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3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Email Marketing Software

July 25, 2019 No Comments

By Sean Peek

Email marketing is often cited as having a high ROI, but only if you use it right. Here’s how to make the most of your email marketing software.

Many companies use email marketing to engage consumers and increase sales. Having a list of contacts who want to receive your latest deals, announcements and other advertisements will help you better establish your brand and ultimately grow your business.

If you’ve invested in email marketing, it’s crucial you understand how to best leverage your software to help you manage and target your contacts. Here are some basic tips for using your email marketing software.

Build your opt-in email list

Every good email marketing campaign begins with a curated list of subscribers. Simply mass-emailing past customers and business contacts will not necessarily increase sales — and may, in fact, be against the law, depending on where you do business. If you have customers in Europe, for instance, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which mandates certain rules and policies about collecting and storing customer contact information for marketing purposes.

When launching your first campaign, you’ll want to obtain permission from customers before sending the emails. Your email marketing software should provide opt-in forms for prospects, so you’re only investing in consumers who are actually interested in your brand.

One particularly effective way to build an email list is to offer some kind of incentive — for example, a free, exclusive piece of content like a whitepaper or e-book — in exchange for a person’s contact information. Typically, visitors will need to check a box confirming their consent to receive marketing emails if they want to receive the incentive.

When launching your first campaign, you’ll want to obtain permission from customers before sending the emails.

How to use email list segmentation

Once you have your list of contacts, you should segment your email list to break them up into smaller groups based on specific demographics, like past relationships with your business, location or interests. This will help you target your customer groups specifically, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach. Subject lines and messages can be customized based on the group and their email or buying habits, and increase your conversions.

How to improve your email open rate

To ensure your contacts are actually opening your emails, you’ll first have to figure out how to avoid landing in spam (which is why opt-in and opt-out options are crucial). Email marketing software typically takes care of this for you, ensuring your IP address hasn’t been flagged as spam in the past. You’ll also want to personalize your metadata, like your To: field and domains.

There’s also no point in wasting time with inactive subscribers. If a consumer hasn’t been engaging in your content for over six months, it’s best to send a last-chance email that asks if they’re still interested in receiving emails. Anyone who does not respond can then be removed.

To encourage subscribers to stay active, though, SCORE recommends making emails short and mobile-friendly, and including a call to action (CTA). Taking that a step further, the SBA recommends testing as a great way to ensure you’re actually reaching your targeted inboxes, your subject lines are catchy enough and that you’re sending emails at the right times and on the right days.

CO— aims to bring you inspiration from leading respected experts. However, before making any business decision, you should consult a professional who can advise you based on your individual situation.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images/skynesher

By Sean Peek

Sourced from CO – by US Chamber of Commerce

In News

Salesforce makes email marketing smarter with new Einstein AI innovations

July 25, 2019 No Comments

By Roy Edwards

Salesforce has announced new Einstein AI innovations for Marketing Cloud. The enhancements will enable brands to increase customer engagement with relevant and timely email marketing messages. This potentially is an invaluable channel for marketers.

The Salesforce report ‘State of the Connected Customer’ shows that 64 percent of customers prefer email communications over other digital channels. These channels included mobile and social media. Furthermore, for every $1 a company invests in email marketing, the return is estimated at $42.

Analysts have forecasted that Salesforce is a leader in marketing automation and the preferred email service provider amongst companies worldwide. Salesforce sends more than 4 billion personalised emails per day for its customers. During Cyber Week 2018, the busiest time of year for retailers, Salesforce sent 20.6 billion emails on behalf of customers. The company also powered 22.8 billion Einstein engagements such as product recommendations within email and mobile messages.

Einstein AI engagement

Einstein Engagement Frequency enables marketers to know the right number of emails to send to customers based on their previous interactions.

(Image credit/Linkedin/Nick Antonelli) — Nick Antonelli, Chief Customer Officer, Naehas,

According to Nick Antonelli, Chief Customer Officer, Naehas: “We are focused on providing solutions that deliver personalised offers and communications. This is needed for our clients across financial services and other highly regulated industries. That’s why we turned to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. We are excited to leverage Einstein content tagging on behalf of our customers.

“Einstein content tagging will help them minimise the use of assets within email marketing campaigns that aren’t resonating with customers. The platform assist with the identification of new images while enabling the re-use of those that are highly effective. It will improve personalisation and also enhance the image library based on actual customer engagement.”

New Einstein AI enhancements include:

Einstein Engagement Frequency: Marketers know that it takes more than one email to engage a customer. But how many emails is too much, and at what point does a marketer risk fatiguing their audience? With Einstein Engagement Frequency, marketers know exactly how many emails to send to customers in order to keep them engaged.

Einstein Send Time Optimisation: Just as important as knowing how many emails to send, is knowing when to send those emails to a customer. With Einstein Send Times, AI automatically predicts the best time to send marketing emails to optimise customer engagement and avoid creating unsubscribers.

Einstein Content Tagging: Marketers turn to their content libraries to find the best, most engaging images for their emails. In order to access and manage these assets, marketers historically had to manually create image tags–a cumbersome and imprecise process. Einstein Content Tagging uses image recognition to automatically and accurately tags thousands of images within a content library, helping marketers save time and locate the best images.

Transaction Messaging

Businesses send promotional and transaction emails, and mobile messages to customers. Promotional messages offer discounts, coupons and other incentives encouraging customers to view or buy products. Transaction messages include purchase confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets, financial alerts and appointment reminders.

With Transaction Messaging now part of Marketing Cloud, customers can integrate transaction and promotional messages into the same campaign. Companies can now understand the complete customer journey, ensure a single voice is being used for all messages. Furthermore, they can embed promotional content in transaction messages and vice versa.

“Brands seek the ability to predict customer wants and needs, and deliver personalisation at scale for email, mobile marketing and all other channels. AI-driven approaches empower marketers to take the guesswork out of knowing when to send and how frequently to send marketing messages, improve efficiencies with content tagging and complete the customer journey with transaction messages. The end result is higher engagement through contextual relevancy and improved conversion rate optimisation,” said R “Ray” Wang, Principal Analyst and CEO, Constellation Research, Inc.

Salesforce to buy Tableau Software

Earlier this month, Salesforce announced its intention to acquire Tableau Software, an analytics platform operator. Tableau pioneered self-service analytics with an intuitive analytics platform that empowers people of any skill level to work with data. More than 86,000 organisations around the world, such as Charles Schwab, Verizon, Southwest and Netflix, use Tableau to understand data.

Salesforce believes Tableau will play an even greater role in driving digital transformation. The company believes businesses around the world can tap into data across their entire business. This could provide deeper insights to make smarter business decisions, drive intelligent, connected customer experiences and accelerate innovation. The acquisition is currently going through the required US financial regulatory processes.

Enterprise Times: What this means for business?

With the introduction of Marketing Cloud Einstein, companies will be able to engage with customers with personalised marketing campaigns. Salesforce is in an enviable position. It provides a complete view of customers across every touchpoint – sales, service, marketing, commerce and more. Salesforce pioneered AI for CRM.

With Salesforce Einstein, the company can now deliver AI-enabled analytics for sales and marketing. This means the company is in a good position to provide the legendary 360 degree intelligent view of their customers across every touchpoint.

Adding Tableau to the eco-system is another piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Companies of every size and industry are transforming how they do business in the digital age. More importantly, customers and data are at the heart of those transformations. This creates an incredible opportunity for Salesforce and Tableau as IDC projects worldwide spending on technologies and services that will enable digital transformation to reach $1.8 trillion in 2022.

By Roy Edwards

Trained as a journalist and editor at Reuters, Roy is a qualified Prince 2 project/programme manager, consultant with more than 20 years experience of working for some iconic brands in digital, eCommerce and bespoke software. He has delivered both website and ecommerce strategy and projects and has a wide experience of different products and sectors. Roy has worked on projects including Jimmy Choo, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Savills, Tui, P&O Ferries and the NHS. During his career he has also lectured at London Metropolitan University and has an MA in journalism studies from the University of Westminster.

Sourced from enterprise times

In News

Knowing Your Data: What Businesses Should Expect From Their Marketing Partners

July 23, 2019 No Comments

By Korena Keys

I am lucky to talk to key executives from hundreds of companies each year. Inevitably, the conversation typically rolls around to the effectiveness of digital marketing. The one common link in each of the conversations is understanding if their marketing is effective and interpreting what it means. In some cases, the organization has never received a report. In others, they get numbers but don’t know what they mean or how to decipher them.

If you are paying someone (an individual or an agency) to execute a digital marketing initiative, then you should expect to receive regular updates, reports on progress and interpretations of what the data is telling you and what should — or should not — be done about it. If you are missing this information, there are two possible solutions: Meet with your provider and ask for reporting data and recommendations to be delivered consistently, or find a new provider.

Understanding your campaign performance is critical in order to make decisions, allocate budgets and understand your customers and their needs. Let me explain in greater detail.

1. Search Engine Marketing: Paid and organic efforts relating to search marketing are able to provide key insights that can boost your page visibility within your specific sector, improving your page rankings while creating a better experience for your customers. As it relates to your paid search marketing (SEM or PPC), you will want to know what terms your customers are using, as well as which of your keywords has the strongest click-through and conversion metrics. Additionally, ask for reporting on ad group and ad copy performance, site links and call extensions. This will help you better understand your customers and what they want from you while providing insights that can be applied to other areas of your marketing. You should review this information monthly with your contracted provider.

2. Website Optimization: With an SEO contract, you can expect to see regular reports on your website performance in relation to your search engine rankings — how and where you are showing up on Google, Yahoo or Bing search results pages. The actual report may vary by contract, but at a minimum should include a review of your website speed on mobile devices, your current ranking and any change in your ranking for 5-8 keywords, identified technical errors and a summary of what work has been completed to improve in these areas.

3. Video (pre-roll, streaming, promoted): Video marketing has a little different report and KPI structure. With this type of advertising, the goal is typically to increase awareness or evoke some type of emotion. That is difficult to measure in clicks. When you are looking at performance metrics as it relates to video, ask for the video completion rate (VCR) and total time played in addition to any attributed clicks or conversions. This video data will let you know how effective your message is as well as if you are targeting the right audience within your ad buy.

4. Online Display Ads: While many professionals within our industry provide reporting on display ad impressions served and click-through rates (CTR), they really do not tell us the whole story. Request reporting data on ad performance by message and size, conversion metrics and website analytics data that will indicate the quality of the click. In today’s marketplace, it is easy to buy clicks and flood a website with cheap traffic. You will want to ensure that you are paying for quality web traffic, not just quantity.

5. Email Marketing: Reporting on this activity is more straightforward than other digital aspects, mostly because it is more of a standardized service. Ask for a summary for each email sent. It should include the date and time it was deployed, total sends, total opens and reads, number of clicks (and on what links), as well as any results from A/B testing of subject lines and content.

6. Social Media Marketing: Depending on the scope of services of your social media contract, your contractor should be providing a monthly summary of their activity and the results. If the intent is to boost your page engagement, the report should include posts made, activity for each post, change in page engagement over the previous month and data on paid activity. If you are trying to promote an event or sell a product, the report should also include hard numbers on the registrations, sales or leads attributed to the campaign efforts.

7. Website Insights/Usability: The goal of a paid online campaign is to grow your business. Looking beyond impressions and clicks will tell you how well your campaign is working for you. Look for key indicators, such as time on site, pages per visit and new visitors. These data points will let you know how good the quality of traffic is (how many pages they are looking at and for how long). They will also provide insights as to what pages of your website need attention through better/more content or flow.

The data collected from your marketing campaigns provides valuable knowledge. Accessing this information, understanding its meaning and applying the insights will propel your organization further, faster and with lower acquisition costs.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Korena Keys

Korena, the Founder & CEO of KeyMedia Solutions, applies 25+ years marketing experience to drive a strategy first approach.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Cut Through The Inbox Clutter With These 14 B2B Email Marketing Tips

July 11, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from Forbes

Email is a great marketing tool, especially in the business-to-business (B2B) world. But professionals may receive hundreds of emails every week, and they simply don’t have the time to read every one of them.

If you want to reach your contacts through email marketing, you’ll have to secure their attention long enough to avoid immediate transfer to the dreaded “trash” folder. We asked a group of Forbes Agency Council members how to stand out among the many emails in a professional’s inbox. Their best answers are below.

1. Hyper-Personalize Your Messages

Only reach out if you are willing to be hyper-targeted and personalize your message to the target recipient. Thereafter, don’t ask for anything up front. Focus on providing value and sharing. This builds trust and credibility. Remember, it’s a mini relationship you are building. – Zamir Javer, Jumpfactor

2. Write Your Subject Line Last

When I write my emails, I always write my subject line last. I work with nonprofits and social enterprises. Because of that, I like to create emails that are very personable and feel more like a letter you would send a friend. I even include a handwritten signature at the end of every email. Once the email is complete, I pull the best line from the text and use it as my subject line. – Genia Stevens, Belwah Media

3. Stay Away From Image Overload

Make them personal. Sometimes a plain text email, addressing the recipient by their first name, will perform much better than a graphics-heavy email with 18 clickable links. In addition to getting noticed and read, it has a better chance of actually making it to their inbox. Too many images or sales-heavy words can land you a spot in the dreaded “Promotions” folder. – Bernard May, National Positions

4. Don’t Templatize Your Personalization

Treat people like real people, not businesses or business contacts. Don’t try to “trick” them into thinking your email is personalized by using templated content and customizing the name of the recipient or company—make it truly personal. Generic personalized emails are today’s mass junk mail. The gig is up. The recipient knows it wasn’t written just for them. – Kelli Corney, Mightily

5. Get Right To The Point

With over 400 emails flooding my inbox each day, I’m quick to delete just about anything that looks like spam—which means that on more than one occasion, I’ve deleted emails that did, in fact, present some kind of lucrative opportunity for collaboration. It’s the emails that get right to the point in the subject line that grab my attention the most—subject lines like “new potential client opportunity.” – Michelle Dempsey, Very Well-Written Marketing

6. Appeal To The Few People Who Need You Now

Email marketing will not work miracles. Don’t expect it to. Write subject lines that will appeal to the few customers who need what you’re offering now. If they open your email and glance at it for a second or two, you’ve earned a brand impression. Be brief and clear about the value proposition and call to action. Have a plan to follow up with those who click the email but don’t “convert.” – Craig Klein, SalesNexus.com

7. Offer Insights And Speak To Tipping Points

Emails that promote products and services are only useful to people who want products or services promoted to them, which is typically a very small segment of any email list. Instead, offer insights that help your audience achieve their most important goals. Identify tipping points when they know they need better ideas to move ahead, and offer great advice. This helps you top the inbox. – Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group

8. Send Something They Want To Read

There are certain emails that I look forward to receiving. I open every single one. Why? Because the information inside is offering real insight that will add value to my life. This applies to seeing a new piece of clothing that I might want, or to the consultant who is sharing their thoughts on our field. In short, you can earn trust by sending quality and keep trust by not sending too often. – Benjamin Collins, Laughing Samurai

9. Leverage User-Generated Content

The power of user-generated content extends far beyond social media. Repurposing user-generated content as part of your email marketing strategy can help capture attention and drive sales, as this content tends to be more authentic, personal and engaging. Not to mention, a consistent and streamlined visual marketing approach across all channels can help strengthen consumer relationships. – David Shadpour, Social Native

10. Don’t Lead With Self-Interest

Lead with the news or a subject line that’s relevant (or humorous) to the receiver, not yourself. Emails with subject lines like, “Got time for a call?” are underwhelming because the self-interest is clear. But when you write to a prospect or contact with a compelling subject line that shows you actually care about their problems or interests, the probability of hitting “delete” decreases. – Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications

11. Offer ‘Positive Disruption’

Know your audience and their interests and needs. Be ahead of trends and industry news, and be the first to offer keen insights, opinions and solutions. Positive disruption can spur thinking and charge change. Focus on what your targets need to know and not just what you want to share. No one needs more information, but everyone needs knowledge. Make sure the news you share is worth reading. – Pat Fiore, FIORE

12. Always Frame Your Message From The Customer’s Perspective

Many times, email marketing messages focus too heavily on broad product claims or feature sets. Challenge yourself to look at the communication from the point of view of the customer. What benefit will it bring them? What need will it fulfill? Be specific. You’ll be surprised how this shifts and improves your narrative. – Jenni Smith, EGR International

13. Use A Personalized Video

By using a personalized video with an embedded animation in the email, we are able to break through the noise of the inbox and grab the attention of our prospects. We use BombBomb to create hyper-personalized and relevant content for our prospects and then email them with a few sentences and an embedded GIF preview of the video, which plays directly in their inbox. – Adam Guild, Placepull

14. Say One Thing, Really Well

Your window of engagement is three seconds. Within that time, you must clearly articulate your message and how it will add value to their lives. While you may have a series of new services and helpful tips to share with your customers, push yourself to focus on one core message with one call to action. – Andrew Au, Intercept Group

Sourced from Forbes

In News

5 Of The Hottest Trends In Marketing Right Now, According To Industry Experts

June 11, 2019 No Comments

By Brenda Stoltz

The thing about marketing trends, particularly for B2B marketers, is that they change frequently. If you don’t stay on top of them, you risk missing out on serious potential for revenue growth and customer acquisition.

So what’s hot these days? What do you need to pay attention to and learn to embrace? Recently, I interviewed several industry leaders to see what they consider to be the most significant marketing trends happening right now.

We’re getting down to creepy levels of personalization

Just a few years ago, personalization in marketing meant customizing an email to address the recipient by name. Brandi Smith, VP of demand generation marketing at Uberflip, says we’ve come a long way since then. Account-based marketing (ABM) and technology are being used to dive deep into an audience base to deliver highly personalized content, especially for B2B marketers.

If you don’t stay on top of the latest trends, you risk missing out on serious potential for revenue growth and customer acquisition. Industry leaders share what’s hot.

Smith says, “We can creep their social profiles to see what information is hot and trending to them, we can look at their company’s annual reports, and look at the footnotes or just the content in general to find out what might actually be a key focus in a key directive for their business moving into the new fiscal year.”

It’s necessary, she says, to use tools like artificial intelligence in meaningful ways to create a personal experience without the customer feeling like the company has crossed a line into creepy.

Nissar Ahamed, senior director of demand generation at Atomic Reach, agrees with Smith. “There’s too much noise, which makes it more difficult and also more expensive to create content that hits the mark and converts,” he says. And that’s why, according to Ahamed, hyper-personalized content based on the buyer’s journey, demographics, location, etc., make for much more effective marketing. He cites the example of emails that Amazon sends: no two are the same because they’re based on a shopper’s past history, profile, and demographics.

Ahamed encourages marketers to invest in tools and automation that can help personalize content in a meaningful and relevant way.

Email marketing is making a comeback

Though we’ve heard this claim already, “email marketing is just as effective today as before,” says Ahamed. That’s due, he says, to the fact that it’s become more integrated with content marketing to build audiences. As algorithms and advertising policies change on social media, it has become more difficult to own an audience there.

Meanwhile, reliable email marketing offers distribution and the ability to build an audience through an established and proven channel.

Other Articles From AllBusiness.com:

Content is becoming increasingly interactive

Content marketing certainly isn’t a trend; it’s here to stay, but its delivery and consumption continue to evolve.

Gaurav Harode, founder and CEO of Enablix, sees that content is becoming more and more interactive. “So, right now we have static content, maybe some web content and video. But I think there is going to be a middle ground where there are going to be a lot of platforms and a lot of flexibility where content is going to be interactive,” he says.

One example Harode gives is calculators that businesses use to attract leads. You can use these calculators to calculate ROI, auto or home loan payments, and more. But what’s less obvious is these are interactive content tools designed to drive business to a company.

Ahamed concurs: “Content is no longer a siloed department within marketing.” He says it’s now a cross-team function, and he also sees more integration of content in other aspects of marketing, sales, and other departments.

AI is no longer a mysterious black box

Ahamed also says that 2019 is going to be the year of heavy exploration and implementation of artificial intelligence for brands. He believes that as companies of every size start to realize that AI isn’t there to replace humans and jobs—that it is, in fact, there to augment and complement those roles—more brands will adopt AI in innovative ways through marketing.

Chatbots are going to take charge this year

Smith also sees that chatbots are going to increase their presence in 2019. In fact, 35% of consumers would interact with one to resolve a complaint or problem, and 33% would use one to make a reservation at a restaurant or hotel.

There are plenty of marketing functions chatbots can serve, from directing a website visitor to a particular product, color, and size to offering instantly redeemable coupons. And as more brands find proven success with chatbots, we’ll see an increase in adoption as well as inspiration for how to use them to reach an audience.

Trends matter

If you’re serious about reaching your customers on their terms, pay attention to these trends. While they may evolve (or even disappear completely) over time, right now they are an effective means to build a real and sustainable relationship with your audience.

Feature Image Credit: weyo – Adobe Stock

By Brenda Stoltz

I am the president of Ariad Partners, a marketing and sales firm specializing in creating breakthrough growth strategies for small to mid-market companies. I also blog about small business, lead generation, and sales at B2Community.com, AllBusiness.com, FoxBusiness.com, Business.com, HubSpot.com, Eloqua.com, and SharpSpring.com. Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

5 Tips for Better Email Marketing Performance

May 28, 2019 No Comments

By Thomas Smale

Email is a powerful marketing tool, but too many businesses miss out on its potential. Is yours one of these?

Email is one of the most effective ways for businesses to advertise their services. While many businesses still use direct mail, their budgets might be better spent on email marketing. According to a partnership study conducted by the Data and Marketing Association and United States Postal Service, more than half (57 percent) of mail being sent at the time of the study was still direct mail.

But this strategy, the researchers said, produced a return on investment of just 7 percent. In comparison, email marketing offered an ROI of 28.5 percent. In terms of value, studies have found that email marketing offers businesses $44 for every $1 spent.

Still, some businesses fail to realize email marketing’s full benefits, so to convince them, here are five of the best ways for any business to improve its email campaigns.

1. Personalize your email content.

Most marketers are aware of the benefits of personalization, but many don’t take it seriously. Personalized email content is by far one of the best ways to increase email marketing effectiveness. According to statistics, personalized emails offer six times higher transaction rates than emails without any personalization. Other studies have shown click-through rates are 14 percent higher and conversion rates are 10 percent higher when personalization is part of the general email content.

However, personalization for many businesses means they’re just including the name of the contact in the content. This is far from perfect as a strategy, and many subscribers are now fully aware of this tactic. Instead, personalization needs to be taken to the next level.

One way of doing this is to segment your audience into groups. Then you can send more relevant content to each group. A wedding specialist website that attempted this asked one question: Are you shopping as the couple or for the couple? This simple question split the website’s audience into two groups, but the results showed a 244 percent increase in open-rates and 161 percent increase in click-through rate.

2. Avoid certain words.

Spam filters are there to stop malicious emails from reaching audiences. Of course, spammers usually use words that businesses themselves would like to use. So filters are growing more sophisticated, and allowing more genuine content to gain access into inboxes. Still, there are times when your email might be mistaken for something malicious.

Therefore, you need to minimize the use of certain words that are considered spam by these filters. For instance, words like “bargain,” “50 percent off” and similar keywords will likely send your email to the spam folder.

When you do want to use a typical spam word, because it is relevant to your content, be inventive with your subject lines. Also restrict yourself to just one high-level spam word per email within the content and email subject line. This will reduce the chance of your emails being blacklisted.

3. Change the times you send your emails.

The aim here is to catch people who are just about to check their inbox or are in the process of doing so. This will put your email close to the top of their inbox. The more time between your sending it and customers checking it, the less likely it will be that your email is read.

You also don’t want to be sending your promotional content at the same time as everyone else, so sending your emails on the weekend might be the best option. Research has shown that many businesses don’t start campaigns on weekends, so you’ll have less competition, and more people are checking their emails on the weekends now than ever before.

4. Ensure you’re building an engaged email list.

It is often the pride of some entrepreneurs to promote how many people they have on their email lists. However, long lists mean nothing if those people aren’t engaged.

There are many ways to ensure that your list is engaged. It requires removing old and inactive subscribers, but in the end, it will help you achieve more profitable campaigns. The first thing is to check for addresses that have bounced three or more times. Ensure that a simple typo such as .con instead of .com is not responsible for the error.

You can also use email verification services. Those services will identify emails that bounce or are inactive, and they can help to remove spam traps: old emails that ISPs use as a tool to identify businesses that send spam.

5. Optimize emails for mobile.

The number of people who open emails on their mobile varies depending on the study being cited. One study said that 46 percent of people opened emails on their mobiles while another found that 59 percent of emails were being opened on these devices. Very few people actually use a desktop mail client to open emails (15 to 18 percent).

To support your efforts, ensure that your campaigns are optimized for these devices. If your campaigns don’t look good on a mobile device, people aren’t going to read them and take action. Therefore, check to make sure you have great mobile templates. A few quick tips include:

Have short subject lines.
Use one-column email designs.
Keep your email design under 600 pixels.
Usie a larger font (13 or 14 pixels).

Conclusion

Email marketing could be the best way to make your business grow. For over a decade now, it has remained the most profitable form of digital marketing. Yet, too many businesses are failing to optimize their campaigns to maximize potential revenue. So, ensure that you are personalizing your emails as much as possible and make sure you avoid the traps your competitors are falling into. Most of these changes can be made without too much disruption to your current campaigns. So, why not implement them right away?

Feature Image Credit: Image credit: anyaberkut | Getty Images

By Thomas Smale

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

4 basic ways to drive traffic on your website

May 20, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from Inventiva

Nowadays, every business is online and everything depends on the website. In order to achieve more customers, you will need more visitors to your website. The more traffic you have, the more conversion rate you will see. Driving traffic to your websites is the main problem for many of the people. Only because they can’t get the traffic, most of the people fail in the online world. Just for you, here are the 4 basic and the handpicked ways to drive traffic to your website

Email marketing

The best way to drive more and more continuous traffic is by Email marketing. When you open any of the websites, you might have noticed that they always ask you for your email and continuously sends the mail every week. Implementing this on your website will not only increase the traffic but you will also get a customer base who knows you by the name.

Email marketing has a huge conversion ratio by which it will easier for anyone to convert the visitors into the customers. You can offer freebie sent to their email as soon as they enter their email address. This will give you more email subscribers. There are various email marketing services that you can make use of.

People have been using email marketing for many years and they have a huge convert ratio compared to all.

Search Engine PPC advertising

PPC stands for pay per click. When you search anything on Google or any other search engine, you will see some of the ads. These are search engines ads. They are a great way to drive traffic as people are exactly looking to buy a product when they search on Google. You can set up a Google ads campaign by which the ads will be visible to all the people who are searching on Google.

If you are looking for a targeted visitor, Search engine marketing is the best as well as the most cost-saving way to get the traffic. For instance, if your website is about dog food, and you have placed ads in Google. Now, if someone is searching for Dog food and your ad shows up, they are more likely to buy from you as they are already looking for that particular thing.

There are various options by which you can target a specific audience to display your ads. The best way to target here is to get a digital marketing expert who will set up the entire Google ads campaign for you. Using this, you will get the visitors that you can make your regular visitor using email marketing.

Social Media Marketing

People spend most of their precious time scrolling through social media. This involves all the famous social media including Facebook, Instagram, and also YouTube. You can display your ads on any of these platforms.

Depending on which niche you work with, you will choose the platform. For instance, if you have to deal with images, you can choose Instagram. In this way, choosing the right platform is necessary in order to get the targeted audience and drive more traffic.

There are various advertising formats that you can choose from and also the ads can be displayed anywhere depending on the social media platform such as in feeds ads, story ads, etc. The social media marketing is not limited to the ads, you can also opt for influencer marketing where you can ask the related social figure to promote your business website.

Lead magnets

Lead magnets are another best way to drive traffic. Basically, a lead magnet is nothing but offering something for free or creating a specific page that converts. It can be about a specific product or you can simply ask for registration for the webinar. Lead magnets will help you to achieve all the goals that you have set.

You can either get members of your websites or you can simply get new email subscribers. In this way, lead magnets are useful for everyone. There are various tools and software that you can use to create a landing page that will convert and either give you sales or new members for your website. You can, of course, implement the email marketing along with this.

For instance, if you are getting leads for the webinar and you can add an email address and then when you have the email address, you can continue with the email marketing strategies.

Final words

To drive the maximum amount of traffic to your website, you can try all of these or you can try all one by one. Once you try it, you will get to know which works best for your business. In this way, you will be able to choose any one of them from all the ways stated above. You can surely try all of them to get the maximum results.

Sourced from Inventiva

In News

7 Marketing Myths Debunked

May 7, 2019 No Comments

By Melissa Thompson

Facts are funny things. Myths go hand in hand with them. It is deciphering what is which that is sometimes the hard part. But, their separation is necessary to understand how to market at an optimal level.

Myth Busting

More content, more traffic! False – Content creation is a requirement for success, but quality outweighs quantity. Speaking in an expert voice is a better draw than words for word’s sake. The inbound framework consists of web design, SEO contextual keywords of value, social media, email marketing, and building trust with an audience.
Thinking the inbound traffic framework is merely a fad. False – Internet fads do exist. However, many people do not like change in marketing and believe inbound strategies will fade away like most Internet trends. Business coaching and mentoring are available for people who find the changes startling.
Return of Investment, or ROI, cannot be deciphered using the inbound traffic strategy. False – The myth about ROI’s has existed since the beginning of inbound Internet marketing. Automated Marketing Platforms began its existence so that businesses could track the ROI easier than ever.
Digital Media costs too much and get nothing in return. False – The particular myth is entirely backward. Digital Marketing creates revenue, not the other way around. Online digital content has no expiration date. Eyes over a never-ending expanse of time mean more for the buck in the long run.
Having only a website is enough! It does not have to be cellphone accessible. False & False – People are not going to visit a website randomly. Thousands of companies are competing with each other at any given moment, regardless of industry. And without a mobile accessible site, the chances of inbound traffic is even lower.
Word of mouth is magic and will do all the work. False – Entire industries continue to *only* use word of mouth. The old school approach is a habit hard to break because there was a time when it was all a business had to gain new patrons. The method integration into a marketing strategy framework is available, but no one should rely on referrals and word of mouth even if it were the most gainful means. Facebook advertising is proof that word of mouth and social media methods go hand in hand.
In the about section of the website, a simple paragraph and photograph are fine. False – The first giveaway that it is a myth is the fact no SEO exists when throwing a call to action paragraph on a website. The simplicity of the approach does not draw search engine attention through Google, or any other search engine. Quality content is indispensable.

Food for Thought

Over eighty percent of online marketing are small businesses using the Internet Marketing strategies. The decision to change methods of marketing is huge, but the integration is a requirement in the era of online marketing.

Businesses that utilize inbound marketing see their ROI triple compared to outbound marketing. Workshops are available to even those who work from home.

Inbound marketing strategies are here to stay. It is better for consumers and companies alike to deploy a modern marketing plan.

By Melissa Thompson

Melissa is a mother of 2, lives in Utah, and writes for a multitude of sites. She is currently the EIC of HarcourtHealth.com and writes about health, wellness, and business topics.

Sourced from Axcess News

In News

4 Email Marketing Metrics to Track Your ROI

May 1, 2019 No Comments

By Thomas Griffin

Email marketing is one of the most crucial parts of promoting your business. Here are the metrics you need to track to improve your campaign’s ROI.

There are few things as necessary as your email marketing campaign. The success of your newsletter and other email-based promotional material can have a significant impact on the financial status and health of your company.

If you need to know what kind of impact your email marketing campaign has on your brand, consider the following stats from a case study by Delivra:

Email subscribers are three times as likely to share your content as those who discover your content on social media.
Automation in the email marketing field is causing a drastic increase in open rates. They report a 70.5% increase in open rates with automated emails.
A whopping 72% of people prefer to receive promotional content in their email inbox.

Now that we know why email marketing is important, it’s time to figure out which ROI (return on investment) metrics you need to track to make the most of your lead list.

Editor’s note: Looking for email marketing software for your business? Fill out the questionnaire below to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs.

Click HERE to read the remainder of the article.

Feature Image Credit: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

By Thomas Griffin

Sourced from business.com

In News

Email marketing trends to expect in 2019

January 14, 2019 No Comments

By Kyle Henderick

This year the email marketing landscape will continue to focus on personalization with a focus on quality over quantity as well as expanding loyalty programs.

Many exciting trends and developments hit the world of email marketing in 2018 as email turned 40 years old – from the emergence of AMP for Gmail to mobile email reaching its long-awaited tipping point.

As we head into 2019 and marketing budgets “refill,” it’s our chance to give our email programs a restart and refocus our efforts on innovation and speed to keep pace with the demanding customer. In 2019 we can expect consumer expectations for quality content to increase – it’s become an annual tradition. Marketers will need to leverage new technologies and disciplines to continue to push the boundaries. Email programs will become even more personalized and more interactive, and as a result, more effective at driving revenue and brand loyalty.

To achieve these lofty goals and marketing dreams, below are my predictions for 2019 changes in the email marketing landscape you should be most aware of.

Personalization will put the right content in front of the right customers

Email marketing content can and should be more deliberate based on customers behavior, and I believe in 2019 we will see this become more prevalent in marketing strategies. Marketers have no excuse not to personalize email content based on the plethora of data they capture from browsing, purchase histories and email preferences.

The use of this data is becoming less “creepy” and using it in a deliberate way can deliver success. If you haven’t done so already, you should make it a priority to collect and use more data for personalization in content execution. Marketers should implement/expand their current preference centers for content choices or follow browse, purchase, click and open behavior to identify the content that piques subscribers’ interest most.

This process will get even more scientific as marketers push vendors for perfection. In 2019, marketers will continue to test AI platforms, while pushing vendors to handle their AI needs and automate at a larger scale. This innovation in technology should enable marketers to identify content combinations that perform better, faster and more efficiently.

The growth of mobile average order value

Historically, mobile average order value (AOV) has lagged behind its desktop counterpart because consumers are less likely to make big-ticket purchases (e.g., large, expensive items) on-the-go. In 2019, we’ll see this gap close. In fact, Yes Marketing data from Q3 shows significant growth in mobile average order value (AOV) for the first time in a long time. In Q3 of 2018 mobile AOV was $66.40, just $20 less than the $86.20 desktop AOV – and this is just the start.

In the year ahead, it will become more common for subscribers to purchase larger orders on mobile devices as the user experience gets better. To take advantage of this trend, brands will need to gain subscribers’ trust by offering detailed product content, more images and videos, or customer testimonials to push subscribers over the edge.

The continued rise of interactive content

As in 2018, I’m a firm believer in interactive content and I’m predicting it will continue to take off in 2019. Emails that contain games, quizzes, image carousels or simply “fun’” clickability (my word for 2019) allow users to interact with the brand without leaving the email itself. The more brands allow subscribers to engage within emails in new ways – whether it’s a personality quiz or the ability to book hotels without leaving email – the more engaged and ready to purchase subscribers will be with the brand.

The use of interactive content can help boost sales or simply educate and entertain. Fun games are a great way to get subscribers in the habit of opening your emails. The ability to actually make purchases within email makes the buying process even faster, and will boost sales for the brands that embrace interactivity.

Quality over quantity (deliverability + greater spend in targeted digital acquisition)

Deliverability has become a serious concern for marketers. Due to poor data management and increased standards from major ISPs like Gmail, Yahoo and AOL, emails can quickly land in the SPAM folder, making all that hard work in creative useless. To reach the inbox every time and maximize revenue from email marketing campaigns, marketers need to ensure they are sending relevant content to high quality value email subscribers and stop focusing on the total quantity of emails sent. In the coming year, that means embracing best practices even more, such as segmentation, data hygiene, email verification and preference centers.

In addition to reaching current subscribers/customers, smart marketers will use data to drive their digital acquisition efforts and better target new subscribers. Again, quality over quantity in acquiring new subscribers will pay dividends for your email program down the road. Model out your digital acquisition by appending the right types of data and finding look-a-like versions of your best customers instead of just paying your standard cost per lead. Yes, this approach may and most likely will cost more to successfully acquire quality subscribers. But in the end the lifetime value of higher quality customers is worth the additional investment. Smarter acquisition = greater ROI.

Loyalty programs will further expand to collect customer data

Many marketers already embrace loyalty programs and in 2019 these programs will become much more sophisticated. Smart marketers will use loyalty programs to collect customer data and better understand customer behavior, allowing them to reach loyal customers with better personalization and acquire new customers with the same characteristics.

What will this look like? Email marketers can track the behavior of their most loyal customers (e.g., those who engage with loyalty emails most frequently) and better understand their needs when it comes to email. What time of day do they want to receive emails? What types of products do they typically browse and purchase? What promotions work best for them? Then, marketers can take this data to encourage subscribers with similar behavior to join the loyalty program. Additionally, strong brands are already leveraging loyalty points as an incentive to receive data from their customers. This combination will lead to greater engagement in the inbox and more revenue for brands who execute flawlessly.

Over the past year, it’s been fun watching email marketing turn 40. While many in the past have claimed email is dead and ready for replacement by a shiny new channel (*cough* Sheryl Sandberg *cough*), we’ve yet to see a true successor. That’s why I’m challenging all marketers to keep up the strong work in 2019 to make it even better.

As you ring in the new year, consider tactics such as AI for personalization, interactive content, improved loyalty programs and spending a little bit more in acquisition so next year at this time, you can give yourself the greatest gift of the holiday season – a bonus or raise.

By Kyle Henderick

Kyle Henderick is Director of Client Services at Yes Marketing, a single solution provider who delivers relevant communications across all channels for mid and enterprise-sized companies. Kyle is responsible for helping major clients implement new programs, processes, and data-driven strategies to create campaigns that truly drive revenue. With a passion for technology implementation and a background in database, email, web, and social media marketing, Kyle turns his real-world experience into executable tactics to help clients see an incremental lift in revenue, subscriber engagement, and customer retention. A lover of all things Chicago, when Kyle is not reading up on latest marketing practices or focusing on improving client programs, he can be found enjoying the city’s great restaurants or wearing his heart on his sleeve while rooting for all Chicago-based sports teams. A curious individual willing to try any and every food that does not include raw onions, he is always looking for exciting dining options and new adventures around the city.

Sourced from Marketing Land