentation allows businesses to put different customers and prospects into different categories and send email messages that are tailored to their subscribers. When you segment your email list you exponentially increase your odds at succeeding with email marketing.

Segmentation can provide benefits of email marketing as it allows you to create more targeted campaigns for audiences in different phases of their consumer cycle.

According to HubSpot, segmentation works wonders as email marketing KPIs work better when segmented.

Let’s look at an example to understand this better. An email with the same subject line and the same content sent to two different groups (different consumer cycle phases) will result in different outcomes. That is why it is important to segment your mailing list and then create email marketing campaigns that target each list individually to get better results.

Personalized Messages

For a consumer named Tom, an email starting with Hey customer and an email with Hey Tom is going to resonate differently. A carefully curated email will give the consumer the right impression. Make them feel that you care about them and that they aren’t receiving randomly generated emails.

Amazon uses this strategy, and the success of the company is in itself is evidence of the success of personalized messaging.

According to Experian marketing services, personalized emails have a 6X higher transaction rate, but 70% of brands fail to use them. This is where many businesses don’t properly gauge the importance of personalized email and gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.

Additional research I discovered stated personalized emails can result in a higher ROI, up to $20 for every $1 invested. As I’ve mentioned above, the most basic yet easy route to email personalization is to address the reader by their given name. You can request the first name in your opt-ins to gain this information and start doing something that 70% of the brands aren’t – using personalized emails.

Automated Email Campaigns

With a high number of subscribers to your mailing list, automation becomes a necessity. Knowing when to automate your email campaigns is going to give you an edge over others. The most basic form of automated emails are confirmation emails or welcome or thank you emails.

These are also more commonly known as trigger emails. Interestingly, research shows that trigger emails perform much better than traditional emails. These emails have higher open-rates when compared with conventional emails. Forrester reports that trigger emails-based email marketing strategies can generate 4 times more revenue and 18 times more profit.

Benefits of Email Marketing

I’ve shared some strategies that can be useful for creating effective email marketing campaigns. Now, let’s further solidify those strategies by stating the benefits of email marketing.

Email is still one of the most commonly used platforms of communication. Did you know that during the year 2020 alone, 306.4 billion emails were sent and received each day?

Add in the fact that there will be 4.3 billion email users in 2023. This staggering growth can be communicated as a growing benefit of email marketing as well.

Low Costs

One of the benefits of email marketing is its low costs. You don’t have to pay a premium to have your message appear on a billboard or in a magazine.

All you have to do is invest in software that will automate your emails and track and analyze the data gathered. However, the cost would be significantly less when compared with traditional marketing.

Effective and Easy Communication

Email marketing is your self-curated platform to communicate with your audience and engage with them.

This communication can also result in your targeted audience getting closer to your brand and becoming more loyal. It’s an easy way for your audience to keep in touch with you and stay updated with your latest updates and offers.

Targeted Messaging To the Right Audience

A good email marketing solution is a timely one. And with email marketing, not only can you reach your targeted audience with a personalized message but also target them at the right time.

Segmentation, as mentioned above, can prove to be beneficial in targeting the right audience. Add in the right timing, and your email marketing strategy is fool-proof.

Revenue Generation

The bottom-line of all marketing campaigns is to generate revenue for your company. Email marketing does that, and with lower costs. Add an excellent copywriter to your team and see your call to action resulting in significant revenue for your brand.

According to marketing week – for Virgin Airlines – email marketing was the second largest revenue driver for them after PPC.

Self-Promotion

Promotion is not an easy feat to achieve. That is why brands have to come with unique and new ways to keep promoting themselves. But self-promotion can easily be a part of an email marketing strategy.

It is undoubtedly a tried and tested method of reminding consumers of your presence. And with email marketing, you have a low-cost platform to do so.

Source : Jeremy Mcgilvrey Digital Marketing Services

Sourced from IssueWire

In News

8 Unconventional Ways to Generate Qualified B2B Sales Leads

January 26, 2021 No Comments

By Nadya Khoja

We know there are numerous ways to generate B2B sales leads, but let’s face it, the same old methods have been done to death.

It’s time to take an unconventional approach to lead generation, especially for B2B companies, because B2B is a different ballgame than B2C — and your strategies need to reflect your audience.

As a refresher, here’s how organization goals differ in the B2C versus the B2B sectors:

Source: Venngage

Before we begin detailing these B2B methods, it’s important to keep in mind that lead generation isn’t a one-and-done deal.

You have to be open to A/B testing your strategies and your content. Regularly track your content performance, metrics, conversions, and be ready to improve.

So, what are these unconventional methods to generate B2B sales leads? Read on to find out.

1. Tailor content for B2B sales leads

B2B content is brand and agency-focused, and you want to create materials that attract attention from that audience.

Getting eyeballs on your content won’t mean much if they aren’t converting into customers — those aren’t the right B2B sales leads for your company.

How can you tailor your content marketing to the right B2B audience?

Buyer personas

Most businesses create audience personas to help them reach their target market. In the B2B arena, don’t aim for a company — look for the decision-makers within that company.

Every target company will have a few key people who decide which products and services benefit the business. These are the decision-makers your content needs to be tailored to, and for whom you can build buyer personas around, such as this example:

Source: Venngage

Determine who within a business will most need your product or service, and build your buyer personas based on the following:

Age
Location
Job title
Level in company
Preferred content channels
Desired goals
Pain points

Create a flow chart with these details to facilitate the content creation process. This also helps you decide which channels will get you the most traction.

Search intent

Once you know your audience, your next step in tailoring content to earn B2B sales leads is to determine their search intent, which can take numerous forms:

Searching for information
Searching to buy
Searching to learn

As a largely B2B company, we do extensive research before creating a piece of content. We ascertain keywords related to our topic, but we also check Google, the “People Also Ask” section, AnswerThePublic, and conduct surveys among fellow marketers.

Choose keywords and terms that are relevant to your audience — not solely based on search volume. Popular searches in your industry will attract more B2C consumers, whereas focused keywords that have a higher value, but a lower search volume, usually fall in the B2B realm.

2. How to use B2B email marketing

B2B email marketing has a higher click-to-open ratio than B2C, and is a favored channel for 59% of B2B marketers.

This is a channel that can consistently bring in B2B sales leads — if done right. You have to keep a few things in mind to make email marketing a successful lead generation channel.

Automate email marketing

Marketing teams know the benefits of automating processes: smoother workflow, faster processing time, and time funneled into creativity instead of repetitive tasks.

But automating your email marketing also helps to generate B2B sales leads.

You can use marketing automation to segment email lists, send targeted campaigns, respond to abandoned carts, and convert customers, as this graphic explains:

Source: Venngage

Imagine this scenario: a customer gets to the final stage of purchasing, but leaves your site right before checkout. Whether that customer was distracted, lost connection, or changed their mind, it’s up to your company to encourage them to finish the process.

If cart abandonment is being handled manually, this customer could fall through the cracks, or get a response well after they’ve decided on another brand.

Email automation can be programmed to respond to them immediately upon cart abandonment — and you’ve earned a customer who would otherwise have been lost.

Email deliverability

Automating emails is one thing, but are your customers receiving your emails? You can create the best content in your industry, but it will amount to little if your newsletters end up in the spam folder.

Brands can improve their email deliverability and draw more B2B leads by following these practices:

Emails sent with a company name instead of a person’s name are more likely to end up in the spam folder or not opened at all. Use an individual’s address to send emails, and include a reply-to option to that address.
Don’t change the frequency of your email campaigns too often. There will be certain periods when you send more emails, but be as consistent as possible so your subscriber base knows when to expect your emails.
Regularly check and clean your lists so you aren’t sending emails to addresses that no longer exist and increase your bounce rates.

Email content

Keep these things in mind when creating your email content as, at the end of the day, your email content is what will be most successful in earning you B2B sales leads:

Your content should be consistent with your brand. Send emails about products, services, events, industry news, and your latest blog posts.
Create a consistent design for your marketing newsletters, including branding elements like your logo, brand colors, and fonts.
Don’t go for the hard-sell approach! If every email is selling products to your list, people will unsubscribe.
Make it worth their while to click on and open your emails by sharing news, updates, and stories that will enrich your customers’ lives.

3. Hybrid events

Conferences have always been a good place to make potential B2B sales, as they’re shared spaces for people with similar interests. But 2020 changed all that.

Though the COVID-19 vaccine is ready for distribution, it’s going to take a while to return to business as usual. We’ve seen an increase in virtual events in 2020, but the future of networking lies in hybrid events, like Apple’s annual announcements.

Combining physical and virtual elements and attendees, hybrid events allow access to a greater swathe of industry specialists and clients.

There are three ways to get B2B sales leads from hybrid events:

Attend the event: B2B marketers should look at attending more hybrid events in their industry to meet potential clients.
Participating in events: search for speaking engagements at conferences to place your business as a thought leader in the field and generate more organic leads.
Hold events: your business can hold hybrid events to connect with experts in your field and establish partnerships with prospective customers.

Events can be a lot of hard work, but the potential for earning leads, converting customers, and boosting ROI make the process worth it.

4. Personalize B2B sales lead content

Personalization is a huge part of content marketing — and it’s crucial for finding B2B sales leads. In the B2B arena, you need to build personal relationships, not just transactional ones.

Because every relationship isn’t just a customer earned, it’s also a customer retained, with the possibility for future referrals that will bring in more sales.

Here are the three areas you want to focus on for personalization:

Presentations
Social media
Landing pages

Sales presentations

You can start building customer relationships early on in the lead generation process by designing a presentation that includes your branding and your customer’s.

In the pitch meeting, talk about subjects that matter to your customer — don’t focus too much on what your business can do, unless you’re talking about the solutions you can provide.

Don’t be afraid of getting granular in your pitch by mentioning buyer intent keywords related to your customer and their industry.

Do your research so you can show them how knowledgeable you are about their company, but also that you’re planning for a future with them.

Social media

Take it a step further by personalizing your social media outreach. Long believed to be the realm of B2C lead generation, social media has its advantages in the B2B field, too.

I’ve mentioned the importance of finding decision-makers within target companies. Most of these decision-makers will have a presence on social channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter. Choose personnel who can make personal connections with key decision-makers on these channels. But don’t treat every channel the same way.

Work with your team to craft LinkedIn summaries that showcase your brand’s ethos — and not just on your company page but also on staff profiles, where you can exhibit some personality.

Twitter is another place to generate B2B sales leads, and it’s a good one for understanding your customers, because Twitter is where people tend to share personal stories.

There are scheduling and analytics tools that you can use to research decision-makers and find out what their interests are — this will help create more meaningful relationships.

Landing pages

A great landing page grabs a customer’s attention within seconds. The best way to do that is to personalize your landing page to generate B2B sales leads.

What does a landing page need to include? It has to answer a specific question that your customers are asking.

What we’ve learned from making our landing pages is that you do not want to put too much information on there — that can be overwhelming for a visitor.

Keep it short and sweet — focus on one selling point, not all. That’s why we love the Moz landing page — it clearly states what the brand can do for any customer visiting it.

Can’t fit all your selling points onto one page? Create multiple landing pages, each one optimized to specific keywords and buyer intent.

It sounds like more work but designing more landing pages helps you retain B2B sales leads by creating cohesion between your advertising and landing pages.

5. B2B referral marketing works

Referral marketing doesn’t just exist within the B2C space — it’s an effective tool for drawing in B2B leads. People across the board trust referrals from fellow customers.

For B2B brands — where sales can sometimes involve millions of dollars — a referral from a friend, backed up by strong reviews, can lead to a purchase much more quickly than paid incentives and advertising.

Referrals lead to more loyal customers and better retention rates. They also act as a tool for boosting organic reach because established customers become your company’s ambassadors, like this PioneerSystems case study.

How do you get referrals? Here are a few steps:

Offer rewards such as discounts, free training sessions, and event invitations
Survey multiple customers
Keep your surveys short and precise so customers will be more likely to respond
Send surveys regularly and keep the window between surveys short
Include follow-up questions asking customers to explain their scores
Use the net promoter system to calculate how likely customers will be to recommend you
Ask for a written review or testimonial, or to feature in a testimonial video
Suggest creating a case study
Ask for a quote for a press release
Offer content that customers can share with their friends

Referral marketing is a great way to generate leads, but you do need to incentivize the process so customers participate.

6. Repurpose content

At Venngage, we are huge on repurposing content — we even created an infographic explaining how to do it:

We know how overwhelming it is for marketers to create fresh content to bring in more views and leads. This is why we’ve found ways to repurpose existing content.

Using old content in new ways takes a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it, your marketing team can structure your strategy around it.

Here are a few ways we’ve stretched a single piece of content and generated more B2B sales leads:

Take quotes and stats from a blog post and create data visualizations for social media
Turn a blog post into an infographic — look at these infographic examples for inspiration
Share infographics on social channels and as a newsletter
Divide an infographic into multiple smaller graphics to share on social media
Turn listicles into social media carousel posts
Create email headers from social posts
Turn a blog post into a podcast or webisode
Combine multiple blog posts on a similar subject into a white paper or eBook
Use an eBook as the basis for a webinar
Divide a longer e-seminar into short YouTube videos
Create GIFs out of videos to share on social media

These are the content repurposing methods we’ve used but the possibilities with this method are endless.

7. Varied content channels

Conventional wisdom has been to focus on the channels that you know best, instead of being a jack-of-all-trades and dabbling in multiple channels. But you also need to know what channels your potential B2B sales leads are favoring. If you’re not where your customers are, you are losing leads.

Blogs

You may not have in-house writers, but with B2B blogs still being a huge source for leads, this is a channel that is worth investing in.

Podcasts

The content market is currently oversaturated — diversifying your content channels helps you reach leads who may not see your content on conventional platforms. Consider starting a podcast for your business. They take some time and investment, but podcasts are easier to run and maintain now. Focus your podcast on thought leadership, industry news, or on sharing behind the scenes tidbits about your business.

Video

Video marketing is another tool to draw in B2B leads. It’s gone from strength to strength, especially in the last few years, with 87% of businesses using video as a marketing tool.

Creating a YouTube channel for testimonials, business insights, how-to guides, and troubleshooting videos will bring in leads who don’t have the time to read a blog post.

But videos do take time and effort to create — you need equipment and software to shoot and edit videos. Plus, you can’t create a video and leave it at that — a promotion plan will need to be executed.

Forums

Search for B2B leads on channels like Quora and Reddit. Customers use these platforms to ask questions and you can tailor content around these.

But don’t use these channels to pitch your company. Follow the same etiquette as responding to a blog post comment. Share your own experience and use these channels for research.

There are a variety of channels available to get qualified leads. Don’t stretch yourself too thin as that will impact the quality of your content but don’t restrict yourself either.

8. Create gated content

eBooks, white papers, and webinars make for great gated content. But why should customers sign up for them?

We’ve seen success with our gated B2B content by doing the following:

Address your customers’ pain points early on
Solve their problems with your content
Include calls-to-action for gated content in relevant blog posts
Use more visuals than text in gated content — don’t make customers work hard
Repurpose your content whenever you can
Provide a preview of your content to whet their appetite
Be informative, inspire action, educate, be personable, and then promote

Your gated content should add value to anyone who accesses it, so longer-form content is the best for this lead generation strategy.

Key takeaways: Focus on the people behind B2B sales leads, not the business

The process of generating leads and encouraging them through the buyer journey to become a loyal customer who advocates for your business is a challenging one. It’s important to remember that even in the B2B field, you are engaging with people at the end of the day.

To recap, here are eight unconventional ways to get B2B sales leads:

Tailored content
Email marketing
Hybrid events
Personalize
Referral marketing
Repurposed content
New content channels
Gated content

You can adopt all or a few of these lead gen methods, but remember to test target segments, CTAs, landing page designs, and social media captions.

And finally, while it’s great to get as many leads as possible, ensure your automation software and sales team can handle it.

By Nadya Khoja

Nadya is the Chief Growth Officer at Venngage and has been featured in Entrepreneur, The Huffington Post, The Next Web, Forbes, Marketing Profs, Social Media Examiner and more. She also has a web-series called Drunk Entrepreneurs where she interviews different entrepreneurs who are finding success.

Sourced from MOZ

In Uncategorized

The 5 most effective ways to drive traffic to a site

December 11, 2020 No Comments

By Manu Gupta

The raison d’être of a website is to draw potential customers and help generate leads. This can be achieved by an intelligent mix of strategies that include paid advertising, SEO, social media, and email marketing.

Website traffic is the lifeline of every business. More visitors to the website mean greater number of prospective customers coming across one’s products or services, which, in turn, will generate more sales. Hence, driving larger traffic to a website is really a no-brainer for businesses looking to make a name for themselves in the market.

For small- and mid-sized business owners, a website is an essential extension of their business itself, and for some, such as the online stores, it is the actual business. After achieving a pixel-perfect website, it’s important for businesses to divert their attention to drive substantial traffic to it.

Here are the five most effective ways of bringing traffic to one’s website:

1. Leverage paid advertising

Most of the strategies to drive traffic are free, requiring dedicated and consistent efforts and time. Towards this end, a strategy that can be more effective, easily measurable and provide quick results comparatively will be investing in paid ads. These include pay-per-click ads, social media ads, display ads and video ads. Pay-per-click ad campaigns will allow one’s brand to be at the top of Google search results whenever a search towards that end is carried out.

Social media ads such as Facebook ads are cheaper and allow brands to set highly-specific parameters like demographics, age, behaviour, location and interests so that ads are shown to the intended audiences. Display and video ads are visual ads that can be shown on third-party websites.

2. Implement good SEO strategies

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of increasing the number of visitors to a specific website by ensuring a higher visibility for the site on the list of results given out by a search engine. Both on-page and off-page is an essential aspect of a successful website.

Backlinks, or creating links to other websites that can lead visitors to one’s website, especially are quite valuable for SEO as they represent ‘vote of confidence’ for search engine giants like Google. For SEO that drives positive results it’s important to ensure that the website and content are updated and relevant to those seeking one’s products or services. Appropriate keywords, captivating meta descriptions and valuable, catchy content are the deal-breakers in SEO. Sign up for our exclusive newsletters. Subscribe to check out our popular newsletters.

3. Be social

In the current digital era, a business can’t afford to not be on social media platforms. Globally, the usage of social media for marketing has doubled. One needs to be on social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter to reach out to their target audience.

No matter who the target audience is for a business, they are bound to be on a social network somewhere. The right way of connecting with them is through creating content specific to one’s industry or products so that it can draw followers in. Even for a niche market, one can find a following with consistency and premier quality content.

Also, using the right hashtags is equally important. People have become very selective about the content they consume and hence, they are resorting to hashtags as a way to filter and streamline the influx. Using hashtags smartly will enable businesses to target the right audience so that they are directed to their websites.

4. Invest in affiliate marketing

Affiliate programs allow brands to attract more traffic by tapping into other people’s users. Companies can publish their content on other websites and pay a commission on the sales generated. This way they can earn positive word-of-mouth for themselves. The pay-outs are made only when a genuine sale is made, which means there’s minimal risk involved. An affiliate program, once set up, can be left to go on autopilot so that one can focus on other aspects of their business. To get started, one must draw up a list of the best affiliate programs and then decide which can be appropriate for the purpose.

5. Use email marketing

Email marketing continues to be an effective channel for driving traffic to a website. It’s come a long way since the times of promotional blasts that were quite pesky for many customers. However, now email marketing involves building a well-thought-out sequence of newsletters or blogposts that can lead to more sign-ups that can forge long-lasting relationships.

In fact, even the basic and most primal welcome email is much improved than the old-school transactional kind. In its simplest form, email-marketing is a great option for showing off one’s latest blog post or for informing customers about an upcoming sale.

Summing it up Just creating an attractive website and waiting for the right audience to chance upon it won’t suffice. The competition is tough. Businesses need to adopt strategies to grow traffic on their websites. It’s important to focus on one’s target audience and quality of content to drive relevant traffic and get amazing results.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)

By Manu Gupta

Sourced from YOURSTORY

In News

7 key strategies for improving your email list

December 9, 2020 No Comments

By Ad Age Collective Expert Panel.

1. Optimize your content to make it relevant.

2. Focus on ongoing verification and consent.

3. Segment your list based on common features.

4. Use industry-specific gated content.

5. Make sure you respect their privacy.

6. Include fun articles in your email marketing.

7. Attach audience acquisition to your strategy.

By Ad Age Collective Expert Panel.

Sourced from AdAge

In News

Digital Marketing – Outsource it or Keep it In-house?

December 9, 2020 No Comments

By Darya Jandossova

Every day, billions of people use the internet and smartphones. Because of this, digital marketing has become one of the most important aspects of an organization’s overall marketing strategy.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing can mean slightly different things to different people. For example, the tactics used by an e-commerce platform will be different from bricks and mortar businesses.

The most common types of activity encompassed within digital marketing include:

Content marketing

The shift towards content marketing has been significant over the last decade. Creating and distributing valuable content to your target audience to build awareness, trust, and inbound leads.

Content marketing can take the form of blogs, whitepapers, video content, case studies, infographics, and podcasts.

Social media marketing

There are a number of social media platforms used by brands in order to drive traffic and engagement. While much of the activity on social media can be classed as content marketing, the chance to listen and engage with an audience makes it a viable marketing channel in its own rite.

Social media continues to evolve as new platforms emerge. The most popular being Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, WeBo, and TikTok.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Gaining quality organic traffic through major search engines such as Google and Bing. Strategies can include optimizing websites, building backlinks, and SEO friendly content.

Search engine marketing (SEM)

The other side of the search engine coin to SEO. Search engine marketing refers to the paid activities used to increase search engine visibility and drive traffic through Google Adwords or Bing Ads.

Affiliate marketing

This particular form of marketing is becoming extremely popular. Affiliate marketing is when a person or company is paid a set commission for every sale or traffic they generate for another company. This particular form of marketing is popular with bloggers and solopreneurs, who can pivot content quickly in order to showcase affiliate links.

Every year Amazon pays out hundreds of millions of dollars in affiliate fees and is one of the most popular programs of its kind in the world.

Pay per click (PPC)

Similar to paid search, you pay a pre-set amount whenever someone clicks on your ad.

Email marketing

The granddaddy of digital marketing. Every year we hear that email marketing is dead, but it is still a staple of a solid digital marketing strategy. When it’s done properly, regular or automated email marketing is still a powerful tool, especially combined with personalized marketing techniques.

Instant messaging and bots

WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat have, between them, billions of users all around the world. That is an unmissable opportunity for brands looking to get their messages out there.

The use of bots, in particular on Facebook, is a great way of interacting with your audience in a scalable, on-brand way.

What does it mean to outsource digital marketing?

Outsourcing your digital marketing means that you are using a person, company, or companies to take care of those aspects of your overall marketing strategy. This could be for a number of reasons including a budget, lack of internal resources, or being too big or too small to be able to have the necessary resources in the house.

What does in-house digital marketing mean?

An in-house team will plan, execute, and report on all digital marketing activities using a team employed by the organization.

What are the benefits of outsourcing digital marketing

There are many reasons that you might want to outsource your digital marketing, including:

Budget – smaller businesses know that they need to implement some form of digital marketing to grow, but cannot afford to hire a team full time to do this. Instead, they will use third-party/parties to plan and implement digital marketing on their behalf. Types of outsourcing could include web design, social media, SEO, and so on.

Knowledge – because digital marketing companies make their money from just that, they need to keep their knowledge, skills, and technologies on the leading edge at all times. You can benefit from this continuing development without having to put yourself off your team through the recommended training or costs.

What are the cons of outsourcing digital marketing?

There are some potential downsides to turning over your digital marketing to a third party.

Less personal – by handing over your marketing strategy to someone else, you might find that your brand begins to develop in different ways in order to attract new audiences and customers. If you’ve been responsible for your brand and marketing to date, it can be difficult to let go.

Finding the right team can be difficult – while working with the right team can fundamentally change your business success for the better, choosing the wrong team can be damaging.

It takes time to find the right people. You need to work with those that you connect with and work hard for you. There are plenty of horror stories out there that put people off hiring an outside agency.

You need to commit to a strategy – in order to create a comprehensive digital marketing campaign, you need to commit to a budget, and strategy at the outset, as well as have. It is unfair for you to move the goalposts frequently. You’ll also need to sign something along the lines of a digital marketing proposal and it’d make sense to get acquainted with one prior to signing it.

You are one of a number of clients – your business may not be as important to them as you’d like it to be. That’s not to say that you won’t be treated professionally, but you cannot always expect to be a top priority.

What are the benefits of in-house digital marketing?

Dedicated to one client, you – there are no other clients vying for your marketing team’s attention, so you know that your company always takes top priority.

Quicker response times – if your marketing team works with others within your organization on various tasks, having a team on-site, dedicated to you can cut out a lot of red tapes. For example, if a certain department has an idea for a campaign or would like something promoted at short notice, you don’t have to try and negotiate with an outsourced team to try and bump your request to the top of the list.

Better brand knowledge – because the team is part of your organization, they live and breath your brand every day. This can then be translated seamlessly into your campaigns.

What are the cons of in-house digital marketing?

Costs – as covered earlier in the article, digital marketing encompasses a lot of different specialisms. Recruiting and training people in all of these areas can be very expensive. In addition to salaries, you also have to consider recruitment costs, benefits and ongoing training needs.

Skill levels – each area of digital marketing could be done by one person full time. But it is usually down to a few people who are expected to do everything. They often end up gravitating towards the areas they prefer, or never developing in-depth knowledge in a number of areas.

Potential to be overworked – if you hire a single person to do all of your digital marketing, as well as your traditional marketing tasks, you run the real risk of burning them out quickly.

Fewer contacts and special deals – digital marketing agencies can often have great contacts and deals in place with other sites or providers. In house teams often don’t have the time of the financial clout to do this.

Less strength in depth – if you are using an agency and someone is out sick, then there are usually other people who can take over the project at short notice. This usually isn’t the case with small in house teams. If someone in your team leaves, you are without any skill in certain areas until they are replaced.

Does it make sense to combine the two?

Many businesses find a good balance between in-house teams and outsourcing. It usually works best when there is an experienced marketing point person who can lead on the strategy development and then recruit and oversee the people or companies who will then actually implement the digital marketing campaigns.

This works well for a number of reasons. Having a single point of contact who has overall responsibility for digital marketing helps to streamline planning and decisions. Small in-house teams can also take care of some of the days to day digital marketing tasks that need doing and respond to in house requests quickly.

From a digital marketing agency perspective, it is always easier to deal with someone who knows what they are doing when it comes to leading a marketing function within a company and has realistic expectations.

For those companies who are deciding whether or not to recruit an in-house team, or outsource, this article provides some of the pros and cons of each course of action. Remember, what works for one company will not always work for another. It might make sense to outsource your digital marketing requirements at the beginning, then move towards a blended team as you scale up. Alternatively, if you are large enough to recruit a full digital marketing team, then you will have an entire department dedicated only to your organization.

Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash

By Darya Jandossova

Darya Jandossova Troncoso is a photographer, artist and writer working on her first novel and managing a digital marketing blog – MarketSplash. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, cooking, creating art and learning everything there is to know about digital marketing.

Sourced from noupe

In News

Why These Local Email Marketing Strategies Could Revolutionize Your Business

November 11, 2020 No Comments

By Rajeev Rajagopal

Local email marketing is a technique for local companies to connect with potential customers and drive sales.

Even though this marketing technique is a great way to connect with customers directly, it is often underused.

A Statista.com study highlights that the total number of global email users increased to 3.9 billion in 2019 and it is expected to increase to 4.48 billion by 2024. Around 80 percent of marketers have shown a rise in email engagement over the past 12 months.

According to a 2018 eMarketer email report, email marketing has an ROI of 59 percent, which is more than social media and display ads.

Email Is Seen As A Top ROI Driver By US Marketers Local Email Marketing

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Emails are a personal and convenient means of contact to keep your customers informed about your business.

Sending localized emails to your customers helps you communicate in their language and boosts customer engagement. For example, if you have a café in Spain, sending an email in Spanish about new offers or special additions to the menu to the locals, enhances the customer experience and builds loyalty for your brand.

Local email marketing is an effective way of getting your company’s message directly to prospective customers for a specific geographic area. It is a cost-effective marketing technique that helps to send clear, relevant and compelling marketing messages to prospective buyers and keep them informed about new products, services, relevant updates or special offers.

So, to promote your local business with email marketing, begin with creating a local email list.

Building a local email list

There are two ways of building a local email list, online and offline. Having a local email list helps you implement the right email marketing strategy.

Online methods:

Categorize your existing contacts. A business will already have an existing list of potential buyers. Segment this list into smaller groups on the basis of locations using a tool, or you can do this manually.
Check your website. You can get a list of customers from your website pop- up or sign up forms. You can also get a customer list from landing pages and chatbots. Newsletters and email subscriptions for your blog is another effective way to get contact details and start your email marketing strategy.

Offline methods:

Promote subscription. Apart from online subscription, a face-to-face subscription in your store or office is a way of encouraging potential customers to know more about your business. Make sure to use a mobile or tablet to collect information about your customers instead of asking the customers to write down their information as it may not be very legible.
Host or attend local events. Identify the events that your potential customers attend or host events to get more subscribers and gain new prospects. Collect their details on an electronic device or hand out your business cards, or provide short URLs that mention your website.
Collaborate with other local businesses. Businesses, especially small businesses, should collaborate with other local businesses. For example, if you own a garment shop, you can collaborate with a nearby jewellery shop to sell some of your garment pieces that go with the jewellery. This can get direct customers to your store and it is a great way to get an email list of prospective buyers.

Local email marketing strategies

Once you have your email list ready, you can implement local email strategies:

Give new offers to promote your products or services. If you have a new product or service, then promote it through email. Give new offers or vouchers to entice your customers. Promotional emails are a great way of advertising your products or services. Consider that your garment shop is introducing garments for men, you can send out emails to potential customers along with discount coupons that are valid for a certain period. Here is an example from the Banana Republic that invites customers to open the email.

Give New Offers To Promote Your Products And Services

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The Banana Republic provides you a place to start browsing from by curating some of their products in this promotional email, in case these winter clothes catch your eye. These types of emails help build a friendly conversation with your customers and also make the recipients want to open the email.

Add a personal touch. Adding a personal touch to the emails provides 6 times higher transaction rates than generic emails. Personalized emails include specific details that attract prospective buyers. Let us consider a case study – Yard & Corp, a Manchester-based restaurant that added a personal touch to their local email marketing campaign by offering recipients free drinks in exchange for donations to the local food bank. This caught the attention of several customers and also created a sense of urgency that made customers donate to the food bank.

Add A Personal Touch In Your Local Email Marketing

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Get feedback and reviews from your customers. To retain your customers and attract new ones, it is important to know your customers’ wants and preferences. Ask for feedback and reviews from your customers to know how they feel about your business. You can send emails to your customers after your service like “How did we do today” and ask them to score on a 1 to 5 scale. This will give you a brief idea about what they want, and areas that need to be improved. According to a study, 91 percent of customers read online reviews and 84 percent of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. For example, below is a review template from Adidas that requests customers to review their recent purchases.

Get A Feedback Or Reveiw From Your Customer Using Local Email Marketing

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Write a stunning subject line. Make sure to use catchy subject lines for your customers like “Exciting offers for Newbies” to capture their attention. Using terms like free and discounts in the subject line can have a higher open rate. Huge companies send out mass email copy whereas a local company marketing team can use local language to communicate with customers on a deeper level. Emails with personalized subject lines generate 50 percent higher open rates. For example, Living Social Deals sent personalized emails featuring art-related offers to a customer who bought Paint Nite and pottery deals in the past.

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Help customers to subscribe easily. To engage your customers and make them more inclined to sign up for your newsletter, make the subscription process simple. To make it easier, landing pages or forms should have only three elements – call to action, shareability and a simple form. Similarly, make unsubscribing also easy with just a few clicks and it decreases your spam complaint rates. Subscription options should be clearly labeled on a web page and it should have two main fields, name, and email id. For example, the following is the sign up for the National Geographic Newsletter. They offer newsletters on various topics based on the interest of the readers.

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Categorize your audience. To personalize emails and improve customer experience, you can segment your email list into smaller groups based on characteristics like age or hobbies. This segmentation helps to make better decisions and gather more details about customers’ interests. Let us consider another case study – when Sony PlayStation wanted to sell a new game console model to their new as well as existing users, they used an email marketing campaign. The company segmented its customers to target customers with different needs and localization to provide offers that they could redeem either via in-store coupons or Amazon vouchers. For each euro spent on the campaign, Sony earned 580 euros, and more than 9,000 people purchased the new console.

Other tips for effective local email marketing

Analyze your data and test your emails. Use split testing or A/B testing to test multiple versions of the same email to know which one works better and the one that performs well can be sent to your customers. Make sure to analyze your data like click-through-rate, unsubscribe rates, open rates, etc. to optimize your local email marketing campaign.
Emails should be mobile optimized. Today, most consumers have smartphones – 49% of all emails are opened on mobile devices. So, make sure that your emails can be opened on mobile phones. This will help your customers enjoy a better user experience and enable you to improve relationships.
Measure response. Consider email analytics to measure open rates and clicks. Find out which emails perform best, and then use those strategies for future campaigns.

What not to do in local email marketing

Just as it is important to know what strategies should be used, it is also important to know what not to do in local email marketing:

Sending out donotreply [at] yourdomain.com. Sending these emails is highly unwelcoming. These types of emails have a very low open rate. So emails should be sent from the recognizable name of the company.
Complicating your email. Do not make your emails complicated with many topics. Keep it clear with one message and one call to action. Sending out an email with several messages can confuse the recipients, making them less likely to buy the product.
Ignoring mobile optimization. If your email is not mobile optimized, then many people will not be able to read it and your company will be losing out on many potential customers.
“One size fits all” approach. Make sure to tailor your email content based on what your customers want.

Wrapping up

All the above-mentioned allows your customers to get your emails seen in the right location at the right time.

Local email marketing is an affordable and effective tool for local businesses to improve their sales.

Follow the above strategies to develop a strong local email marketing campaign that appeals to your target audience and also helps boost your business.

Guest author: Rajeev Rajagopal is the owner of Managed Outsource Solutions which runs its digital marketing division through MedResponsive since 2003. As someone who has developed businesses in several industry segments, he loves strategizing and coming up with innovative solutions for businesses that are hitting a roadblock with their online strategy. He is adept at creating campaigns that mesh your business’s traditional and digital plans and make them work together. Spearheading the digital marketing division, he works with his team of talented and dynamic designers, programmers, writers, search engineers, and Social media experts to make businesses tick. Whenever possible he loves to write engaging content related to SEO and its evolution, sharing his ideas and insights with others. In his spare time, he likes to read, watch sports. play badminton, golf, and travel with his family.

By Rajeev Rajagopal

Sourced from jeffbullas.com

In News

How to Grow Your Email List

November 3, 2020 No Comments

By Kiely Kuligowski

A quality email list is a vital part of email marketing and can determine the success of your campaign. Here’s how to build one.

Email marketing is an incredibly effective way to market your business, and your email list is arguably the most important component of your strategy. Your email list can have immeasurable impact on your marketing campaigns and a serious effect on your traffic and sales. If you’re looking to grow your email list, we have 25 tips to help your small business reach a wider audience.

What is an email list?

An email list, also referred to as a mailing list or subscribers list, is a collection of email addresses from visitors and customers who have consented to a business sending them communications, such as information, updates or discounts. Your list may grow and shrink as followers unsubscribe or new ones join over time.

Email marketing is a huge asset for a business. Nearly every customer has an email address, so there are billions of potential customers available for you to reach with just a few clicks. Additionally, email marketing is 40 times more effective in acquiring and retaining new customers than social media, and it has a significantly higher click-through rate than social media posts, which means more customers receive and read your content than they would if they came across your content on social media.

25 ways to grow your email list

There are many ways to grow your email list organically. Follow these 25 tips to grow your list the right way.

1. Create valuable content.

Your followers signed up to receive emails from you for a reason. Your job is to make it worth their while by providing interesting, engaging content. You will quickly lose subscribers if your content is boring or not applicable to your followers.

2. Know your audience.

Knowing your audience will help you create content they like. You can use email analytics or information you’ve collected on your own to inform your content. Look at things like demographics, customer behaviour and clicks to better understand your audience.

3. Make it easy for followers to share your emails.

Include buttons that link to your social media and “email a friend” links in each of your emails to make your content easily shareable. You don’t want your subscribers to have to work hard to send your content to another potential customer.

4. Segment your lists.

Once you understand who your audience is, you can segment them into groups – for example, by age, location or buyer behaviour – and send emails based on those groups, making your messages more targeted to each part of your audience for a more positive effect.

5. Send out an opt-in campaign.

If you have an old email list that doesn’t yield much engagement, you can send out an email with an opt-in message and a promise to remove any email addresses that don’t respond. While it might seem counterintuitive to remove contacts from your list, it can actually give you better results by ensuring you only send emails to people who want to receive them.

6. Include a link in employee signatures.

Including a link to a landing page where people can sign up for emails in all your employees’ email signatures is a quick and easy way to help build your email list.

7. Include gated offers on your website.

If you have valuable content to offer, like whitepapers or e-books, you can host it on your website with a pop-up that requires an email address and an opt-in to receive emails from you in order for the user to download it.

8. Require an email address to get a quote or access a resource.

Similarly, you can require a customer to provide their email address if they want to contact you for a quote or access a unique resource your business offers on your website.

9. Host a contest.

You could host a contest and require an email address for entry. Post about the contest on your social media pages to drum up interest and awareness, with a link directing viewers to where they can sign up on your website. [Read related article: How to Create a Giveaway Campaign That Boosts Sales]

10. Have a pop-up on your website.

“The single best method I’ve used to grow email lists rapidly is via website pop-ups,” said Kent Lewis, president and founder of Anvil Media. “Add a pop-up to your site to ask for an email address to send updates. The strategy still works, especially if you cookie the visitor and only hit them once, instead of every time they refresh or visit a new page. Make sure the incentive is clearly articulated and relevant to your brand to maximize conversions.”

11. Put a call-to-action button on your social media.

You can add a CTA to sign up for your email list on your social media pages to make it easy for interested customers to sign up to receive your emails. Here’s how HubSpot Academy integrates a CTA on its Facebook page:

12. Ask website visitors for their feedback.

Visitors enjoy providing feedback on a topic they’re interested in or that pertains to them, so you can provide a form on your website that asks them to leave their feedback on your business or website, and make their email address a required field.

13. Keep lead-capturing forms short.

When you ask customers to provide information, you don’t want to overwhelm them with lengthy forms that ask for a lot of information upfront. Stick to the basics, like their name and email address.

14. Utilize Facebook groups.

“Over the years, I’ve added thousands to my email list by using Facebook groups,” said Rick Orford, founder of The Financially Independent Millennial. “As part of the joining process, I ask for users’ email address in exchange for free information, such as a PDF. Facebook groups can be an invaluable way to increase engagement with your audience, while allowing you the opportunity to keep in touch with everyone by email.”

15. Make subscribing easy on your website.

A customer who wants to subscribe to your emails should not have to hunt around your website to find the subscribe button. Make it plain and easy to find in several different places on your website, such as your homepage, your “about” page and your “contact us” page.

16. Conduct A/B tests of your email content.

When you first start out with email marketing, you don’t know what content will perform best. To find out (or at least better predict), you can send out different versions of the same email – with different subject lines or images, for example – to sample groups to see which performs better with your audience. [Read related article: 16 Effective Methods to Make the Most Out of A/B Testing]

17. Set expectations.

“Set expectations so that a subscriber knows exactly what he/she is signing up for and how often he/she will receive email from you, and immediately send a welcome email upon sign-up that matches the expectations you just set,” said Katie Bonadies, content and social media strategist at Berxi.

18. Have a blog.

Blogs are a great way to boost your online presence. They can increase your ranking on search engines like Google and go a long way to establish brand credibility. You can also collect email addresses via blog subscriptions and deliver quality content right to their inboxes.

19. Allow customer reviews on your website.

Alongside a blog, a place for customers to leave reviews on your website can boost your image as a reputable business while giving you another opportunity to gather email addresses. Make an email address a required field for a user to leave a review.

20. Be consistent.

“Don’t expect to have a massive email list overnight,” said Shmuel Fogel, web designer and online marketer at Talmudico. “It takes time to build email lists, but they can be extremely effective in marketing to your customers. By maintaining in-store signage, website banners and campaigns to grow your email addresses year-round, you will ultimately build up a large list over time that continues to grow.”

21. Collect email addresses at a trade show or conference.

There is always the old-fashioned way to collect emails: in person. Have a sign-up sheet readily available for anyone who stops by your booth or table, and have a welcome email ready to go once you add the email addresses into your system.

22. Add QR codes to your promotional materials.

Another quick and easy way to collect email addresses and maximize your advertising materials is to add a QR code to your printed advertisements. This way, you can collect email addresses even from a poster or brochure.

23. Offer an incentive.

“The best way to grow an email list is to offer some incentive for being on it,” said Rex Freiberger, CEO of Gadget Review. “Sometimes, if customers really want to know about an upcoming product or possible promotions, this is enough. Usually they need enticement in the form of free content, trial services or large discounts.”

24. Include timed pop-up surveys on your site.

You can create surveys that come up only after a customer has spent a certain amount of time on your website. This works because the customer has demonstrated interest in your content and is much more likely to sign up to receive emails from you if you make it quick and easy.

25. Leverage your social media.

“You can set up Twitter and Facebook campaigns to boost your lead generation efforts,” said Anthony Mixides, managing director of The London Vape Company. “By giving links to your various offerings and resources on social media, you allow more users to find you, and this helps you tap into a newer sect of people. This is also a very useful technique for growing your target audience base.”

What to avoid when building an email list

Because solid email lists are so vital to the email marketing process, there is some specific etiquette to keep in mind, as well as missteps to avoid. Here are 10 things not to do when building your email list.

1. Buying email lists

This is the No. 1 mistake marketers and business owners make in building their email lists. Many think the best and quickest way to build a list is to buy one. While it’s true that this is the fastest method, it generally comes back to bite you, since there’s no way to guarantee that the purchased email addresses are real or associated with users who are interested in your content. As such, you could purchase a list with 1,000 addresses but discover that only a few engage with your content.

2. Adding email addresses without permission

This is another huge mistake many marketers make, and it could even get you in legal trouble. You should only send marketing emails to addresses who have given you permission in some form. These are the two main types of permission for email marketing:

Implied, which covers those with whom you have an existing business relationship – like current customers, donors or members of your website
Express, which is when someone gives you clear permission to send them emails, such as by entering their information in a subscription form

3. Asking for too much information

When you’re asking someone to provide personal information for your email campaign, you don’t want to ask for too much and risk coming off as a spammer. You want to make subscribing quick and easy, and make the customer feel at ease providing you with their contact information. Give the customer plenty of time to learn about your business and establish that you are a credible organization.

4. Offering a nonvaluable incentive

Offering an incentive is a common way to get people to sign up for a targeted email list, but it can backfire if the incentive isn’t actually valuable to the customer. For example, you don’t want to offer a coupon that expires the next day, or a discount that can only be applied at one store at a specific time. Make your incentive as valuable to and usable by as many of your customers as you can.

5. Using stolen email addresses

“There are bots that can search the web and aggregate a list of found emails,” said Steffa Mantilla, founder of Money Tamer. “If you add these emails to your list, you’ll likely get reported as spam, and your deliverability will go down drastically.”

6. Skipping the welcome email

When a new subscriber signs up, it’s important to send out a welcome email as soon as possible. This greeting makes the new subscriber feel valued, encouraging them to become a repeat customer. Your welcome email should have a clear subject line, engaging visuals and content, and a link to whatever incentive you promised when they signed up.

7. Using paid advertising too soon

“You don’t want to grow your email list with paid advertising until it’s proven,” according to Kelan and Brittany Kline, founders of The Savvy Couple. “You always want to focus on organic growth to find what actually works, then you can scale things up by running paid ads.”

8. Sending emails without a goal

A clear goal for your overall email marketing campaign as well as each email you send will go a long way in making your emails worth your subscribers’ while. You don’t want to send out emails for the sake of sending emails; this will be clearly felt by subscribers, who may be put off by content that isn’t valuable to them. You should know what you want to accomplish with your emails before you send them. Is it sharing news about your company? Sending a discount code? Informing your customers of a new product? Shape your email marketing content around that goal.

9. Being disingenuous

“I’d stay away from anything disingenuous to the reader,” said Jakub Rudnik, vice president of content at Shortlister. “Ultimately, any bait-and-switch tactics will lead to the sign-ups that you earned unsubscribing more often than not. People are protective of their inboxes, so tell them exactly what types of content they’ll get and how often they’ll get it. You’ll gain their trust far better that way.”

10. Sending too many (or not enough) emails

With email marketing, the best way to retain your customers is to be consistent in your sending habits and let subscribers know what to expect. If you send a burst of five emails every few months, or three emails every day, your subscribers could get annoyed and unsubscribe. Set and stick to a regular posting schedule. Many email marketing services have scheduling features to make this effortless, even allowing you to schedule emails months in advance.

By Kiely Kuligowski

Kiely is a staff writer based in New York City. She worked as a marketing copywriter after graduating with her bachelor’s in English from Miami University (OH) and now writes on small business, social media, and marketing. You can reach her on Twitter or by email.

Sourced from business.com