WebProNews

Category: EmailMarketingToday

EmailMarketingToday

  • Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying, Says Bombora VP

    Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying, Says Bombora VP

    “It’s really about customer experience,” says Nirosha Methananda, VP of Marketing at Bombora. “I think that is something fundamental to marketing. I feel like we have gone down this path of almost over automating and having to constantly pounce on people without necessarily being conscious and mindful of what their experience is on the other end. From my experience, it’s leading to me switching off and ignoring messages. I’m sure I’m not the only one. That’s basically why I’m passionate about creating a marketing strategy that’s not annoying.”

    Nirosha Methananda, Vice President of Marketing at Bombora, discusses the challenges of marketing without annoying your potential customers by bombarding them with marketing messages in an interview with Logan Lyles on the B2B Growth Podcast:

    Marketing Is Really About the Customer Experience

    As a B2B marketer, I get marketed to a lot. It’s something that I have increasingly noticed and I’m probably not the only one. That’s just becoming part of the experience in terms of being inundated with different messaging and different calls and this, that, and the other. Use this, do this, buy this, whatever it is. It’s really not a great experience. It doesn’t necessarily provide value. Marketers are so busy as it is, and I know that is applicable across the board with everyone we are marketing to. Being able to cut through the noise and having an understanding of all these different things is very challenging. 

    Having on top of it being inundated with this constant flow of messaging like meet me, meet me, meet me, is not very helpful. That’s one of the things that I’m passionate about. It’s really about customer experience. I think that is something fundamental to marketing. I feel like we have gone down this path of almost over automating and having to constantly pounce on people without necessarily being conscious and mindful of what their experience is on the other end. From my experience, it’s leading to me switching off and ignoring messages. I’m sure I’m not the only one. 

    Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying

    It also leads to this annoyance and irritation which leads to distrust of brands and that’s not great for this industry. From a customer perspective those bad experiences, unfortunately, more than good experiences, they stay with you for longer and you remember that. Another thing that we don’t necessarily think of is that it’s wasteful. It’s wasteful of time and it’s wasteful of money especially for marketing and sales where money is a precious resource. It’s not something to be wasted. That’s basically why I’m passionate about creating a marketing strategy that’s not annoying.

    As an example, our Intent Event was our first flagship event that we did last year. It was a closed event so we did have limited numbers and we were limited as to what we could do with promotion. What we did was try to have mindfulness around what we were sending out and ensuring that it was helpful. Making sure that the recipients, the people that we invited, were given all the relevant information, but there was brevity in the communication as well as encouraging them to participate without forcing them to be there. 

    There was certainly some urgency around some of our communication but it wasn’t you need to attend this and this is why you must attend this. It was more about being a bit more subtle in presenting them the idea and the concept of what it was, why it would help them, and exactly the information that they needed. What that meant was not sending out multiple emails, being very controlled around it, really thinking about what the experience was before the event, to during the event, to after the event. We were really focused on the customer and making sure that all of the content and communication was educational and helpful.

    Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying, Says Bombora VP Nirosha Methananda
  • Conversational Marketing Closes the Gap Between B2C and B2B, Says Drift Marketing VP

    Conversational Marketing Closes the Gap Between B2C and B2B, Says Drift Marketing VP

    Conversational marketing is a whole new way of thinking about marketing and sales, says Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift. “We go to our jobs in B2B and none of the tools that we use match how we actually buy as real people,” he says. “That’s the most exciting thing to me about conversational marketing. It’s really closing the gap between B2C and B2B. We just call it B2P, marketing to people.”

    Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift, was recently interviewed on the B2B Growth podcast by John Rougeux who is VP of Marketing at Skyfii. Gerhardt discusses conversational marketing as a new B2B product category and how it is changing marketing from reaching out to you later to a conversation that is happening now:

    Conversational Marketing is About Connecting You Now

    Conversational marketing is a whole new way of thinking about marketing and sales. The traditional way of doing marketing and sales is all about later. Come to my website and fill out this form and somebody is going to reach out to you later, when it’s convenient for them. The big shift that is happening in marketing and business over the last five to ten years is customers have all the power today. You can’t make people wait. Information is free now.

    I can find anything I want to know about a company without ever having to go to your website. It’s crazy to think that you are going to force people to go to your website, fill out a form, wait three days to hear back from your sales team, and then get a demo. Conversational is all about connecting you now with the people who are ready to buy now while they are live on your website.

    B2P – Marketing to People

    It’s not about buyers. It’s not about sellers. It’s not about sales. It’s not about marketing. It’s about people. That’s how people all communicate online today. I pressed one button in my car and I got a list. I ordered something from Amazon while I was here this morning to send back to my house and it’s going to be there tomorrow when I get home. There are countless examples of that. That is how we all behave online in our real lives today.

    But then something happens weird happens. We go to our jobs in B2B and none of the tools that we use match how we actually buy as real people. That’s the most exciting thing to me about conversational marketing. It’s really closing the gap between B2C and B2B. We just call it B2P, marketing to people.

    What Ties Our Products Together is Conversation

    We have an email product and we have a landing page product. Black and white versions of those people would say everybody has email, everybody has landing pages. The thing that ties those together is conversation. That forces us to think about what is conversational email? What is conversational landing pages? What is conversational whatever? That one word forces our product team to think about how can we change this? If our fundamental stance as a company is that the internet should be one conversation, then how does that weave into everything that we build?

    Ultimately what we care about is that email becomes a conversation. Meaning, the way that marketers have had to use email the last decade is a one-way channel. Email is meant to be a two-way channel. Marketers have been using it as, “John come to my webinar.” What happens if you actually respond to that email? Most of the time you can’t because it’s donotreply@ or it just goes to some inbox where nobody is answering it. That is a terrible experience. Our belief is that if you reply, “Hey actually I can’t make it. Can you reregister my colleague?” That should get handled. We are thinking of that from an evolution standpoint.

    The same thing with landing pages. Most landing pages today are static. You go to the landing page, put a bunch of info in and you are gone. What if that was a real-time conversation on the page? That one topic has to weave itself into everything we do from a product perspective.

    >> Listen to the complete interview with Drift Marketing VP Dave Gerhardt on the B2B Growth podcast.

  • The Advantages of Using Outlook for Collaboration and Teamwork

    The Advantages of Using Outlook for Collaboration and Teamwork

    Image Source

    There’s no denying that collaboration and teamwork are two of the most important drivers of business success. Having a well-oiled machine where team members communicate efficiently and are always on the same page can make a huge difference when it comes to productivity since it means you are getting the most out of your human resources.

    On top of this, the rise of remote work has made collaboration and teamwork even more important in the modern workplace. With team members now spread out across the world and face-to-face interaction becoming less frequent, it can be difficult to keep everyone in sync.

    Fortunately, with Microsoft Outlook, businesses can leverage the power of collaboration and teamwork while still staying secure, no matter where team members are located. On that note, here are the main advantages of using Outlook for collaboration and teamwork:

    Increased Productivity

    One of the most significant advantages of using Outlook for collaboration is its ability to help teams stay productive and organized. By harnessing Outlook’s powerful tools such as shared calendars, task reminders, and automated scheduling services, team members can not only keep track of their assigned tasks but also stay on top of deadlines, follow up with colleagues, and ensure that all projects move along smoothly.

    Moreover, by integrating with Office 365 suites like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, team members can collaborate on projects in real-time without the need for cumbersome email chains or other slow-moving systems. This helps keep everyone in sync while still allowing teams to work remotely or from different offices around the globe.

    Improved Communication

    Outlook makes it incredibly easy for teams to stay connected in real-time without the need for lengthy in-person meetings. Through its chat and messaging features, team members can quickly share ideas, updates, and questions – helping them to stay cohesive while working apart.

    Additionally, Outlook’s voice calling feature lets users make calls directly within its interface – allowing them to get answers faster no matter where they may be. And with the ability to create a custom Outlook email signature, team members can maintain a professional image and streamline communication with clients and colleagues alike.

    And perhaps most importantly, Outlook helps create a people-centric environment by making it easier for everyone to interact with each other regularly. This fosters stronger relationships between colleagues which can help increase morale and productivity, leading to more successful collaborations all around!

    Streamlined Collaboration

    When collaborating on projects or reports within Outlook users can easily share comments with one another within a shared document or project which makes gathering feedback simpler than ever before. When changes have been made they are synced automatically so there’s no need to copy/paste files back and forth between team members anymore.

    Additionally, tasks assigned within this shared environment are tracked in real-time meaning that everyone knows who is responsible for what at any given moment – helping increase overall efficiency.

    Enhanced Security

    One of the biggest concerns in today’s modern workplace is security – especially when dealing with sensitive data exchanged over multiple devices.

    Fortunately, Microsoft has taken steps to ensure that Outlook remains secure at all times by implementing TLS encryption (Transport Layer Security) as well as two-factor authentication methods. This requires users to enter both a username/password combination as well as another form of identification such as an SMS code sent directly from their mobile device before being allowed access to their account.

    Flexible Scheduling Tools

    Outlook also provides incredibly useful scheduling tools that make it easier for remote teams to adequately manage their workloads even if they are spread out over multiple time zones. Shared calendars allow team members from across the globe to view upcoming tasks and events together so no one misses out – ensuring efficient workflow throughout all operations regardless of physical location.

    Additionally, task reminders help keep everyone informed about deadlines and upcoming assignments – further simplifying project management.

    Integrations With Popular Business Tools

    Finally, Outlook integrates with some of the most popular business tools available today, making it easier than ever to collaborate with the tools you already know and love. This includes applications such as:

    With the integration of these tools, users can stay up-to-date with projects and calendar events without having to switch between multiple applications or tabs. As an example, if you have an important meeting today, you can sync your Outlook calendar with Slack so that everyone on your team receives the event invitation in real time.

    Conclusion

    Outlook remains one of the most versatile platforms available today due to its capabilities around facilitating collaboration and communication while still maintaining a high level of security throughout operations. With helpful scheduling tools such as shared calendars and task reminders, those using Outlook can effectively work together regardless of location while staying organized and productive along the way – ultimately resulting in greater efficiency during all stages of any given project.

  • Best Email Marketing Services for Businesses in 2022

    Best Email Marketing Services for Businesses in 2022

    Email marketing is still alive and remains one of the top most effective customer engagement tools for businesses – if you do it right, of course. Email marketing has proven to consistently deliver an overall better ROI as compared to other marketing schemes. Additionally, it is a brilliant means of building your brand community and consistently engaging your customers in a more convenient way.

    However, you need to have the right email marketing infrastructure in place to adequately reach new customers and loyal subscribers and build better relationships that generate more leads and consequently increase sales. These platforms even come with email analytics and optimization features that enable you to improve your email marketing campaigns and increase your conversion rates. Luckily, there are multiple email marketing platforms to choose from. To help you navigate the market, we outline some of the top email marketing platforms for businesses:

    1.    Constant Contact

    Constant Contact is undoubtedly the top email marketing platform for startups and small businesses. It’s also the fastest-growing email marketing provider worldwide, while it remains beginner-friendly and easy to use. Using Constant Contact, you can conveniently manage your contacts, email lists, email templates, marketing calendar, and more. Your account comes with unlimited email access for easy tracking and subsequent reporting. It also has built-in capability for social media sharing, list segmentation, a free image library, integration for Facebook ads, and a powerful Shopify eCommerce integration.

    Constant Contact’s Plus Package comes with additional features such as powerful email automation, online donations, drip campaigns, subject line A/B testing, coupons and surveys, and polls, which will help you broadcast targeted emails to maximize your open rate.

    2.      HubSpot

    HubSpot is also a popular marketing platform with all the necessary tools to accelerate your business growth. Email marketing, however, is just one feature of their CRM plan, which also comes with other tools such as the meeting scheduler, live chat and bots, form builder, and landing page builder. For instance, you could set up your landing page with a simple signup form that will enable you to capture new users’ email addresses in your CRM. However, the real utility of HubSpot email marketing is the CRM’s ability to log your contacts automatically and record all your business interactions to help you create and send deeply personalized emails.

    3.      Moosend

    Moosend is one of the most affordable email marketing platforms for startups and small businesses. Its offering comes with powerful email marketing automation features, email-building tools, landing pages, and more. Using Moosend, you can easily and quickly customize your email newsletter that matches your brand in a few minutes by utilizing their numerous pre-built email templates.

    The good thing about Moosend is that email marketing automation features are available across all plans. They also allow you access to their automation workflow designer, who will help you personalize your newsletter for new subscribers. More importantly, Moosend uses detailed analytics of important email metrics, including email opens, bounces, clicks, custom event tracking, product views, purchases, and even demographics data.

    Endnote

    Despite the common belief that email marketing is dead, it remains a crucial tool for businesses of all types and sizes. This is mainly because it’s a cost-effective means to quickly reach a mass audience and generate leads more efficiently while also sharing crucial market information and trends. Additionally, email marketing software is typically easy to use, enabling you to create customers for life through personalized connections to your client base.

  • Email Syncing: What is it and Why You Need it

    Email Syncing: What is it and Why You Need it

    The world is in an era where technology is changing fast and affecting the way people communicate. The business sector is one of the industries that has been changed by technological advancements. Big amounts of data are generated daily from different sources, such as email communication. 

    To respond better to emails and enhance customer satisfaction, companies must sync their devices across the board. Enterprises use emails across different platforms, and syncing them on the business’s daily functioning improves accessibility and response time. Email syncing avails both current and historical email communications in a company. 

    What does email syncing mean?

    To sync means to back up data from multiple sources or devices and to avail it on multiple devices at the same time. The data can be in various forms, such as calendar events, emails, videos, or photos. When emails are synced, it is availed from different platforms or servers into a single platform. 

    Syncing helps streamline a company’s email processes. The top beneficiary of email syncing is the sales or marketing team because they can manage all incoming and outgoing emails from one place. It helps improve the team’s productivity and boosts sales in a company. 

    The syncing process combines different sets of tools, software, and systems that create a seamless marketing strategy. One of the main tools used in email syncing is the Salesforce plugin for Gmail integration. Revenue Grid automatically updates your Salesforce by capturing all activities from your Gmail inbox. Its auto-capture feature allows your marketing team to collect all information from the meetings, emails, and tasks and update them in the Salesforce records at the same time. 

    Why is email syncing in a company important?

    Email syncing provides an instant update of your inboxes in real-time. Bringing your emails into one place provides the marketing team with multiple benefits. 

    All communication can be viewed from one place

    It is harder to track communication when it is coming from different sources or devices. The sales/marketing team has to keep switching from one device or platform. It takes more time to check all emails and respond to each, which could lead to lost business opportunities. 

    Syncing brings all your communication to one place, making it easier to view different communications from clients. The sales team can easily respond to emails according to priority and customize responses according to customer needs. 

    It is easier to develop detailed email lists

    Building email lists is beneficial to marketing teams in different ways. It makes it easier for them to segment customers and create marketing content unique to each segment. This type of content can be newsletters, marketing videos, and product suggestions. The syncing tool integrates all emails from different channels into one platform. The marketing team saves time by making sure every important piece of information needed is in one place. The team enhances productivity which helps increase sales. 

    Sending automated emails

    Creating different content for each market segment and sending it to individual recipients takes more time. When the email lists are long, some of the customers may fail to receive their emails in time, or they may receive the wrong content. Automating email workflows ensures each recipient gets the right content at the right time. Email automation has several benefits for a company. 

    • The marketing team nurtures leads into customers, which increases sales.
    • Automation doesn’t need human intervention. All that the marketing team needs to do is to create the content and set up the lists according to recipients, time, and day. The system automatically sends the emails to the right recipients when needed. 
    • The marketing team can easily view email engagements. Some of the tools allow the marketing team to view who received emails and the action they took. That way, they can make product suggestions to the customer and increase sales opportunities.
    • Raises brand awareness. Email automation ensures a consistent marketing strategy. The company appears better organized to clients, which increases brand reputation. 

    Better return on investment

    The marketing team must generate a report on the performance of each marketing campaign. Syncing allows the team to see how each campaign performs, and they can use the information to improve marketing strategies for each market segment. Email syncing positively impacts a company’s return on investment. 

  • Mailchimp Was Hacked, Compromising 100+ Customers’ Data

    Mailchimp Was Hacked, Compromising 100+ Customers’ Data

    Mailchimp has admitted being hacked, with more than 100 customers’ data compromised.

    Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform, and was recently acquired by Intuit. The deal was based on Mailchimp rounding out Intuit’s suite of tools and products aimed at small businesses. Unfortunately, it appears Intuit also inherited a security issue.

    According to TechCrunch, Mailchip has revealed it was hacked in late March. Fortunately, the company quickly identified the breach and took action while the perpetrators were still working.

    “We acted swiftly to address the situation by terminating access for the compromised employee accounts and took steps to prevent additional employees from being affected,” Mailchimp CISO Siobhan Smyth said.

    Unfortunately, the hackers were able to download audience data for 102 accounts before Mailchimp personnel were able to lock them out and secure their systems.

    “When we become aware of any unauthorized account access, we notify the account owner and immediately take steps to suspend any further access,” Smyth told TechCrunch. “We also recommend two-factor authentication and other account security measures for our users as added measures to keep accounts and passwords secure.”

  • Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes and You Will Crush It, Says Neil Patel

    Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes and You Will Crush It, Says Neil Patel

    If you avoid these seven online marketing mistakes and you follow these tips you’re going to generate more sales, says popular digital marketing expert Neil Patel. A common theme of Neil’s tips is creating a brand. “Google doesn’t want to rank sites that aren’t brands,” he says. “There’s an issue out there called fake news and that’s why they’re pushing brands over anything else.” Patel says that if you follow these tips you’re going to crush it!”

    Neil Patel, digital marketing expert and founder of Neil Patel Digital, discusses the seven online marketing mistakes in his latest video release:

    Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes

    I’m going to break down seven online marketing mistakes that you need to stop. You’re probably wondering you’re doing all these things but why aren’t you seeing results? Even if you’re doing the right things, if you’re also doing the wrong things at the same time it’s going to hurt you and it’s going avoid you from getting the results that you deserve.

    Mistake 1: Not Collecting Emails

    The first mistake you are making is not collecting emails. It doesn’t matter how good you are with SEO or marketing only a very small percentage of your visitors are ever going to convert into customers. By collecting emails not only can you get people to come back to your site but you can convince them to convert over emails.

    The moment someone gives you their email address think of that as a micro-commitment. They’re much more likely to convert into a customer because they committed, they already gave you something. That’s why you want to collect emails. You can do this through sliders or exit pop-ups. You can do this for free using tools like Hello Bar.

    Mistake 2: Not Collecting Subscribers Through Push Notifications

    The second mistake you’re making is you’re not collecting subscribers through push notifications. There are free tools like Subscribers.com that’ll make it easy. Just add in a JavaScript or a WordPress plug-in and then when people come to your website they will automatically subscribe through the browser. Then anytime you have new content or products or services that you want to sell then you can notify them through Subscribers.

    Mistake 3: Not Building a Brand

    The reason tip number one on collecting emails and tip number two on getting more push notifications subscribers are really important is because you need to build a brand. This gets you into the third mistake. Google doesn’t want to rank sites that aren’t brands. Why is this? There’s an issue out there called fake news and that’s why they’re pushing brands over anything else. It’s not just going to be Facebook and in Google. Eventually, it’s going to be Twitter and LinkedIn and all the sites out there.

    When you get people back to your site seven times you’re much more likely to build a brand. It’s called the Rule of Seven in marketing. So with your site, you want to provide an amazing user experience. When you provide an amazing user experience, create a great product, create a great service, it’ll help you build a great brand over time.

    Mistake 4: Not Interlinking

    The fourth mistake you’re making is not interlinking. You may notice on Google I’m ranking for terms like online marketing on page one. You’re probably wondering how do I do this? A lot of it comes out to interlinking. In my sidebar, I link to my most popular pages of content. When I write blog posts related to online marketing I link back to the online marketing guide that talks about what online marketing is. By having all these links it helps me rank higher.

    Mistake 5: Just Focusing On Text-Based Content

    The fifth mistake I have for you is just focusing on text-based content. The future of digital marketing is moving to video. It doesn’t mean you should stop doing text but it means you should also be doing video. When you do video you’re going to get more traffic because everyone’s lacking it. LinkedIn wants it right now. YouTube wants more of it. Facebook wants it. Instagram even wants it.

    Why is this? They want to crush the television networks. You look at things like the Oscars or traditional movie theaters and they’re not doing as well. You look at traditional TV and they’re going to get crushed. Why? It’s because of Facebook. It’s because of Google. It’s because of Netflix. If you’re there creating that video content you can be part of it and you’re going to get extra traffic. They want as much help as possible to crush these big old-school companies.

    Mistake 6: Sticking To Just a Few Marketing Channels

    The sixth mistake that you’re making is you’re really sticking to just a few marketing channels. Marketing is competitive. People raise venture capital hundreds of millions of dollars just so they can compete in marketing and sales. You need to do more than one or two or three marketing channels. The more you do the better off you’re going to be.

    Mistake 7: Not Asking For the Sale

    The seventh mistake I have for you is not asking for the sale. Whether it’s a lead or whether it’s getting people to buy your product, there’s nothing wrong with asking people to buy from you. If you don’t you’re not going to generate any sales. Everyone’s like I get all this traffic through my online marketing but no one’s converting. Why? Because you’re not asking for a sale.

    Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes and You Will Crush It, Says Neil Patel


  • How To Leverage AI To Optimize Your Email Marketing Strategy

    How To Leverage AI To Optimize Your Email Marketing Strategy

    Email has taken communication to newer heights as it is one of the most widely used methods for digital communication. It is estimated that there will be more than 4.3 billion email users worldwide by 2023.

    Hence, the significance of email marketing is no surprise for your business to influence your target audience. Moreover, utilizing the power of artificial intelligence to optimize your email marketing strategy further enhances the impact on your target audience.

    Businesses that use AI to drive email marketing are likely to grow by US $1.2 trillion annually.

    In fact, 49% of marketers are already implementing automation in their email marketing strategy.

    Artificial intelligence can be used for smart segmentation, optimization of email subject lines, and email automation workflow, which can help you to increase click-through rates and open rates.

    Let’s deep dive into how you can leverage AI to optimize your email marketing strategy.

    1- Write Appealing Subject Lines

    With the help of AI, you can optimize your subject, body copy, and CTA.

    The subject of the email is one of the most crucial parts of the email content. More than 35% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone.

    By integrating artificial intelligence, you can analyze the performance of past emails and determine which subject lines have performed the best in the past. It also assists you by recommending a subject line that can be engaging and interactive. You can also find spam words that can be avoided while writing subject lines.

    2- Optimize Your Body Copy and CTA

    Similarly, the main content of the email can be tailored based on the past behavior of users. AI evaluates the content explored by users on your website and changes the e-newsletter from week to week when the user begins to explore a new category of content. 

    Moreover, provide a unified company-wide email signature to brand every message that you send to your subscriber. Focus on Office 365 email signature management to centrally manage and sync your company email signatures.

    For optimizing CTA, utilizing AI helps you to find the change in user behavior and interest and present the next CTA accordingly.

    For example, a user was not checking the technical document on your website. But gradually started showing interest and became engaged in your technical content. Taking it as a signal, AI prompts to offer a technical whitepaper in the next email CTA. 

    3- Create a Segmented Email List

    You can win customers through data segmentation as it enables you to send targeted emails to the audience. However, manually segmenting your data requires a lot of time and effort.

    Therefore, by AI it is more stress-free and an easy task. Using AI, you can easily segment users based on:

    ●  Demographics, such as age, location, or gender.

    ●  Past purchase behavior of the users.

    ●  Email behavior, such as open or click activities in their mailboxes.

    After evaluation, AI-powered apps come up with a segmented list, allowing you to boost email marketing efforts to the fullest. It also enables you to create real-time and accurate marketing segments based on customer insights drawn from cross-channel activities.

    Moreover, it helps you to segment your subscriber based on their position in the sales funnel. Thus, AI-powered techniques allow you to target users individually for hyper-relevant marketing.

    4- Personalize Your Emails

    Integrating AI in your marketing strategy enables marketers to study the behavior of users and predict the perfect time to send them an email.

    It also helps you to reduce the spillage and reach a definite audience based on their locations, interest, likes, preferences, and search patterns. Using this data, marketers can predict the type of content that their users would like to see. Thus, making it possible to personalize your email.

    In addition, you can use professional and personalized templates that will increase the chances that your subscribers will open and read your mail.

    Utilize AI-powered email marketing tools, such as ConvertKit, Sendinblue, or Moosend, that help you create more personalized emails.

    5- Automate the Workflow

    AI-based data insights enable marketers and strategists to schedule the mail at regular intervals. If you have a wide range of users from multiple time zones, then it is better to set and optimize delivery times as per their time zone.

    AI helps you to figure out the time when your users are actively looking at their emails based on their past behavior. 

    Therefore, with the help of AI, you can optimize the send time and send sales or limited time offers when your subscribers are active and more likely to click on it.

    6- Better Reporting and Actionable Analytics

    Traditional methods of reporting included capturing statistics, such as opens and clicks. However, it can be improved with the help of AI. It enables you to generate data that can be utilized to get better insights and achieve the intended goal.

    Some of the improved techniques that you can use to get detailed insights into user behavior and create better emails are funnels, cohorts, and churn analysis.

    ●  Funnel analysis: It analyzes the actions taken by the users before reaching the desired goal. Funnel analysis helps marketers to determine where they are losing the most users and where they are converting them. With the help of this information, you can implement necessary steps to drive traffic, encourage subscribers to take action or entice them. 

    ●  Cohort analysis: It helps you to find out a group of subscribers that share the same characteristics. For example, some users signed up for emails in February and opened their emails in the following months of March, April, and May. Using this data, you can understand what products, promotions and marketing initiatives attract your subscribers.

    ●  Churn analysis and prediction: It helps you to identify signals that a subscriber is about to unsubscribe you. An example of such a single is subscribers that stopped interacting with your emails. Thus, it enables you to take action in advance to retain your subscribers. 

    Final Thoughts

    Your emails must be distinctive, specific, and target-oriented to stand out of the clutter in the mailbox of your target audience. It is because a common emailer with a repetitive message will not fetch you the desired click-through rate. You can easily achieve that by integrating AI with your email marketing strategy.

    It helps you to provide more customized, targeted, and personalized emails to the subscribers. It is one of the effective strategies to deliver quality and insightful campaigns. It uses a combination of automation and advanced tools to synchronize and create appealing email campaigns. Thus, it is advantageous to incorporate AI technology to witness exceptional growth.

  • How to Develop and Deliver Effective Emails

    How to Develop and Deliver Effective Emails

    With the growth of digitalization, emails are also gearing up for attention in this vast zone. To give businesses a higher edge and compete with other peer’s email marketing is capable of grabbing the attention of your targeted audience. Let’s learn how to deliver effective emails in the tips below.

    While they are the first choice for communicating with your customers, spice your content to make it one of the most effective mediums to reach your prospective customers. There is no secret ingredient to make your emails stand out, but certainly, you’ll need to employ a few tricks to make your emails more captivating.

    Below we are listing some of the practical tips that, as an entrepreneur, you can try to implement in your email marketing and deliver some powerful effective emails to your customers.

    Create Enticing Subject Lines

    To create engaging emails, you need to make sure your subject lines are creative and unique to stand out from the crowd. You need to develop your subject line so the message resonates with the audience and people don’t judge your email content with its cover. This aspect will spark genuine interest in your clients and make them engage in your emails considerably.

    Prepare Useful Content Strategy 

    With the increasing popularity of emails, plan your email content wisely. Keep them illustratively captivating and relate them to the needs and desires of your readers. From adding CTAs to educational resources, connect your email content with the reader in a personal way. This approach, in return, adds value to your business and enables you with potential buyers. Moreover, never talk only about your company or product and cut through the noise by offering engaging content.

    Keep it Personal to the Recipient

    The secret to delivering enticing emails is by targeting the emails in a personalized way. By adding dynamic content specific to your reader, you can greet them with their name and develop a personal connection to the brand. Everything you do as a business needs to lend value, and thus, ensure to provide them something to gain by encouraging them to open your emails.

    Make Them Interesting

    To make your email resonate with your audience, you need to bring in some visually appealing content. Ensure to keep the email layout enjoyable to read with a mixed balance of images and texts. The right flavor can quickly grab your subscriber’s attention. So, enhance the overall design while staying on-brand, creating relevant, high-converting emails, and boost engagement for your email campaigns.

    Make it Easy to Unsubscribe

    To facilitate your emails with maximum growth, allow your emails to have a visible unsubscribe link in your email footer. Don’t keep the link hidden, and ensure to complete the process with two-step clicks. By configuring this facility, you don’t have to force your readers to be in your contact lists and hurt your engagement level. For more tips to ask people to sign in, you can take help from a reputable email agency. Also, check the email marketing agency pricing before you hire them for your customized services.

    Ensure Mobile-Friendly Layout

    If you want to connect to a vast audience and hope to improve your email open rates, create mobile-friendly emails. With an estimated mobile user climbing in numbers every day as a business entrepreneur, you need to create emails that have high open rates on every type of mobile device.

    Get Your Frequency Just Right

    If you are a start-up, then at the beginning, do not bombard your readers with emails. Create a sense of bond and faith between yourselves and send enough emails to stay consistent. By this, you can uphold your brand’s presence and develop that balance of customer engagement. Maintain the frequency of sending your emails just right by understanding the customer’s interactive pattern. Additionally, depending on your industry or campaign objective, you can fluctuate the frequency and allow the open rates to grow.

    Analyze and Improve

    Last and foremost, by sending a variety of emails, analyze the performance of your email. This aspect can enable a high success rate and help you to plan and improve future campaigns. You can even test different emails to determine which styles perform better through A/B testing. Thus, with well-researched and insightful material, you can develop patterns of success for improvement and adjust your overall strategy.

    In Conclusion

    From the above content, you may have an idea of how email marketing campaigns can work by creating effective emails. These tips are necessary to develop your email content on point and ensure that your emails are not termed spam. Thereby the emails are developed and crafted wherein they get opened and acted. By doing this, you can add significant value to your business and adjust your strategy seamlessly. So, use this powerful marketing tool wisely and ensure to drive customer retention and acquisition.

  • Intuit Acquiring Mailchimp for $12 Billion

    Intuit Acquiring Mailchimp for $12 Billion

    Intuit has announced it is acquiring email marketing service Mailchimp for $12 billion.

    Mailchimp is one of the leading platforms for email marketing. The company was founded some 20 years ago, and is used by companies around the world. Intuit sees the acquisition as a way to improve its small and medium-sized business offerings, providing its customers a marketing solution to compliment its other services.

    “We’re focused on powering prosperity around the world for consumers and small businesses. Together, Mailchimp and QuickBooks will help solve small and mid-market businesses’ biggest barriers to growth, getting and retaining customers,” said Sasan Goodarzi, CEO of Intuit. “Expanding our platform to be at the center of small and mid-market business growth helps them overcome their most important financial challenges. Adding Mailchimp furthers our vision to provide an end-to-end customer growth platform to help our customers grow and run their businesses, putting the power of data in their hands to thrive.” 

    Ben Chestnut, co-founder of Mailchimp, echoed those sentiments:

    “Together with Intuit, we’ll deliver an innovative small business growth engine powered by marketing automation, customer relationship management, accounting and compliance, payments and expense, and e-commerce solutions, creating a single source of truth for your business. We’ll also be able to offer more personalized support and onboarding, expand our international footprint, and scale our teams to innovate faster and deliver the solutions you want and need.”

    The deal is worth $12 billion, in stock and cash, and subject to the usual regulatory approval. The deal is expected to close before the end of Intuit’s Q2 2022.

  • How to Reactivate Your Email List

    How to Reactivate Your Email List

    Some novice marketers think it only takes a long list of subscribers to make their email marketing successful. However, experts understand that this list can turn out to be more of a setback than a benefit if it is filled with inactive subscribers who don’t interact with your content.

    The whole point of marketing is to get the attention of your audience. If your emails no longer do that, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

    To solve this issue, you need to start re-engagement campaigns.  71% of marketers believe that these campaigns are an effective way to win back inactive subscribers. However, only 57% use this type of marketing technique.

    So, if you’re among that 57% and still exploring your marketing options, read on to find out the importance of a re-engagement campaign and how you can execute one for your brand.

    Importance of Re-engagement Campaigns

    Email marketers can fix the inactive status of their email subscribers, ignore it or remove those subscribers from the list. Unfortunately, the ones who ignore the inactive status of their subscribers continue sending the same old emails in hopes of different results.

    On the other hand, those who remove these people from the email list lose a significant number of potential customers. Studies reveal that, on average, the value of an inactive subscriber is 32% of an active subscriber.

    The most effective way to deal with inactive subscribers is to win them over with a re-engagement campaign. Unfortunately, even though the first two options seem more straightforward to execute than this and require minimal effort with minimum resources, they will multiply the risk of damage.

    One of the most significant troubles of emailing inactive subscribers is that your open rates get impacted. A drop in open rates of your emails can negatively affect your email reputation, as your internet service providers (ISPs) will note it.

    This ultimately means that ignoring inactive subscribers instead of winning them back can cost you loss of a significant sum of revenue.

    3 Effective Ways To Re-engage Subscribers

    Here are a few ways you can re-engage subscribers.

    Make Your Emails Relevant

    Most businesses usually make the mistake of only sending sales and offering emails to their list. But, unfortunately, these monotonous emails can lose the interest of your subscriber. So, it would help you run an effective email marketing campaign if you made your emails more relevant.

    You can base your emails on current news or points that might interest your subscribers and be relevant to your brand too. Providing them with something new every time will compel them to open your email. If it becomes predictable that you’ll always send them offers, they will stop opening the emails.

    So if you want to hold the attention of your subscribers, come up with eye-catching content. For example, if you are creating a Shopify newsletter, find the right layout and use striking visuals to grab your readers’ attention and ultimately direct them to your Shopify store.

    Moreover, the click-to-open rate has dropped to 18%. This could be attributed to the fact that Americans receive 121 marketing emails per day, making it very unlikely for them to open all of them. Only the ones that manage to win the attention of the user will survive. So, make your email worth opening.

    Rebuild the Relationship

    The broken relationship between your brand and your subscribers needs to be mended. There are many ways you can do that. Running a campaign that references the lack of engagement of your subscriber can be a great idea. State it as the purpose of your campaign, something like, “(brand’s name) Misses You!”

    This campaign will make your subscribers feel noticed and appreciated. Moreover, its transparency provides them all the reasons to engage with it.

    Send Personalized Emails

    It is crucial to make your subscribers feel important. One way to do that is by sending personalized emails. When they recognize the effort, you seek their attention. They will most likely want to open and respond too.

    For example, you can sort the purchase history of your subscriber, their web behaviors, or product usage. Then use this information to provide recommendations regarding similar products or birthday/anniversary discounts through your marketing campaign.

    This re-engagement campaign will shoot your click-to-open rates, making your email marketing successful.

    In Conclusion

    Spending massive sums on your marketing campaigns that don’t bear results can be a disappointment. Unfortunately, inactive subscribers can be a primary reason for the campaign’s failure. To eliminate this liability, you need to try some new and novel tactics to win them back. Make it your ultimate priority, and you’ll start receiving engagement from them in no time.

  • Keep Company Emails Safe from Phishing Attacks

    Keep Company Emails Safe from Phishing Attacks

    Email services are central to modern communication.  Ironically, 85% of emails today aren’t meant to foster communication at all.  Spam is rampant in inboxes all over the world.  While some spam is merely annoying, spam can also include real danger.  Phishing emails exist to steal personal information, and at least 3 billion phishing emails are sent every day.  While phishing emails can wear a variety of disguises, the intent is always the same: to snatch recipient’s information and use it against them.  Many phishing schemes are but the first step in a complicated cyber attack.

    By 2025, phishing attacks will cost the globe $10.5 trillion every year, according to Cybersecurity Ventures.  Cybercrime will be the 3rd largest global economy.  A criminal industry that large can choose anyone as its target, even large companies.  A recent ransomware cyber attack against Colonial Pipeline caused a nationwide gas panic in the United States.  Shipping company FedEx failed to protect consumer information in the wake of a ransomware attack against their company computers.  No one can afford to think cybercrime won’t reach their servers.

    If the largest corporations on the market can’t avoid cyberattacks, what hope do small businesses have?  Successful phishing schemes can be fatal to small companies.  It takes 2 to 6 weeks for small businesses to recover from ransomware.  Many cannot serve customers during that time.  Furthermore, customers must be notified of any data breach affecting them.  It’s understandable customers may choose not to continue shopping at a company incapable of keeping their information safe.  Between lost operating time and customer attrition, over 60% of small businesses close permanently in the 6 months following a phishing attack.

    So what can companies do to defend themselves?  The first step is to train their employees to spot phishing emails.  While regular training is not infallible, 85% of scams rely on human error to succeed.  A suspicious link not clicked is a crisis averted.  Next, companies should verify all invoices and payments.  Many attacks exist to harvest credentials, which leads to invoice fraud.  If a business can spot invoice fraud early, they can keep the crisis from growing severe.  Finally, a combination of human vigilance and email security programs should exist in every company.  43% of small businesses lack a cybersecurity plan at their own peril.  While humans alone can’t catch 100% of security discrepancies, 25% of phishing emails bypass default security.  Yet as cybercrimes grow more advanced, so too do the programs that fight against it.

    The best line of defense against phishing keeps dangerous emails out of human inboxes to begin with.  Advanced AI can stop 50% more attacks than regular security.  Some AI programs deploy inside the cloud and configure as an app would to fight phishing on all fronts.  Thanks to integration with other tools, AI email defense is a full scale operation designed to protect end users.  The best email security programs can keep the ratio of malicious emails as low as 5 to 100,000.  Effective phishing attacks defense begins with you.


    How Safe Are Your Emails From Phishing Attacks? [infographic]
    Courtesy of Avanan


  • Kroger CEO: Customers That Engage Digitally Spend Twice As Much

    Kroger CEO: Customers That Engage Digitally Spend Twice As Much

    “Customers that engage with us from a digital standpoint also continue to enjoy coming into the store,” says Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen. “They also spend about twice as much with us. When you look at those things together I really feel optimistic about the future. We’re continuing to make progress on the things that matter on a seamless experience… digital, fresh, and friendly.”

    Rodney McMullen, CEO of Kroger, says that customers who engage digitally come in more often and spend twice as much on average as non-digital customers:

    Seamless Experience of Digital, Fresh, and Friendly

    Every day our associates are taking care of our customers. We’re continuing to make progress on the things that matter on a seamless experience… digital, fresh, and friendly. When you look at the things behind the numbers continuing strong trends. If you look at the things that we’re doing it sets us up well for the fourth quarter and sets us to continue to gain share in 2021 as well.

    One of the things that our customers are telling us is they’ve learned how to cook, they enjoy cooking, and they enjoy the time together as a family. Also, I think the economy continually will continue to be a little bit soft which will cause people to eat at home more as well. Both of those things will continue to provide support (for increased sales).

    Customers That Engage Digitally Spend Twice As Much

    Obviously, we’re anxious for the vaccine to get here and to get widespread use of it just like everyone else is. We were making great progress in gaining share even before COVID 19 started and we expect once things get back to normal we’ll be able to continue to gain share as well. We can’t wait until a vaccine gets out there and it gets widespread usage.

    I really believe our teams will continue to take care of our customers and the seamless experience will tie it all together. What we find are customers that engage with us from a digital standpoint also continue to enjoy coming into the store. They also spend about twice as much with us. When you look at those things together I really feel optimistic about the future.

    Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen: Customers That Engage Digitally Spend Twice As Much
  • Tips For Optimizing Your Email Marketing Strategies

    Tips For Optimizing Your Email Marketing Strategies

    Only 2.62% of recipients click links for “more information” in marketing emails; however, we will send a collective of 361 billion emails per day by 2024. More along, 90% of marketing professionals say email engagement is the number one metric that can help them measure content performance. Similarly, 87% of marketing professionals say email is one of their top free, and organic, channels for content distribution, and 81% say email newsletters are their most used form of content marketing. 

    Email newsletters can lend a great deal of help in client retention, communication, and revenue-building. Many newsletters provide readers with coupons, exclusive offers and products, as well as membership perks and discounts. As a result, experts have found shoppers to spend nearly 137% more with a business after receiving email offers. To the benefit of the brand, a $45 return is seen for every $1 spent on email marketing.

    In other words, the key to successful email marketing is getting your content seen and engaged with without getting flagged as spam. Luckily, this is achievable in various ways.

    One of the easiest things you can do to raise your email open rates is to replace any irrelevant text or uninteresting subject lines. When crafting an email, be personal. Feel free to use the recipient’s name or location as a conversation-builder. Continuing on, be brief. As a general rule of thumb, keep email subject lines under 10 words – and/or 60 characters. However, remember to keep your subject line friendly, as this personable method also increases email open rates. With this, be sure to use no more than 3 punctuation marks and 1 emoji.

    Of course, there are many methods to messaging targeted recipients. A/B comparison methods can assist as they allow for testing across various subject lines. With its results, you can learn which outreach variant your customers prefer.

    You can also categorize your contacts into interest groups and geolocation to ensure content is relevant to all receivers. Geolocations can be as specific as time zones or regions.

    On the other hand, you can increase your click-through rates using hacks just as easy. For example, change your hyperlink’s text, and avoid using “click here.” Remember: not many email recipients click for more. Instead, take the opportunity to embed multiple links to the same content, and create descriptive and concise link text when doing so. You can also use A/B style testing here to test out content blocks.

    When conducting outreach, one of the most important keys to remember is not getting marked as spam. Recipients rarely flag marketing emails as spam; but when they do, it’s because they’ve grown stale of the marketer’s content, their contact information has been purchased, they have been contacted without permission, or something else along these lines.

    As a human courtesy, ask customers to opt-in to receiving your emails before auto-blasting them with content. In fact, take the time to explain the benefits such as coupons or other exclusive offers when asking them to op-tin. Regardless of what you, never purchase email addresses. Similarly, never hide the unsubscribe link from your emails. It’s always important to keep emails and campaigns professional – so stick to any email frequency expectations you have set for your team.

    Overall, all marketers want consumers to engage with their content. The best way in doing so may be through email marketing. Do you know the best tactics for engaging with the public?

  • COVID-19 Continues to Reshape Advertising

    COVID-19 Continues to Reshape Advertising

    The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released a report demonstrating how much COVID-19 has impacted advertising.

    As the coronavirus pandemic began impacting businesses, advertising was one of the areas hardest hit. The IAB conducted a survey of 242 companies to see how the pandemic has changed advertising, and how it will continue to do so going into 2021.

    In a bit of good news for the industry, the IAB projects that digital advertising will see an overall increase of 6% in 2020, compared to 2019. That’s where the good news ends, however, as overall advertising across all mediums is expected to drop by 8%. Traditional media advertising is to blame for the drop, experiencing as much as a 30% decline.

    Looking ahead to 2021, as much as 70% of businesses have ballpark estimates of their budget at best, are not clear or have no idea how much they plan to spend. Those buyers that do have some idea of their 2021 budget, plan to spend 5.3% more than in 2020.

    While the pandemic continues to take an obvious toll, one thing is clear: digital advertising is coming into its own as a result.

  • How Amperity Uses Machine Learning To Unlock Data and Supercharge Marketing

    How Amperity Uses Machine Learning To Unlock Data and Supercharge Marketing

    “Nobody was using machine learning to point at the underlying consumer data to help make sense of it and bring it together,” says Matthew Biboud-Lubeck of Amperity. “We put together cloud computing that was scalable with better economics alongside a machine learning algorithm that we were pointing at the data to help make sense of it. We realized that what we had was a pretty scalable solution to help brands get to that nirvana of a single view of the customer.”

    Matthew Biboud-Lubeck, VP of Strategic Services at Amperity, discusses how their platform helps brands create a complete view of their customers in an interview on the B2B Growth podcast:

    Helping Brands Create a Single View of Their Customers

    We are a CDP (customer data platform) based in Seattle that is helping brands create a single view of their customers and to unlock personalized experiences from that data. If you look back to the founding of Amperity about three years ago our founders were canvassing the marketplace. What you saw was a marketplace using a lot of buzzwords but having a lot of trouble executing them. You heard about personalization, customer 360, and a 360 view of the customer. Marketers across major consumer brands were super frustrated.

    They spent a fortune trying to cobble some view of their customer. They invested in technology to help them send better emails, to make their media more targeted, and to unveil better analytics. All of those tools that they have invested in talked about the notion of a single view of the customer because they fundamentally needed that to operate. The reality was that nobody was getting to the solution. We came in to say maybe there is a better way.

    Machine Learning Helps Brands Get To Nirvana

    There were two things that changed in the marketplace that we capitalized on. First of all, it was that cloud computing got a lot cheaper. It used to be that if you were a big brand and got hundreds of millions of customer interactions, it’s just a lot of data. Part of the reason that no one was able to create an easy solution to putting that all together was because it was cost prohibitive.

    The second really interesting evolution in the market is that machine learning has become much more mature. What we found was that everyone in the marketplace was using machine learning to make that last mile to the marketer a little bit better. It was used to decide which products to show a customer or to decide which offer to show a customer or to create a customer care solution that’s automated. You go online and type toward a solution and some bot talks back to you. Nobody was using machine learning to point at the underlying consumer data to help make sense of it and bring it together.

    We put together cloud computing that was scalable with better economics alongside a machine learning algorithm that we were pointing at the data to help make sense of it. We realized that what we had was a pretty scalable solution to help brands get to that nirvana of a single view of the customer. That’s how we were born. What’s interesting is that the customer data platform space is a little bit confusing. You have a lot of companies that started as something else that rebranded as a CDP. We were purpose-built from the ground up as a customer data platform designed to bring all of a brands data, reconcile that data to create a notion of identity on it and then to unleash that data back to the brand anywhere that they want to use that data.

    >>> Listen to the full B2B Growth podcast here.

  • New AI-Powered Email Capabilities Released Into Salesforce Marketing Cloud

    New AI-Powered Email Capabilities Released Into Salesforce Marketing Cloud

    “We’re making email marketing even smarter with a set of new AI capabilities getting released into Salesforce Marketing Cloud,” says Salesforce VP Armita Peymandoust. “One of them is Einstein Engagement Frequency. The other one is Einstein Send Time Optimization. We also have Einstein Content Tagging out and available today to our customers. Email is definitely not dead. Even the Millennials say that.”

    Armita Peymandoust, VP Product Management, Analytics, and Einstein at Salesforce, discusses new AI-powered email features for Marketing Cloud announced by Salesforce at Connections 19:

    AI-Powered Email Capabilities Released Into Salesforce Marketing Cloud

    As we know email is still a really important channel. Over 64 percent of customers are still saying that they prefer email channels to all the others. What we’re doing is we’re making email marketing even smarter with a set of new AI capabilities getting released into Salesforce Marketing Cloud. One of them is Einstein Engagement Frequency. The other one is Einstein Send Time Optimization. We also have Einstein Content Tagging out and available today to our customers. Email is definitely not dead. Even the Millennials say that.

    Einstein Engagement Frequency

    With Einstein Engagement Frequency we’re trying to tell the marketer what’s the sweet range that they should keep on engaging with their customers. As marketers, we want to keep on engaging with our customers but we just don’t want to get to a point that we’re potentially annoying them. So we are telling them that this is the range that you should stay in.

    Einstein Send Time Optimization

    Now that the marketer knows what the frequency of engagement should be, with Einstein Send Time Optimization we’re also telling them what is the right time to send those messages. It’s really easy with a drag and drop of an activity into Journey Builder we make every message go out at the right time for the customers.

    Einstein Content Tagging

    Then with Einstein Content Tagging, we’re basically bringing image recognition the same set of AI capabilities that you’re familiar with for your customer based or consumer based products. This is where you upload photos and then they automatically get tagged. We are bringing that same technology to the hand of the marketer. Every image that’s getting uploaded into Content Builder gets automatically tagged so they can find it later and use it when they’re building their messages.

    Transactional Messaging

    We’re also releasing Transactional API’s for Emails and SMS. There are different types of emails out there. There’s the commercial one and there’s the transactional one. It allows the marketer to bring both of those two in an inter-marketing cloud and take advantage of Marketing Cloud to send those emails to have the same voice, the same brand voice, and also be able to see how those are performing all in one place.

    Indiana Pacers Improved Customer Engagements By 20 Percent

    These features are all relatively new. So we have pilot customers that have been taking advantage of them. We have one retailer that talked about Einstein Engagement Frequency. They had a hunch that they were over messaging customers but they couldn’t really put their finger on it. With Einstein Engagement Frequency we could show them visually exactly where they’re over engaging with their customers and let them take action on it. The platform automatically created lists so that they would not send messages to the ones that are getting too many email messages.

    We’ve had a set of AI features in Marketing Cloud, specifically Einstein Engagement Scores, was one that the NBA’s Indiana Pacers is taking advantage of, to increase the engagement rate that they’re having with their fans. They got a 20 percent increase in engagements with their fans using that.

    Customer Engagement Getting Even More Granular

    We have a jam-packed roadmap for the next of the rest of the year as well. One of the things that I’m really excited about is Content Selection that’s coming out. Content Selection lets each of those messages that we’re creating be dynamically optimized for every customer that’s receiving them. Think of your email as a template that has different aspects or different selections in it that gets automatically replaced with what your customer cares about most and also what they have engaged with most and historically. It’s very engaging for every one of your customers.

    The other one that I’m interested in (that is coming later) is bringing natural language processing to understanding your subject lines. What types of subject lines are resonating? Why is it that they’re resonating with your customers? It will give you an insight on them first and then also give you recommendations on how to improve your subject lines.

    https://youtu.be/oaH_OrquEcE
    New AI-Powered Email Capabilities Released Into Salesforce Marketing Cloud
  • Yesware Founder: Have Sales Conversations that are ‘Authentic at Scale’

    Yesware Founder: Have Sales Conversations that are ‘Authentic at Scale’

    Yesware Founder Matthew Bellows says that it’s important that the relationship between the salesperson and the prospect is authentic, genuine, and honest. That’s why Bellows advocates a sales prospecting concept he calls ‘Authentic at Scale’ which uses Yesware technology to have genuine authentic communications with customers and prospects.

    Matthew Bellows, Founder & Chairman Of The Board at Yesware, recently talked at Web Summit about salespeople being ‘Authentic at Scale’  and how Yesware can help companies and their sales teams more effectively drive lead generation:

    Important for Salespeople to be Authentic

    There’s not only just the business model which is changing the relationship between the salesperson and the prospect but also the fact that information is freely available, that your reputation sticks with you much longer now, and all pushes towards more power to the customer. Therefore, it is more important for a salesperson to be authentic and genuine and honest and a long-term partner for success as opposed to a transactional sort of guy.

    Whether we’re working with a brand new startup who’s just implementing Yesware for there one or two or three person sales team or the CRO of a publicly held company like Twitter or Yelp, salespeople are always changing stuff. They’re always trying to find out a new angle, they’re always moving territories, always changing a training program or changing their comp structure.

    For those of you who have read all the blog post about how you just got to get a repeatable scalable model then pour money on top of it, that is not true. You need to actually continue to iterate and make up stuff and try different experiments with your sales program. That’s the kind of thing that our software tries to enable, basically getting the data from your activities and seeing what works and doing more of that.

    Authentic at Scale is What We Advocate For

    For those of you who are just starting your businesses and getting going, you are faced with a dilemma which is I want to grow really fast. One approach to that is what we call spray-and-pray. Buy a big list, blast out a ton of emails, and hopefully some people respond. If they don’t keep blasting them out. That is a short-term successful strategy with a medium-term disaster. It burns your brand. As a sales person who’s in that organization you’re ruining your reputation potentially for the rest of your life, and obviously in Europe it’s illegal.

    What we advocate for our customers is something we call authentic at scale. Use technology to have genuine authentic communications with customers and prospects in a way that shows that you’re actually paying attention to who they are. You’re recognizing what they need and what they’re interested in and what you can offer or not. But do it at a scale that actually helps you build a business. That’s the binary choice that I think most startups are faced with. You can go either way but authentic at scale is what we advocate for.

    When Building Your Team Incrementally Hire

    In the very early stages, one one of the mistakes I made early very early on was when I got the board approval to hire our first sales team. I was the first sales person for Yesware and then I hired this kid straight out of college who blew up and was amazing. He closed Box on his own and it was sort of like, oh this is great, this is ready to go. I went out and hired eight other sales reps and it was way too many.

    So the big thing I I coach people who are just building their team for the first time is really go two by two by two by two and incrementally hire. Even though you never know if it is the market or the person, at least with that sort of slower incremental sales build you get more feedback and have more time to correct as opposed to going in and hiring a big team all at once.

    We Make Software that Helps Salespeople Make Money

    Yesware is software for sales people. We help sales people communicate better with customers and prospects and we’ve been doing this for about eight years. I started as a SaaS business and still are.

    In the early days, there was very little competition for what we were doing. We were getting a lot of inbound interest from companies that just heard about Yesware. They were like, I gotta try this thing. There was a lot of good word of mouth from the very early adopter kind of companies. Now the market is more mature. We’ve probably crossed the chasm in terms of technology adoption curve and we’re into the early majority and those companies think about things differently and they have a different buying process.

    At the end of the day what it turns out to be is if the end users like your product and if we’re helping the salespeople make more money then we’ve got a business. So my first business plan for Yesware as I explained to our early stage investors was we make software that helps salespeople make more money and they’ll give us some of it and that is sort of still what we’re doing.

    It’s Hard to Know What Makes a Good Lead

    For folks out there who are reading blog posts and just getting your company started it’s harder than it looks. When you read the thing about Arg or whatever, it’s hard to know what makes a good lead. You have to keep revising it. We just did a big data science project to try to figure out of the 2,000 leads that closed in the last 18 months, which were good leads? We had a data scientist work on this problem for three months to figure it out because it’s not obvious what a good lead is actually. You’re going to be frustrated but know that everyone else is frustrated with you.

    I think the most important thing is just to get your motivations right. Be clear about why you’re doing this because it’s a long slog and the clearer you can be about why you’re doing this project the more effective you can be when you’re talking to other people about why they should do it too.

  • How Non-Amazon Retailers “Leaned Into” Prime Day To Increase Sales

    How Non-Amazon Retailers “Leaned Into” Prime Day To Increase Sales

    “Retailers and brands took advantage of the buzz, the demand, the awareness, that Amazon has created and really rode that wave for great growth,” says Rob Garf, VP of Industry Strategy and Insights for Salesforce. “Retailers didn’t just ignore Prime Day, but they leaned into it. They really recognized this manufactured holiday, recognized the demand that was being created, and really took advantage of the consumers and their willingness to look for a good deal.”

    Rob Garf, VP Industry Strategy and Insights for Salesforce, discusses how retailers “leaned into” Amazon Prime Day, taking advantage of the buzz and overall consumer interest, to initiate their own Prime marketing. Rob was interviewed by Owen Milbury, Senior Manager, Analyst Relations for Salesforce:

    Retailers Didn’t Just Ignore Prime Day, They Leaned Into It

    What we saw is that this manufactured holiday, Hallmark has to be proud, really rose all ships if you well. The tide has risen where we saw 37 percent year over year growth for global retailers other than Amazon. What’s really interesting is that it just didn’t take place over those two days, but rather the entire month of July. We saw July having a ten percent higher growth rate than any typical month. Retailers and brands took advantage of the buzz, the demand, the awareness, that Amazon has created and really rode that wave for great growth. 

    Retailers didn’t just ignore Prime Day, but they leaned into it. What we found was that emails were at a heavy double-digit increase week over week. The other really interesting thing is our team stepped back and we actually looked at the Internet Retailer 500. We subscribed to all of their email lists and we went to their homepages over the last week. What we found was 51 percent of the IR 500, more than half, did some sort of promotion either on their home page or through email. 

    They just didn’t ignore it, they leaned into it. We found that 17 percent of the IR 500 mentioned either Prime Day or Black Friday in July as part of those promotions. They really recognized this manufactured holiday, recognized the demand that was being created, and really took advantage of the consumers and their willingness to look for a good deal. 

    We Saw Two Breakouts, Apparel, and Footwear

    Consumer electronics was certainly big. But we also saw two breakouts, apparel, and footwear. That’s really important because Amazon is leaning into their own private label. So these brands need to think how to differentiate. They didn’t just go to market and give deals. They also promoted limited edition products, special assortments, customizable merchandise, and even looking for subscriptions to be able not only to attract but to retain them over time. 

    The other one was consumer product goods. What was interesting about that was typically what you find in a grocery store they use the retailer as the intermediary, they’re looking generally to leapfrog these retailers. According to Salesforce research, 99 percent have some sort of active direct to consumer (D2C) type of initiative underway. That was no different this Amazon Prime Day. They were taking advantage of the buzz and really looking for ways to engage the consumer directly.

    49 Percent of Orders For Non-Amazon Retailers Were On Mobile

    When you think about the time of the year, most of Europe was on holiday, most of the US was taking time off as well, they’re not tethered to their computer. They don’t have the luxury of sitting down and searching that way. That showed in our data. In fact, 49 percent of orders for all non-Amazon retailers were done on a mobile device. This just speaks to the fact we’re on the go, the phone is the remote control of our daily lives. 

    We’re using it to break through the friction that usually exists between inspiration—I like something and I want to buy it—and then actually purchasing. Just for a point of context, that was a 20 percent increase year over year. It’s become a bellwether for shopping not only during the rest of the year but in particular on Prime Day.

    Retailers Saw Prime Day As a Test Run For Holidays

    Retailers are seeing this as really the test run for the holidays. They’re looking at their mobile strategy. How are they going to breakdown their friction? They want to make sure that they have mobile wallets so that they can really get through the checkout process. They are incorporating artificial intelligence so not forcing the consumer to swipe five times down the phone to find if you like this you might like this. Instead, putting it right above the fold. 

    They are also looking for fulfillment as well. As you are thinking through towards Cyber Week and the overall holiday season, and with it being five or six days shorter between Thanksgiving and Christmas, how are we going to use the store as a fulfillment center? You really bump up against that shipping deadline and need to also be able to fulfill that for several days after. Retailers are really cutting their teeth. They’re really bearing down. They’re looking at Prime Day as a way to get ready and gear up and go full force to back to school, Halloween, and through the holiday season.

    https://youtu.be/JHm8PZ2z1xU
    How Non-Amazon Retailers “Leaned Into” Prime Day To Increase Sales – Salesforce Execs Explain
  • Neil Patel’s Content Marketing Strategies for 2019

    Neil Patel’s Content Marketing Strategies for 2019

    In 2019, you need to think differently about your content marketing strategies. Google has so much content on the same topics that it’s difficult for average content to rank. You need to constantly create new fresh content that is unique. More importantly, according to Neil Patel, you need to aggressively promote your content. He says you should use the 80/20 rule, 20 percent of the time writing, 80 percent promoting.

    Neil Patel, one of the original internet marketing influencers, released a new video (below) that offers tips on how to successfully do content marketing in 2019:

    Content Marketing Strategies for 2019

    In 2019 content won’t rank as well as it used to. Yes, they say content is king, but we already know there are over a billion blogs. Google isn’t just picking from, hey what content do we want to rank because we lack content. They’re like, we have content on everything under the sun and the same thing a hundred other times. So now they’re just not picking what content do we want to rank. They’re looking at authority and user metrics and their even looking at when the content was created.

    Tip 1 – Create New Fresh Content

    Why would they want to rank content that’s two years old when they can rank something that’s less than one week old? When it comes to content marketing in 2019 you need to make sure that your content is also being up-to-date. If you don’t update your old content you’re not going to get as much love as people who are continuing to put out new fresh content.

    Tip 2 – Don’t Regurgitate the Same Information

    The second tip I have for you is don’t regurgitate the same information over and over again. People are tired of reading 12 SEO Tips That Will Double Your Traffic. You can Google it. There are probably different variations of that number but there are probably hundreds of articles on that subject. Write something new and fresh that hasn’t been seen before and you’re more likely to get traffic rankings and even social shares.

    Tip 3 – Create Video and Audio Content

    I know you’re not gonna like this third tip, but the third tip is to create video and audio based content. Text is overrated. It doesn’t help you connect with people as much as video. I still love text and I still crank out text, but the future is video. It’s much more personal and people get to know your personality and your company better. Create video-based content, upload it to YouTube, LinkedIn, and you can even do Twitter and Instagram if it’s short enough, and of course Facebook.

    Don’t share the same video over and over again like sharing your YouTube video on Facebook. You’ve got to take that video all over again and re-upload it into Facebook. With LinkedIn, for example, you have got to re-upload the video all over again versus sharing the link to that Facebook video or that YouTube video.

    With audio, you want to create a podcast. It’s easy. You can just bust out your phone, create an audio file, upload it to iTunes or Libsyn, and you’re off into the races. Same with video. You don’t actually have to go into a studio like I am and shoot all these fancy videos and pay money. You can just bust out your phone. I would even say most of the times from all the tests we’ve run that the videos that you end up running on your iPhone convert better if you’re selling a product or service. There’s nothing wrong with doing that. Just look at Tai Lopez. He’s known for just busting out his phone and recording videos and it does very well for him.

    Tip 4 – Spend More Time Promoting than Creating

    The fourth tip I have for you is promoting your content. In 2019, you’ve got to spend more time promoting than writing. Again, I can’t emphasize this enough. There’s too much content on the web. It doesn’t matter how good of a content piece you write it’s not going to be seen unless you promote it. so spend more time promoting than writing. Use the 80/20 rule, 20 percent of the time writing, 80 percent promoting.

    One way to promote content is to email all the people who link to your competitors content and ask them for a link. You can use tools like BuzzSumo. Just type in a keyword related to your space and see all the other popular articles within your space. You then take that and put that URL into Ahrefs. It shows you all the people who link to that URL. Then you hit up all those people who link to it contact them asking for a link also.

    Tip 5 – Get Social Shares

    You also need to get social shares. Getting backlinks isn’t enough. Facebook, Twitter, all these social sites drive a lot of traffic. You then want to go to BuzzSumo and click on the view shares button and it will show you every single person who shared those articles. That simple thing will help you get more social traffic.

    You Can’t Just Do the Old Stuff That Worked Before

    In 2019, if you don’t leverage these tactics you’re not going to do well. A lot of people have the old mentality of, hey, I’m just going to keep creating new content and just crank out ten posts a day. If you do that you’re probably going to regurgitate content and you’re not going to get rankings. Google already has more authoritative sites to choose from. You can’t just do the old stuff that worked in 2018 and 2017. You have to leverage these tactics.

    Even the video stuff I described, I know a lot of you’re like, I don’t want to create video it’s too much work. But you know what, with YouTube SEO I get over a hundred thousand visitors a month just from YouTube SEO. It’s amazing. It’s a channel you have to leverage. Best of all, unlike Google SEO, with YouTube SEO you can get results in less than a week. I kid you not. I created a video on SEO and I started ranking for the term SEO on YouTube in less than one week.

    Neil Patel’s Content Marketing Strategies for 2019


  • How to Offer Free Tools to Drive Email Collection and Leads

    How to Offer Free Tools to Drive Email Collection and Leads

    You can try a lot of stuff, but what used to work to collect emails doesn’t work as well now, says internet marketing experts Neil Patel & Eric Siu on their Marketing School podcast. What does work effectively they say are free tools. Entrepreneurs can even buy cheap scripts or full websites with these tools and rebrand them to drive email collection and leads.

    Neil Patel & Eric Siu, discussed the tactics they use to drive email collection on their Marketing School podcast (listen below):

    High-End Popup Software

    Let’s start with popup software. There are a lot of different email popup software tools out there. There is Bounce Exchange which charges thousands of dollars, and possibly as much as $10,000 a month. It’s a done-for-you service. The benefit is that they do all of the optimization and conversion stuff for you. (Neil Patel at one time used them successfully.)

    There is something else similar to Balance Exchange. It’s also a very done-for-you service, which means they will find out what your offers are and they will design the popups for you and they will manage it based on your desired conversion rate. This business is called Exit Intelligence. It’s somewhat more cost-effective at around $1,500 – $3,000 a month. It’s something that we are experimenting with right now.

    Email Collection Tools Don’t Work Like They Used To

    You can try a lot of stuff, but what used to work to collect emails doesn’t work as well now. You will find that exit popups don’t work as well as they used to. They still work, but just not as well. Content upgrades don’t work as well as they used to. Blocking out content and requiring a name and email to read it works well. I used to even block it out and make you share the content which worked well too.

    I found quizzes to work really well because you can collect leads at the same time. LeadQuizzes is another solution that you can use. In general, if you want to collect emails you have to figure out a better mousetrap. I don’t know what the better mousetrap is because it is going to vary by business. What I mean by that is that exit popups, content upgrades, quizzes, none of them work as well as they used to. You have to truly find something that is unique.

    Offer Free Tools to Effectively Collect Emails

    My version of it now is going to be to create a free tool and give it to people who have to register with their email address. That’s how you are going to effectively collect emails in 2019. It’s going to have to be something like a calculator or tool, something that is added value to people that are used to paying for it and who will gladly give you their email address.

    You don’t necessarily need to build a tool either. There is a site called 1Kprojects where you can actually buy tools. Developers make a lot of tools and end up throwing them away. Instead, they post them on this site to sell cheaply. You can also just buy scripts even cheaper, sometimes as low as $10 – $20. For whatever industry you are in you can literally buy a script or pre-made tool that you can leverage for email collection. It’s not hard to build a WordPress plugin either. It can be a basic tool.

    How Frank Kern is Driving Revenue From YouTube

    You know Frank Kern, the marketer. He’s all about the email before (content access). I’m actually observing what he is doing on YouTube where he’s going live every single day and he drives people to KernClass.com and people opt-in there. What happens is he not only collects the email addresses but he is actually driving revenue from those live videos too. He’s going live everyday and in a 30 day period he did over $350K.