A beginner’s guide to email marketing automation

Email marketing automation may be the secret to a successful marketing strategy, provided that you know how to use it. Here’s how to get started.

Email marketing is still a powerful method to boost your marketing goals, but as your business grows, it becomes more challenging to handle all the different types of emails you need to send.

Email marketing automation could be the solution to this problem.

What is email marketing automation?

Email marketing automation is simply the automated process of sending emails to a specific list of people, depending on the predefined triggers. Once the trigger is activated, the email is sent.

The use of email automation software allows you to set all the parameters that will determine when the automated emails will be sent, making the planning of them easier.

In other words, it’s the use of technology for the sake of an improved marketing strategy that may lead to an increased effectiveness.

Why use email marketing automation?

The first reason that marketers turn to email automation is the fact that they manage to save time and effort, by creating the triggers that send the right emails, to the right people, at the right time.

Moreover, the automation of this process is saving them time from future similar efforts, as the triggers can be adjusted to include more people, or additional emails to each action.

This increases the efficiency of their email marketing strategy, in such a way that their creativity is blended with technology for the best possible results.

According to Epsilon Email Institute, automated email messages lead to an average 70.5% of higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates than usual emails.

Effectiveness also goes beyond click rates, as automated mails seem to contribute to a message’s relevance for the target audience. In fact, according to Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups, companies that send automated emails are 133% more likely to have relevant messages that correspond with a customer’s purchase cycle.

Now the question is, where should you begin with email marketing automation?

6 tips to consider when starting with email marketing automation

1. Think carefully about your lead magnets

The first step is to encourage people to sign up with the right lead magnets that provide them a reason to do so. It’s better to think of a reason that is relevant and useful, rather than an instant reward, as this increases the chances to create a long-term relationship with them.

Lead magnets have to be clear, offering value that cannot be ignored from the target audience. Testing of several forms can help you understand what users find more interesting and this can be the indication that will make the building of the list easier.

2. Focus on the welcome message

Once a user signs up to a list, it’s important to send a welcome message that’s as relevant as possible. Not every user is part of the same customer journey, and this may affect their future relationship with your business.

A proper segmentation of users allows you to send a warm welcome message that addresses their problems, helping them find the right answers while they are also learning more about your brand.

It’s also important to plan the emails you’re going to send, and how the workflow of the messages will work from now on.

What’s the best way to use automation to build a relationship with users who have already showed interest in the value you’re offering them?

3. Don’t underestimate lead nurturing 

Automation doesn’t have to be impersonal. On the contrary, it’s crucial to add a personal touch to your emails, as a way to show your genuine interest in every message that you send.

A personalized communication can be very useful as part of your nurturing process. A warm and welcoming message increases the chances of turning a prospect into a customer, with a smooth and positive inbox experience serving as a great lead magnet.

Once you manage to find the balance between automation and personalization, each email should indicate your genuine interest towards every recipient. Lead nurturing is all about consistency and although automation can be very useful, it’s still important to excel in the segmentation of your audience to ensure that each recipient receives the right message.

4. Set your goals and work towards them (create the right triggers)

Before you start with automation, it’s useful to focus on your goals and your expectations from each automated process. How could automation boost your email marketing campaign? What’s the best way to save time while increasing your effectiveness? What do you define as an effective email marketing campaign?

The ROI from email marketing automation depends on your goals, and it’s useful to be clear on what you expect from the earliest stages of your planning.

For example, if you’re interested in lead nurturing, then you can use email automation to send consistent and personalized messages to your recipients to create a relationship with them.

If you want to use email automation to increase sales, you can create the right set of emails to promote your products in the most relevant and appealing way.

Remember, not every email has the same purpose, and there needs to be a distinction between your goals in order to enjoy the benefits of email marketing automation.

5. Keep evaluating the process

Although email marketing automation aims to help you create a streamlined process among your emails, it’s still useful to evaluate it from time to time to measure its performance and examine whether it needs to be changed.

Does automation bring you closer to your goals? How does the audience respond to your emails? Is there a part of the process that can be improved?

As every audience is different, it’s a good idea to monitor its automated process on its own to test whether it’s contributing to a successful email marketing strategy.

6. Make subscribing and unsubscribing obvious

It’s frustrating for users to keep searching for the option to unsubscribe from an email that they are not interested in. Thus, it’s best to have a clear display with all their available options.

Just as you add a CTA button to encourage further clicks in case they are interested in the email’s content, you should also feature an easy unsubscribe process.

Even if this means that you’re increasing their chances of opting out, it also means that you’re only maintaining the ones that are truly interested in your content.

Overview

Email marketing automation can be a very useful ally to your marketing strategy, provided that you find the right balance between automated messages and personalization for each segment of your contacts.

Even if the initial planning may seem time-consuming, the benefits should give you an additional motivation to work towards an effective process that will help you reach all your set goals.

Tereza Litsa is a Writer at ClickZ.

Source

Read More

How to Establish Your Brand Through Inbound Marketing

Much of the emphasis of inbound marketing is attracting the attention of people to your website who need your products and services. However, establishing a strong and positive brand reputation remains integral in building credibility within your marketplace. The more familiar people become with your company and product brand, the greater your ability to make a positive impression on them.

The following strategies contribute to establishing a powerful brand image using inbound marketing methods.

Make Your Message Personal

Search engine optimization and massive content volume dominated the early days of content marketing. However, in a competitive market, you need to create highly customized and personalized messages that resonate with a particular prospect base.

To succeed in content marketing, you need first to understand the traits, motives, and preferences of each buyer persona. Only by understanding the deep problems and frustrations faced by particular prospects can you craft a message that speaks to their emotions.

After building thorough buyer profiles, formulate your mix of content, including copy, images, and video, and present it in a concise way. Buyers use the Web to research solutions to their business problems. The more precise your answer, the more your brand resonates as a go-to source.

A previous article titled “Inbound Marketing Brings Your Brand Alive in the Human Era“, is a summary of a presentation by branding firm Hill Holliday. The presentation by their CEO describes how their company is transforming the message and advertising of large enterprises to project their human side. Inbound Marketing provides the same powerful methodology for small to medium sized firms.

Take the Smart SEO Approach

Search engine optimization remains an important component of online branding based on the volume of buyer search activity. To achieve success, though, think about how prospects search and emphasize quality content that Google algorithms prefer since Google now focuses on your search intent rather than purely keyword-based search results.

People tend to search “smarter” than they used to. Rather than entering two or three keywords, many people now enter a search query like, “How to improve Salesforce adoption?” Not only can this awareness help you in targeting the right long-tail keyword phrases, it prepares you to develop content that answers this query or problem. Blog articles are a common place where marketers need to optimize for search since they are the entry point of most visitors to your website. Learn the best practice for optimizing a blog for search with this previous article.

Engage Through Social Media

Just being present on social media and promoting content won’t do much to build your brand. Instead, develop a well-defined strategy that emphasizes the use of a few core tools that align with your audience’s habits.

In many high-tech and financial services industries, LinkedIn is a high-priority platform for networking and building a brand. Your company can use a business page and leaders can create personal profiles that project a consistent brand image. Use your profiles to outline core points of differentiation for your company and its solutions.

Other tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, offer their own branding opportunities. Engagement on Twitter includes looking for and responding to comments related to your brands. If you sell a particular software solution, for instance, look for Tweets from people struggling with the problem your solution addresses. It takes time to engage and build your brand on social media, but the synergy and momentum that comes from consistent activity is often high.

Understand Your Buyer’s Life Cycle

Speaking of synergy; consider the long-term implications of developing an army of loyal followers who help spread your brand like wildfire. To succeed in getting positive word-of-mouth and referrals, get to know your buyer’s life cycle.

The first stage of a buyer’s journey is an initial contact with your brand. Blogs, white papers, and video content are common inbound marketing tools used to create this initial encounter. Over time, your company needs to monitor the communication flow that leads to conversions and loyalty, and those that cause failures.

The next step is to have a plan for engaging prospects that take your initial call-to-action and visit your website. A positive user experience that includes easy navigation and usability is critical to your brand. Beyond that, continue the education of a now interested prospect with more in-depth resources, demonstrations and trial offers.

The real key to building your brand, though, is to transform a satisfied customer into a brand messenger. Follow-up to ensure ongoing success in the user experience, and seize opportunities to acquire testimonials. Encourage customers to endorse your company with a “recommendation” on LinkedIn, for instance. As you manage relationships with loyal buyers, you gain potential impressions via e-mail, social media and face-to-face mentions.

Use an Integrated CRM & Inbound Marketing Solution

Customer relationship management software is a major support tool for managing and measuring the buyer’s journey from initial contact through becoming a customer. It allows salespeople and marketing to capture data that leads to better interpretations of what inbound marketing strategies influence your customers the most and which lead sources provide the best prospects.

As you gather profile and behavioral data, you can use predictive analytics to gain perspectives that aid in continuous process improvement. Data helps you figure out which prospecting methods attract attention, and which marketing and selling strategies drive conversion and loyalty. After converting prospects into customers, sales reps can implement automated communication plans with customers that allow constant experience monitoring and additional sales opportunities.

Take a Multi-Channel Approach

One of the most important factors in branding through inbound marketing is implementing a multi-channel approach. Just as companies use broadcast, print, support and digital media in a traditional campaign, an assorted mix of inbound tools extends the reach of your brand message.

Companies that perform the best with inbound marketing normally include extensive content marketing, SEO, social media and e-mail in their plans. Presenting your message across all of these channels helps you reach more people, and create multiple impressions within high-priority market segments.

In the digital age, meeting prospects on their preferred turf is vital to inbound marketing effectiveness.

Conclusions – Content Strategy is King

Building a brand through inbound marketing requires a well-defined and multi-faceted strategy. Identify the deep needs of each specific buyer type, and then tailor content and social messaging to match. Use available technology to strengthen insights on the buyer experience, and to continually enhance the emotional appeal and precision of your messages

You can use our Inbound Marketing Buyer Persona Worksheet to begin to define your target audience. A content strategy that is very well aligned with your target buyer is the best approach to learn which content will attract and convert the ideal prospect to your business.

Source

Read More

5 strategies that guarantee digital marketing success

With the New Year just around the corner, this is an opportune time to evaluate and refine the fundamental processes affiliated with the execution of digital marketing campaigns.

As we finish out 2015, it is a great time to take stock of both your ability as well as the abilities of those within the marketing department, specifically in regards to their skills, interests, and effectiveness.

In marketing, nearly everything boils down to five places where you should excel:

1. Planning initiatives
2. Designing great campaigns
3. Flawless execution
4. Analyzing the results
5. Deciding how to adjust and improve for the future

Let’s look a little closer at each one of these important functions.

1. Laying a firm foundation with solid planning initiatives

We all know that great marketing doesn’t happen at the snap of your fingers. It takes time and insight to understand where you are and where you’d like to go. Planning is where you take stock of the current state of your customers, prospects, products, and more. You establish goals, milestones, and targets for everyone to rally around. In this phase, you should also determine how much budget and resources you want to assign to different projects and campaigns. To help you stay focused on the customer - instead of just on your products or services for sale - develop or review your buyer personas.

Remember, everything will cascade off of your plans, so make sure you have the correct assumptions and double check that you have been thoroughly using all of the market research at your disposal. Hopefully your targets are meaningful to everyone on the team and not arbitrary or completely out of reach before you even begin.

2. Marrying creativity with digital marketing

This is where you and your digital agency (if you have one) should get creative with all of the information from your planning stage. Today great campaigns are much more than just a simple drip nurture or series of e-blasts. If you are still relying solely on these types of tactics, then you really need to step up your sophistication. 

You need to design multichannel, customer journey-centric campaigns with interactive content, data collecting assessments, video, mobile apps, new website pages or microsites, location targeting, and SMS and mobile push should all become part of your campaign design arsenal. If you found in your planning phase that you lack key insight about your customers and/or prospects, incorporate simple questions into your campaign so you can build your database as you go. Make sure you preview your campaign plans with both the sales organization and your call center so that they can provide valuable input, acting as an additional team member.

3. Flawless execution; all hands on deck

Once you are ready to launch your campaign, it is everybody’s responsibility to ensure you are executing as perfectly as you can. You need to send your outbound messages on schedule, make sure your website can handle the traffic, have call center reps trained on proper call handling, and have sales act as helpful facilitators.

Keep in mind that executing flawlessly does not mean you should be so cautious that you take lots of extra time. I see too many marketers move at a snail’s pace because they are so terrified of making a mistake. Remember that "done" is better than "perfect" - you are better off getting out in the market to establish first preference over your competitors. If you do make mistakes, ensure that you can get the feedback and quickly work to correct any errors.

4. Reviewing all aspects of campaigns and analyzing results

Over the weeks, months, and even longer periods of time, you will need to assign the resources to analyze your results, so you can adjust and improve mid-campaign or for your next major effort. Of course, good old-fashioned reporting is a great start for everyone. But this is the time to kick things up a notch by doing more sophisticated analytics into the root causes of success or the lack thereof. Perhaps you even take a sample of customers and non-purchasers and interview them about their perceptions of your campaign.

Finally you can explore newer tools such as predictive analytics to spot trends before they actually happen. Having a robust analytics capability will only make for stronger campaigns and an improved marketing department.

5. Digging deeply for next time

Toward the latter half of the campaign, begin to ask yourself, "If I had to do this whole project over again, what would I change?" Allowing everyone in the marketing department to periodically ask and answer that question is the key to continuous improvement.

Hopefully you have a culture that allows everyone to have an open, honest, and constructive dialog about what you need for the next iterations. Make sure that all of the performance data is readily available to all for close inspection. Also, be sure that all voices are heard - not just the more vocal extroverts. Collect all ideas and encourage everyone to share.

All too often, if things don’t go according to plan or don’t exceed the goals, everyone is quick to bury the evidence and move on to the next project. However, taking time at in this final stage should help you both build a better campaign next time and build a better marketing department. Is everyone in a role that they enjoy? Are they able to contribute to maximum effectiveness? By asking all of these questions and more, you should be well on your way to future success.

Source

Read More

Separating the 'what' from the 'how' in digital marketing

Marketers that align messages with the right communication platforms and take a multichannel approach to campaign strategy can ensure that their content will reach targeted audiences.

All too often, when I meet with marketers, I find out they are planning a new campaign and making a huge assumption that they are going to solely focus on email to get their message out. If I have done my job in this column, then you will step back and no longer make that assumption.

There are lots of ways to get your message out there. Taking time to assess the right channel for each message could pay off handsomely with improved engagement and results.

Remember when you were in elementary school and while learning new vocabulary you had to learn to say the words, write them down, use them in a sentence, and even work them into a story?

Although we really didn’t know it at the time, these multichannel approaches really helped us learn the material - not just for the weekly spelling test, but (hopefully) for a lifetime.

Well, the same applies with campaign offers and content: the more methods and approaches that are taken with marketing tactics, the more memorable campaigns will be. 

If you’re launching a new campaign, a multichannel approach that integrates snail mail, SMS messages, infographic-based ads, calls from reps, social posts, a Web-based diagnostic tool, a call center (outbound or inbound) - and yes - also a few emails, will reinforce your offers and appeal to every learning style.

What are your overall campaign objectives, and who is your target audience?

The first step in any campaign plan should be to determine your overall objectives and target audience specifications.

• Which personas make up your core audience?
• What roles make up the other segments that you’d like to influence?
• What is your audience's current state of mind?
• Do they already know about your company, product, or solution - or are you starting the awareness process from scratch?
• What is your time frame for executing the campaign?
• How will you measure activity, influence, and results?

An engagement scoring model can help you automatically assign points to track activity and influence, giving you a real-time view of your progress.

What content will you use?

Build a content matrix to name all the content you’ll need for each persona and each stage in the customer journey. Note what photograph, design, or other assets you will need, so you can give your creative team a head start on their own strategy and production work.

So often we leave those elements to the last minute, causing our digital agency or in-house creative teams huge amounts of stress, and I have rarely seen stressful creative teams perform at their best.

Will you use in-house or external writing talent?

Now is the time to tee them up for your project. Know that if you give your creative team free reign to choose the channel that might work best, they might have some great ideas about the optimal channel on which to deploy what they have created.

Make sure you are collecting other channel information. You might realize that SMS would be a fantastic way to reach your audience, but if you don’t have many mobile numbers it will be hard to leverage that channel - the same goes for physical mailing addresses.

A great way to make progress is to enlist your call center representatives to help you complete your audience’s profiles. If you have your call center integrated with your digital marketing platform, then any cell phone numbers and snail mail addresses should port over to your digital platform.

Conclusion

Only when you have your campaign targets and objectives, key personas, content framework, and a creative strategy in place, should you begin to think about which channel is best for each tactic. Of course a few will be email, but by adding in other approaches you’ll create a richer experience for your clients and target audience.

Source

Read More

Small businesses step up holiday social media game

Monif Clarke plans to use social media to promote a program giving customers a $25 discount if they recommend friends who buy from Monif C.

NEW YORK — Monif Clarke didn’t have a social media strategy for her women’s clothing company until this year, when she hired a consultant to help her build one.

The holiday social media marketing plan for New York-based Monif C. Plus Sizes includes contests promoted on Facebook, with prizes like a $1,000 wardrobe. When Facebook users click on a link about a contest, they’re taken to the New York-based retailer’s website and their email addresses are recorded when they enter the contest. Those addresses are key to increasing Monif C’s business — it gets nearly 30 percent of its sales in response to emails.

Clarke will also use social media to promote a program giving customers a $25 discount if they recommend friends who buy from Monif C. The friends also get a $25 discount. And Clarke gets another customer for her email list.

Previously, Clarke relied partly on a Facebook page that 180,000 people “like,” but she’d used it only for the basics: posting pictures and promoting sales. She realized she needed to do more.

“We need to reach the customers we have in a more effective way and attract new customers,” says Clarke.

There’s more to a retailer’s holiday social media strategy than posting photos and advertising discounts. Small and independent retailers are getting more aggressive in using Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram for the important holiday sales season and beyond.

“All of this is new for small businesses. They’ve not been used to using social media actively,” says Christina Shaw, chief marketing officer at Blue Fountain Media, a marketing consulting company. Like Clarke, many are seeking help from consultants.

Rewarding customers

At Peter Kate, a women’s clothing store, owner Sissy Harris recently signed with a customer rewards program linked to social media. Customers get points for posting comments about the store on Facebook and Twitter. They also get points when they use social media to refer friends to the Greenville, Del., store.

Harris switched from a traditional rewards program with no social media link. In her first month with the new program, about 50 new customers signed up. The program also helps her track its success. She gets daily reports on how many program members are shopping, and whether they come back.

The right service

Vivian Sayward forecasts a 50 percent jump in 2014 online sales because of her new social media campaign, which includes contests, special posts and discounts timed for the weekends, when most online shopping is expected. Sayward, owner of San Diego-based Vivacity Sportswear, is focusing on selling her women’s golf and activewear to online customers this holiday season after spending the last three years marketing to retailers.

Sayward recently hired a consultant to run her campaign. She’s concentrating on Pinterest and Instagram because her customers use those services. Women make up over 80 percent of Pinterest’s users and 60 percent of Instagram’s, according to Nielsen, the market research company.

Social media creates a buzz that makes users want to visit Vivacity Sportswear’s website, Sayward says.

“Just by creating a website does not mean that the shoppers will come,” she says.

Target customers

Divas SnowGear will use Facebook to promote a “buy one, give one” program to increase sales of women’s snowmobiling wear from its website. Customers who click on a link on its Facebook page will be taken to the Divas SnowGear website; when they buy a jacket, the company will donate one to charity, says Travis Gavinski, who handles social media for the Madison, Wis.-based company.

If the company doesn’t get the results it wants, Gavinski can pay Facebook to send postings to users likely to buy from Divas SnowGear — for example, women whose profiles say they like snow sports.

“My opportunity to get out in front of our audience is much greater on Facebook than on our website,” Gavinski says.

Joyce M. Rosenberg,

The Associated Press

Source

Read More