Tag Archives: digital marketing

Segment your Email List for More Conversions

Segment your Email List for More Conversions Have you heard, the money is in the list? The email list, in this case.

Did you know you may be leaving money on the table if you mail the same message to your entire list? Send the most relevant messages to their inboxes, not just any message. This in an efficient and scalable solution with segmentation.

What is Email Segmentation?

Email segmentation divides your email list based on custom factors. You can split up your list with some of the most common methods being by geographic location, age, income and job title.

The specific factors you choose depends on your type of business. Add a behavioral tag to categorize a user. Have they ordered from your store recently, did they buy something last year, or are they a new purchaser? Nurture each list segment with the offers and content that they need to increase your conversion rate and lifetime value of the customer.

If you provide services, look at where the subscriber is in your marketing funnel, any actions they’ve taken on your website and whether they’ve been in contact with your team.

The sky’s the limit on the segmentation you choose for your subscriber. So there’s no reason to take one-size fits all approach to your list.

How to Segment Your List

Most email marketing and marketing automation services allow you to sort readers into different groups based on the information they provide. You can automatically do this by sorting users on the subscription form.

For example, if you offer several products segment your list by the product purchased. Progressive profiling allows you to capture more information every time a person goes through one of your forms. You might ask for an email and name on the first interaction. Then expand to their company size, income and questions about their pain points in the next.

The second way to segment is by links clicked.  Start with a general list. Send out an email with 3 key, unique links to different areas of service your company offers. You can segment your audiences by those who clicked service link 1, the second list for service link 2 that was clicked, and the same for the service link 3.  Furthermore, you ow have three lists with people who were interested enough to click a specific area.  You can then send each follow-up emails specifically related to the area of service they clicked on in the first email! That’s segmentation.

Get the most out of your email list by providing a custom experience that’s valuable to your readers. You’ll see more leads, conversions, and revenue for your efforts.

How to Capture the Elusive Lead – Part 3 Capture

How to Capture the Elusive Lead - Part 3 Capture
You’ve attracted new prospects and engaged with them several different ways. Now it’s time to seal the deal and capture the elusive lead. You can accomplish this with lead magnets that give your leads something of value in exchange for their email addresses and other information. Here are a few options for lead magnets to implement for your lead generation campaigns.

Ebooks

An ebook is a long-form piece of content that positions you as the authority on a particular topic or market segment. The information given to your visitors should solve one of their pain points immediately. That way they’re likely to give you their email address in exchange for the offer. One way to create an ebook is to rework a series of 4-5 blog posts into one cohesive “mini-digital book”.  This can work well for business-to-business, and business-to-consumer.

Coupons

People love discounts and couponing, so this is an easy way for to get immediate value in exchange for their email address. Offer free shipping, a set percentage off their purchase or a buy one, get one type of promotion.   This is, of course, a great option for business to consumer-focused sites.

Email Courses

Need to get a lot of information across in a structured manner? An email course delivers lessons over a set time period, “dripping” the information into the visitor’s inbox. You have the advantage of increasing your touchpoints with your lead while giving them valuable information.

In-depth Tutorials

Answer the pressing questions that your audience has or simply make their lives easier with an informative tutorial. Tackle anything related to your product or industry, but be strategic. Create a foundation and educating future buyers with the info they need to make a purchase decision at the end of the funnel.

Buyer’s Guide

A buyer’s guide is another lead magnet that revolves around educating potential customers on their options. Create the most exhaustive guide possible that covers all important considerations when making a purchase.

Don’t just cover the features and considerations that make your product come out on top. Not every lead is an ideal buyer for you, and people will remember if you help them out with the process, even if they don’t buy directly from you at the time.

Free Webinar

A short beginner webinar is a great way to gather email addresses. Start with short live trainings on the basics of your product or industry. Record the training and send the training to your whole list. Or record several short trainings on several topics and bundle them together for a pay to view training series.

Simple Sign-Up

Some companies try to ask for as much information as possible when they’re capturing a lead. They have long forms or even a multiple part process. Prospects don’t have a long attention span before they go to another website so keep it simple. All you need to start your relationship building process is a name and an email.

You can use progressive profiling throughout your future relationship to find out more information. In the beginning, it’s better to treat lead capture as a slow and deliberate “getting to know you” phase.

How to Capture the Elusive Lead – Part 2: Engagement

How to Capture the Elusive Lead - Part 2: Engagement

You’ve made enough of an impression on potential leads that they’re aware you exist and have a basic level of trust in your company. Now it’s time to take the next step and engage them. This stage continues building the relationship and moving one step closer to converting a curious person into a lead.

Answer Questions

Social media offers a convenient way a prospective lead can ask you questions. This offers a prime opportunity for you to position yourself as a trusted and valuable resource. Social media management tools make this process easier, as you can get a single tool to handle all of the people contacting you through your profiles.

Invite Feedback

Market research used to be incredibly difficult and costly to get. Now you can invite feedback directly from your target audience. Polls, surveys, and live chats allow you to connect with potential leads and find out exactly what they think about your plans. You can use this information to tailor your solutions to your ideal customer.

Stay Responsive

Don’t ignore engagement, whether it’s on social media, email or another channel. Focus on the timeliness of your responses with the potential lead. Therefore, if you’re quick, they’ll know that you’ll be on the ball if they do business with you.

Acknowledge Engagement

Sometimes engagement doesn’t come in the form of a question. Your audience may share your content or reach out with an observation. Take the time to acknowledge the conversation, so they know you’re paying attention to them.

Be Social

One of the best ways to improve your engagement strategy is to put yourself out there on social networks. Potential leads will find it easier to reach out if you’re already active on social media. Furthermore, share useful content from your audience, and your own resources for trust building and connect with a wide range of people and companies.

Adapt to the unspoken rules and requirements expected for the social media site. For example, on Twitter, you need to master the art of talking in 140 characters or less and provide topical information. Your Instagram strategy will thrive when you have a strong visual strategy, while Facebook works better for more in-depth resources.

Engagement is a crucial step in getting more leads for your company. You go where your audience does and put yourself out there as a valuable and helpful company.

Get the Maximum ROI From Your Email List

Get the Maximum ROI From Your Email List

Email marketing has the potential to, directly and indirectly, improve your revenue and growth rate. However, you may not be getting the maximum ROI out of your efforts. Use these suggestions to optimize your strategy, find new ways to grow email lists, improve conversions and increase your brand awareness.

Improve Your Sign-Up Form

Don’t skimp on your user experience. Put yourself in their shoes and go through the sign-up process. Is it clear what information the visitor needs to provide? Eliminate any ambiguity and find technical issues with your email subscription form before anyone uses it. Go short and simple!  Name and email are key and use a pop-up form to get more visibility.

Email Marketing Automation

Manually emailing your list might work when you have a few dozen people, but not when you have hundreds or thousands. Automate your workflow and scale your efforts no matter how many subscribers you have. Drip campaigns, transactional emails, and other triggered events can happen immediately upon subscription.

Give Subscribers a Signup Incentive

Want to give visitors a compelling reason to give you their email address? Put a signup incentive in place. The exact form takes depends on your industry and audience, but discounts for e-commerce shops and ebooks for B2B companies are 2 examples of ways to encourage interested parties to add their name to your list.

Keep It Simple

How much information do you ask from subscribers? For a basic B2C mailing list, stick with a name and email. In general, eliminate as many fields as possible to overcome any signup resistance.

Use Segmentation

Don’t treat your email list like a one-size-fits-all entity. Align your email subscribers with your buyer personas, specific demographics, the form they filled out or other differentiating information. When you have a segmented list, you can customize the messages going out to these users. They get more relevant emails, and you get better opportunities for conversion.

Deliver Value

Are you giving subscribers emails that they look forward to reading? If they’re ignoring your messages or rolling their eyes and sighing whenever you land in their inbox, you’re not going to get much out of your email marketing efforts. Make sure the content you include is relevant, timely, and the value is clear to the subscriber. Ask yourself if you would be happy to receive this type of email in your own inbox.

What’s your key next step from the above to improve your email marketing ROI?

The Formula for Brilliant Email Subject Lines

The Formula for Brilliant Email Subject Lines

Anyone who’s used email has found themselves in this predicament. How to grab the attention of the email recipient, yet, not be wordy or salesy? If you don’t do well with the subject line, the email will get tossed in the electronic trash bin before it’s even opened!

Sometimes you get the feeling that you’re obsessing over it too much, but you’re right to feel the pressure. Approximately 35% of those surveyed by Convince & Convert admitted they decide whether to open an email based on the subject line alone. If that isn’t bad enough, 69% in the same study indicated they report email as spam based just on the feel they get from the subject line.

So let’s dive into some tips for brilliant email subject lines:

Get Personal in your Subject Line

If recipients are going to base their decision to open your email on the subject line, then you need to make an immediate impact. You need to go beyond just the simple second-person pronouns or incorporating their name into the subject line.

Geo-location can make an email subject line feel personalized. Seeing their community mentioned adds legitimacy and is a sure sign that what’s inside the email isn’t just some generic message.

Time For Some Action

Draw in your potential customer through action-oriented verbs. Just like any term paper you ever had to write, action verbs make the text more enticing and exciting to the reader. Using action verbs in your email subject lines is a no-brainer. You’ve got limited space to make an impact.

If possible, lead your subject line with the action verb, like “Dine with local sports hero.” Subject lines like that have an immediate significance.

Don’t Get Left Out

As humans, we have an inherent fear of being left out. Whether it’s not getting picked for the kickball team in 4th grade or missing out on that big party in college, we have a need to be included. Leverage that instinct in your readers by creating a sense of urgency in your subject lines.

Include phrases like “today only” or “24 hours left” urges your recipients to open the email immediately. Thus avoiding the ability to put off reading it until it’s forgotten. Scarcity can also increase click-throughs by giving the impression that there’s only a limited number of opportunities.

Make Your Point

Some companies, in an effort to convey as much of their message as possible in the subject line, go way overboard. While it’s true, you only have the subject line to hook them into opening the email. It’s also true that a subject line that’s too long is going to bore the potential customer.

Keep it snappy and to the point. You only have a small space, and try to communicate your message in 45 characters or less.

Know Your Audience

You can read any number of guides on how to craft the best emails. The one thing that can make your digital communication most effective is to learn what motivates your readers. Craft multiple emails with different subject line strategies, and then monitor which email is most effective. Running a simple A/B test can give you insight into what drives your customers.

Once you’ve found the sweet spot, run with it. By creating an impactful subject line, you’re creating future customers that will be on the lookout for your next email.

It all needs to fit together!  Capture leads on your website, then nurture those leads. Nurturing your leads requires getting the emails opened, which means writing good subject lines!  See how it all works together?

The Value of Video in Social Media to Drive Traffic to Website Lead Capture

The Value of Video in Social Media to Drive Traffic to Website Lead Capture
If you aren’t making use of video in your efforts to get more leads, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful tools available today. Using video in social media efforts is perfect for capturing the attention of your target audience.  In turn, funneling people into your company’s purchase cycle.

A great deal of research has made it clear that video is one of the most popular forms of content for capturing and maintaining user interest. Here are several ways you can make effective use of video to enhance your lead generation.

Landing pages

The ultimate purpose of a landing page is to convert a potential customer into an actual customer. Before you can even get anyone to the ‘potential’ stage, it’s necessary to get their attention. Consider these points about your landing page video:

  • Video is 12 times more likely to be viewed than text content is to be read.  The most effective way to use video on a landing page is in conjunction with a call to action (CTA), which you can strategically place near the end of the video.
  • The whole point of your CTA should be to engage the user in some action, such as downloading a guide or an e-book – anything that increases their commitment to your brand.
  • Don’t want to place the CTA directly in the video? Redirect viewers to another portion of the landing page or to a contact form. Place your request info and that will provide you with a lead.

High-value content

High-value content videos are educational or instructive in nature, like webinars which provide significant benefit to viewers. These videos have a powerful appeal, so it’s both convenient and worthwhile to include your lead capture mechanism in the video, as part of the presentation.

  • By having users fill out a contact or subscription form before viewing the presentation, you’ll capture the lead on the front side. The only drawback to this strategy is that viewers will need to be convinced of its value before they become interested in viewing.
  • Content on your website, or social media, can be used to alert users to the video. This effectiveness makes webinars one of the best methods for acquiring leads on the Internet, and it’s a strategy you should be using.

Demo videos

Some of the most popular kinds of videos are demo videos and product description videos. If used properly, these can generate an enormous amount of information about your target audience. You can use this data later for lead generation.

  • It’s not a good idea to make any lead capture attempt in the video itself. This is likely to put off viewers.
  • Videos can be used interactively to learn all about potential customers. (e.g.: types of technology they use, vendors they work with, and pain points.)
  • You can also include survey questions. These help to flesh out potential customer profiles so that follow-up contacts can be more focused and personalized.

The Bottom Line

Video is one of the most attention-getting and persuasive forms of media you can use for lead generation. Make sure to include it in your strategic marketing initiatives.

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How Lead Capture fits within Social Media Lead Generation

How Lead Capture fits within Social Media Lead Generation

Many business owners believe that social media marketing is only about brand awareness or updates to let followers know what’s going on with the business. What they don’t realize is that social media has some serious lead generation power.

To get started generating leads, think about your opt-in freebie or lead magnet. This is something you create and offer to potential customers for free to get them to sign up for your email list. This can be anything from an ebook or white paper or video education series to a free consultation or a discount/free shipping.

Once you’ve decided how you’re going to lure potential customers onto your email list, you can set up your lead captures on social media.

Step 1: Landing Page

Your landing page should include a brief bit of information about the lead magnet, graphic, and a signup form. Plain, and simple. On a lead capture landing page, you don’t want to distract the customer from what they’re there to do: sign up for your email list. You can include a First Name field, but you should only have your Email field required to make signing up quick and easy.

Step 2: Facebook Ads

There are 2 types of Facebook ads you can use for lead generation. The first is the basic lead generation ad that gathers emails directly in Facebook. When your ad is finished running (or every week or so if you have your ad running continuously), go into your lead ads library to download the most recent signups and upload them to your own email marketing platform.

The other option is conversion tracking. You’ll set up a conversion tracking ad that leads to your landing page. You’ll need to insert a pixel on your website’s home page, your landing page, and your thank you page to track conversions.

When setting up your Facebook ads, create a caption that makes your targeted audience want what you’re giving them (in exchange for their email address).

Step 3: Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards are interactive tweets that give more info on a link, app, or video. Twitter also has a lead generation card for ads. To get access to the Twitter Cards, you’ll need to create an ad account and run an ad.

Create your lead generation Twitter Card in the same manner, you would create your Facebook ad. Twitter Cards also allow you to collect email addresses directly through Twitter, without the customer navigating to another website. The cool thing about Twitter Cards is that you can promote them, but you can also organically tweet out a lead generation Twitter Card. Pin it to the top of your Twitter profile to increase views. This is a great way to organically collect new leads.

Step 4: Promoted Pins

Design a Pinterest graphic that leads to your landing page. Create a Promoted Pin campaign with the traffic objective, so you pay for clickthroughs. If you don’t have graphic design skills, outsource this project. Pinterest relies heavily on visual aesthetics, so your pin graphic is important.

These are the top 3 ways to capture leads on social media. Want to move potential customers through your sales funnel? Try using these 3 lead capture methods.

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How Engaging Your Fans on Social Media Helps Grow Leads

How Engaging Your Fans on Social Media Helps Grow Leads

Training your sales people to go from good to fantastic is challenging. But there’s a large amount of readily available information regarding lead generation that can be helpful in growing new leads.

What if I told you that there’s a sales tool that can accomplish all this – and more? It doesn’t require a fancy company car; no expense account and business cards are useless. The cost is free (yes, free) and it works late at night, on the weekends, and even holidays. This invaluable sales tool is social media.

Some business owners view social media as a tool to use occasionally for marketing or, as an afterthought. When you engage with current customers through social media, gathering new leads is possible and has a fairly low entry cost.

Social Media Selling

With social media, you aren’t giving a sales pitch. The rules of engagement are unique, but necessary to follow if you want to effectively acquire new leads.

Make sure you focus on what your customers say. Don’t worry so much about what you want to say. During any social interaction, remember the following:

  • Avoid pushing your products or services
  • Do not focus on yourself
  • Don’t recite a sales pitch

You aren’t trying to “sell” on social media, you are just trying to communicate. What does Selling on Social Media Look Like?

You know someone is selling if the majority of their posts focus on a service or product they offer. Or, if they list all the benefits of choosing “them” over the competition. Other signs of social selling include:

  • Sharing employee details
  • Posting information or images of awards their product or service has received
  • Featuring a testimonial about the service they provided

This is all focused inward, on the company.

When someone thinks about who to follow on social media they usually (intentionally or unintentionally) think “what’s in it for me?” If you only rehash your selling points, they’re going to turn away.

Educate, Excite, Engage

These are the three “E’s” of social engagement.

You want to provide your customers with education. Tell them something they don’t know or help them make informed decisions about purchases they make down the road.

Make your posts exciting. Think local, think big, think different. Don’t post the same thing everyone else is. Let your customers know you care about more than just getting a sale.  Be a resource and a go-to value-adding source for the best information in your industry.

Once you have a prospect’s attention, you can engage them. Listen to their questions and concerns. It’s important they know you care about what they have to say and what they need.

The Bottom Line

Engaging your customers on social media means they’re waiting for what you have to say. They are also going to share this information with their friends on their social accounts. As a result, you can get new fans that will want to hear what you have to say. Social media offers powerful lead generation benefits. Use it to its full potential to increase your business sales.

Use MailChimp to Get More Leads from Your Website

 

Use MailChimp to Get More Leads from Your Website Ask any digital marketer about the key to online success, and they’ll tell you “the secret is in the list”.  Getting traffic to your website is the first step in the process, but turning them into customers is the tricky, important part.

The key is to capture an email address from visitors and use it to keep in touch until your prospect is ready to buy. A great way to keep in touch and in front of potential customers is a weekly email campaign.

MailChimp is a 3rd party email marketing software that lets you do just that.

What Is MailChimp?

MailChimp is a cloud-based email newsletter system that helps you to collect and store emails from your website, and design, send and measure email marketing campaigns. They are free for your first 2,000 email address and 12,000 sends, which means you can get started and try it out without spending a dime. They also have a paid version which has automation processes for drip campaigns.

Gathering Email Addresses

Use MailChimp to gather email addresses by adding  a newsletter subscription form to your site.  Create a free opt-in offer like a downloadable ebook. People “pay” for the free item by entering their email address.

MailChimp is tough on spam. MailChimp has your subscribers double opt-in to your list.This means they’ll sign up on your subscription form and they’ll receive an email with a link to click that confirms their subscription.

Adding an existing email list to MailChimp? The double opt-in doesn’t apply to email address added directly to MailChimp. But, if you haven’t sent an email in a while you may want your first one to confirm their desire to continue receiving your emails.

Create a Campaign

Once you have a list in MailChimp, create an email campaign, include news, deals or interesting articles and send to your customers and prospects. Make sure you include a clear call to action in your email, so your readers know what to do with the information you send.

For convenience, you can schedule more than 1 newsletter at a time. Or to automatically send your blog post to your readers via RSS feed without any effort on your part.

If you pay for your MailChimp account you can send an automatic drip campaign. This is a set number of emails you send for a specific purpose … to move readers through the sales process and convert them to buyers.

Measure Results

One of the best features of MailChimp is their reports and statistics. The detailed reporting features built into the system lets you measure your email open rate, and link clicks to name a few. It tells you if anyone reported you for spam (not good!) and how you are doing based on industry averages.

When you’re starting out with email marketing, MailChimp is an invaluable tool that helps you refine your message and delivery. I’d recommend you spend some time reviewing and analyzing each report you get and adjusting your email marketing plan accordingly!

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New Mobile Feature for Waftio

New Mobile Feature for Waftio

Early next year, Google will roll out an update to build upon the overall mobile-first use of the Internet by daily web users. Since over half of Google’s searches come from mobile devices, the focus on improving the mobile search is unsurprising. One of the things the upcoming change focuses on is reducing intrusive interstitials (especially pop-ups) that hamper the mobile experience and frustrate users by blocking access to content unless users take action. The following examples of pop-ups violate Google’s new mobile search rules:

  • Interstitials that make content inaccessible immediately after visitors come to the page from the search results
  • Pop-ups users have to dismiss before continuing on the site
  • Pop-ups that mimic the above-the-fold part of the page but the original content is inlined under the fold

Websites that don’t meet Google’s new standards will be penalized. If the content you have worked so hard to produce is visually obstructed by a pop-up (in a way that violates Google’s criteria), the site’s mobile rankings may go down.

In response to this new update, we’ve made a few changes to our Waftio app.

To be helpful to all users of Waftio, we’ve altered the way pop-ups can be used so you have more control.

What does this mean for your website?

We’ve added a feature to Waftio that puts you in control of your site’s mobile user experience with Waftio. Our new update includes the option to disable pop-ups only on mobile devices. This way your site won’t hinder mobile visitors view of your content. Hence, your visitors will have a more pleasant time navigating the site.

This is an optional item to turn on in the Waftio settings area.  We keep you in control and give you the power to continue to grow leads with your website!