#u can follow the link for the pdf if you want a better quality version init

[pinkchunder]

https://palestinecampaign.org/

[brianobrienny]

What Is Email Marketing Automation and Why Does It Matter?

Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways of reaching your customers. Sending emails is very cost-effective and offers an impressive ROI. Furthermore, email marketing automation means that after some initial setup, this form of marketing is mostly “hands-off,” giving you more time to spend on creative thinking and building relationships.

Email automation enables you to send email responses that are triggered by customer actions. This means you can send an email at the optimal time to encourage a conversion. Automating your email also means you can easily send personalized communications and adjust your message for different target markets.

Quick Takeaways:

Email automation offers several benefits to marketers, including saving time, easier-scaled marketing campaigns, and increased sales.

There are several different types of automated emails. You can choose the type that will best suit your audience and business.

Exploring the advanced functionality of email automation software can help you to optimize your ROI and create a better customer experience.

The Benefits of Email Automation

It’s pretty obvious why most brands use at least some form of email automation. After all, nobody is going to sit and tediously copy and paste a message to email out manually to thousands of subscribers.

But email marketing automation has many benefits that aren’t immediately obvious at first consideration.

Better user experience

Automating your emails means that you can personalize the content to suit whoever you’re sending it to. More personalization means more relevant content and better user experience in general.

Image source: https://optinmonster.com/ecommerce-personalization-examples/

On its most basic level, automated email personalization allows you to automatically insert the customer’s name and other details into the email. Reading an email addressed to “Dear John” feels much more personal than “Dear customer.” Even though most people know this personalization is automated, they’re much more likely to read and take action on the contents than they would with a generic email.

You can also use personalization to adjust the email’s content. For example, you could have specific content targeted to the user location or mention products they’re likely to be interested in based on shopping history.

All of this makes the email more relevant to each user, which can only be a good thing. Nobody wants to get an email of content that’s irrelevant or not useful to them.

Easily scale up your marketing strategy

Using email automation means you can quickly set up a set of rules and triggers to move each user through your marketing funnel based on their actions.

This is not only faster but also more efficient than attempting to carry out your marketing strategy manually.

For example, email automation takes the pain out of checking weekly to see which customers made a purchase in the last seven days and emailing them all manually. Instead, you are able to simply set up your processes so that a specific email is automatically sent to all customers who made a purchase.

Optimize delivery times

Sending your emails to their recipients at the time when they’re most likely to open and read them can make a huge difference to your open and conversion rate.

If you send an email to someone that hits their inbox at 3:00 a.m., and they have a lot of emails to get through the next day, there’s a good chance they won’t see it at all.

Image source: https://optinmonster.com/the-best-time-to-send-emails-heres-what-studies-show/

Increase revenue

Transactional emails are those sent automatically when a user performs a specific action such as downloading an ebook or completing checkout on an e-commerce site.

Sending this type of email can help to increase the amount spent per customer significantly. For example, an order confirmation email could be used to direct the user towards other products they might be interested in based on their recent purchase.

Maintain engagement with subscribers

Sending an email is an easy way to say to your customers and prospects, “Hey, we’re still here!”

Not everyone uses social media on a regular basis, and even if they do, there’s no guarantee that they’ll see your brand communications in their feed. Unless your blog is absolutely riveting, there’s a good chance they won’t remember to visit it regularly either.

Sending regular emails is a simple way to keep in touch with people that doesn’t require them to make any more effort than clicking in their inbox.

Email Automation Examples

You can get a better idea of how to use automated email marketing in your business by studying some common examples of how other brands use it.

1. Email welcome series

A welcome series is one of the most common forms of email automation and is an effective way to save time and build relationships with new followers.

This technique involves a series of pre-written emails that can be personalized and automatically sent out on a schedule whenever someone signs up to your mailing list.

A welcome series could be as short as a single email thanking the user for signing up, or it could include a year’s worth of weekly emails or even more.

2. Abandoned cart email

An abandoned cart email is another common example of email automation that most e-commerce sites use.

With this type of automation, the site automatically sends out an email to customers that have added items to their shopping cart but have not checked out.

The average cart abandonment rate is over 68%. This type of email can significantly reduce this rate by acting as a reminder and a prompt to buy for customers who were unsure about their purchase or simply got interrupted before they could complete their purchase.

3. Birthday emails

If you collect your customers’ date of birth, sending a personalized email message on their birthday is a great way to make them feel valued and build a stronger relationship.

Birthday emails can be an effective way to increase sales too. Sending an exclusive discount code as a “birthday treat” can encourage customers to make purchases they wouldn’t have normally considered.

4. Email reminders

You can use automatic email reminders to warn customers of upcoming account expiration, remind them of an appointment, or remind them it’s time for a routine service.

Automatic email reminders will not only save you a lot of administration time, but they can help to encourage repeat business too.

Image source: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-automation/

5. Regular newsletters

With automation in place, you can be more efficient in creating content for your emails as you can write them in bulk and queue them up to drip-feed over the following weeks or months.

6. Email course

An email course is a specific type of welcome series, although you won’t necessarily send it to new subscribers only.

Offering a course can be a highly effective way to attract new subscribers, and it can help drive conversions or demonstrate how to get the most out of your products and services.

Advanced Email Automation

With email marketing automation, you can make things as simple or advanced as you wish. You can get a lot of benefits from basic automation, but by taking things a little further, you can really start to optimize your conversions.

Segment your subscriber list

Some email marketers maintain a single subscriber list and send emails out to everyone on the list. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, particularly for sending out basic newsletters.

However, segmenting your subscribers based on certain criteria such as location, job position, industry, and where they signed up to your mailing list can help you to personalize your emails for better click-through and conversion rates.

Create specific landing pages for email visitors

Rather than sending people who read your emails directly to your home page or a particular blog post, you can create landing pages designed specifically for mailing list traffic.

Split test your emails

Making small changes to things like the title of your email or the position of CTAs can make a big difference in how many people open it, read it, and take action.

Most email marketing software has split A/B testing functionality, so you can send out two or more versions of one email and compare data such as open rate and conversion rate to see which version was most successful.

Let Your Email Work For You

When planned properly, email automation can be a real powerhouse that is constantly working for you in the background while you focus on with other priorities.

Of course, it’s still important to make sure that the content you’re linking to in your emails is high quality and relevant, or you’ll be wasting the opportunity.

If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content published consistently, check out our Content Builder Service.

Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today — and generate more traffic and leads for your business.

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[brianobrienny]

5 CTA Tweaks to Remove Friction from Your Lead Conversion Process

Lead generation and nurturing often take center stage for digital marketers. They are commonly the top goal for most businesses, with the majority of their budget being funneled in this direction. But when the numbers at the bottom of the funnel refuse to budge it can be incredibly frustrating.

As a result of excessive focus on lead generation or lead nurturing, marketers might be ignoring an important factor that is hurting conversions further down the funnel: Call-to-Actions or CTAs.

CTA buttons are the link between a potential lead and a converted sale, so they need to be the center focus if you really want to increase conversions. Little mistakes could actually have a major negative impact on your CTA’s effectiveness; however, there are a few basics that you can stick to in order to keep conversion rate steady.

1. Be Mindful of Above-the-fold Vs. Below-the-fold Placements

The placement of CTA buttons is incredibly important. They need to be highly visible in order to catch your customer’s eye and lead them to the next step of the buyer’s journey. Historically, marketers have been warned not to place the first CTA buttons “below the fold” – meaning that when the site loads, the user should see the most important prompts at the top of the screen (above the fold) without having to scroll down.

Here’s how email marketing platform Mailchimp does it:

You see three CTAs – all important ones – above the fold.

However, all CTA advice should be taken with a pinch of salt and extensively tested to see if it works for you. A case study reported by Beem Digital showed that when the CTA was placed on the bottom half of a very long landing page, conversions grew by over 300%.

One reason why placing the CTA lower down could actually be better in some cases is because it waits until the visitor’s purchase intent builds up. As a customer consumes more content, scroll down on the page, and engage with it, they move from awareness to interest to consideration, the CTA naturally appeals to them at that point.

Research from Google on display ads (which could be considered similar to CTAs in terms of impressions) also found that while the most viewable position for something on your page is just above the fold, page position doesn’t always tell the full story. Not all above-the-fold elements are viewable while below-the-fold items often are.

2. Reduce the Number of Options and Simplify Them

While most of us prefer to have lots of options when it comes to choosing products, having too many can actually be problematic – it leads to the paradox of choice, meaning that customers become overwhelmed and unable to make a decision. It’s the same case with CTAs.

Here’s a great example – take a look at the menus for two well-known fast-food restaurants: In-n-Out versus Sonic. Clearly, one of these menus is far easier to navigate and choose from than the other.

  Simplifying your customer’s choices down as much as possible is going to have far better results than listing out every possible choice on your home page. So, start by taking a close look at the CTR metrics. Which CTA buttons are clicked on the most and which ones lead to the highest number of conversions? Conversely, which are clicked the least or lead to the greatest number of exits? Keep the most popular and effective CTAs highly visible while reorganizing the others into drop-down menus.

3. Use Heat Maps to Know How Customers Browse

The layout and appearance of your website have a great effect on your audience’s behavior. You want to make sure that your website is as user-friendly as possible while still making it attractive.

For consumers, usability and appearance go hand-in-hand. Adobe’s State of Content report found that nearly the same number of customers will stop engaging with a website simply because they find the layout to be unattractive as those who would exit because the site was not working properly. The report also found that for both B2B and B2C audiences, a layout that kept visitors’ attention and looked appealing was most important, with functionality following close behind.

So, in addition to ensuring that your loading speeds and screen layouts are working properly, you should also be keeping the overall look of your website as a top priority.

In order to truly optimize the layout of your website, you can turn to heat mapping tools that can identify the popular (and unpopular) elements of your site by measuring mouse hovers, clicks, and scrolls. This is incredibly important for on-page CTA positioning – they need to be in places that users’ eyes naturally drift towards.

4. Don’t Disdain (or Dismiss) Pop-Ups

Pop-ups get a bad rep, but they can be useful for capturing your audience’s attention – if they are used correctly. Obviously, most pop-ups will annoy your website visitors, especially if they appear to soon on page load, obstruct their view of the page, or have a condescending message.

However, you can use pop-ups more strategically and optimize them to appear at the right time and the right place.

For instance, you can set up your pop-up to show up based on behavioral triggers that signal a potential loss in engagement. If there’s a sudden uptake in the visitor’s scrolling speed (especially in an upwards direction) or their mouse starts to head towards the exit button, it would be an optimal time to send a pop-up message with an enticing CTA.

5. Always Run A/B Tests

You are most likely not going to nail your CTA placement on the first try. Just like with any marketing method, you need to test and monitor performance until you find what works best with different segments of your audience. As you make changes, be sure to conduct frequent A/B testing to see which colors, copy, fonts, sizes, and tactics actually drive the most conversions.

Over to You

Ultimately, the central purpose of any CTA is to nudge leads one step closer to conversion (or advocacy). The point here is to provide your customers with the “next step” on their journey and get them to take an action that’s beneficial to both you and them. While new techniques and tactics to optimize your CTAs are being uncovered every day, the basic principles remain the same:

Draw attention.

Include a clear directive.

Remove barriers.

Encourage immediate action.

So, let’s end here with our own call to action: relentlessly improve your CTAs. Good luck!

If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content that’s published consistently, check out our Content Builder Service. Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today–and generate more traffic and leads for your business.

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[brianobrienny]

4 Surprisingly Effective B2B Lead Nurturing Tactics

Nurturing leads has never been simple for B2B companies – in fact, it often tops the charts when marketing and sales teams are asked about their greatest challenges.

The digital landscape has only made this task more complicated and difficult, as there are now more opportunities than ever to either interact positively with a customer or drop the ball and lose the sale.

Since this is such a hot topic, there are countless opinions out there on the best ways to nurture leads; there are “hidden strategies” and “secret tips: that are guaranteed to boost your team’s results. The truth is that every single B2B organization’s audience is different – some audiences may react well to one method while others see little results.

However, there are several tactics that are not just rumored to be effective (across the board to various extents) but have the data to back them up. Curious what they are and how your marketing team can use them in their lead nurturing strategies? Let’s dive in.

Quick Takeways:

Personalize your content for leads based on their intent and the stage of the funnel they’re currently in.

Email marketing is still the best channel to reach your leads at the right times.

B2B content needs to be completely data-driven for business decision-makers to take it seriously.

1. Personalizing Based on Intent

It is no secret that personalization is incredibly influential on consumer behavior. According to research from Epsilon, 80% of consumers said that they were more likely to buy from a business that offered personalized experiences.

This survey also found that the preferred forms of customization included specific discounts and offers, personalized product recommendations, and personalized customer service assistance.

The power of me: The impact of personalization on marketing performance from Epsilon Marketing

One of the best ways for B2B marketing teams to use personalization effectively for lead nurturing is customizing content dynamically based on customer intent. This will take some research and analysis first, in order to create a data-driven buyer’s journey map to guide your content.

It is also important to personalize the structure or “visual hierarchy” of your page so that visitors’ eyes match the flow of content on the page. Once you get this right, you can use “website heatmaps” to track user interactions with various elements of your pages and find out exactly how these elements influence their behavior in conjunction with your copy and content.

Once you start piecing together the typical journey that your customers are following from initial interaction with your brand to the purchase decision, you can start to personalize the content you show your leads and prospects, based on data from intent shown by existing customers.

For example, say that a lead lands on one of your blog posts by clicking a link from another website’s blog. You know that they are part of your targeted audience and are likely interested in learning more about a specific topic in your niche, so you might highlight content that matches the category/topic of the blog they came in from, point them to more posts related to that topic, and customize the relevant parts (edit copy) of the landing page when they click through an in-line CTA from one of the posts they read.

On the other hand, if a customer browses through product descriptions and clicks on some case studies, you can see that they are likely further down the buyer’s journey. It would be best to send out a personalized email message to encourage this lead to connect with a sales representative.

2. Triggered Emails and Drip Campaigns

Email marketing has been and always will be one of the best ways to turn a lead into a customer, particularly in the B2B realm. Most (if not all) marketing teams customize their email marketing in some form or another. But in order to really ensure that it has an impact on lead nurturing, you need to perfect your use of automated drip campaigns to show relevant content that truly influences customers.

Using trigger-based emails allows you to reach customers with the exact content they need at the perfect time. According to a report from Email Monday, 81% of organizations that implemented automated marketing saw an increase in qualified leads, 71% reported better lead management, and 40% increased their revenue.

Source

Again, a data-driven customer journey map for your specific audience lies at the center of a successful campaign. You will need to understand which actions should trigger an automated response, such as a welcome email when a customer downloads content, or a reminder notification when someone sets up a phone call with a sales rep. By using these automated messages, you can ensure that no leads fall through the cracks and tweak your communications with each one of them.

3. Letting Content Do the Talking

B2B buyers are often far more informed than B2C customers. Furthermore, they are typically looking to make a business investment rather than just a simple purchase, so they are going to be far more critical (and expect proof) of your business’s claims and promises.

According to Demand Gen’s Content Preferences report, the majority of customers will consume up to five pieces of content before reaching out to a salesperson. Most buyers consume content like third party reports, whitepapers, and webinars – they don’t just want simple blog pieces. Therefore, it is imperative that your business’s content is based on facts, not just opinions.

Source

When it comes to B2B content, the proof is in the pudding, so be sure that all your content is backed up by research, and provides them with a reason to learn more about your company. You’d do good to elaborate and add your insights on reports and studies published by a third-party for truly unbiased messaging.

4. Intelligent Retargeting

Just because a lead falls off after an initial interaction does not mean that all is lost. In fact, data collected by Invesp CRO reports that customers who view retargeted ads are three times more likely to revisit your website and have a 70% higher chance of converting than first-time customers.

Again, your strategies here need to be based on data for truly intelligent retargeting. Not every customer will respond to generic retargeted ads. Invesp’s study also found that 46% of customers actually ignore retargeted ads most of the time. Personalization will come into play here to ensure that your efforts are more effective and enticing to your audience in order to re-engage them.

One of the most effective ways to retarget leads is by using buyer personas to personalize these ads based on their interest and behaviors. Once a user interacts with a website, their information can be recorded and analyzed to see which buyer persona they match up with best. If they leave the website without taking a desired action or micro-conversion, then they can be retargeted with ads that match up to their preferences and interests.

Convince and Convert

The real secret to successful lead nurturing is giving your audience what they want, when they want it. Ask yourself:

Do we really understand our audience’s intent based on their actions and behavior?

How can we provide personalized experiences and use them to connect with leads on a one-on-one basis?

Where and when do the majority of our leads fall off and how can we re-engage with them?

Is our content helping or hurting our lead generation?

B2B marketers need to take a long, hard look at their current nurturing strategies and pinpoint the areas where they’re lacking. The key is to identify your best prospects, understand what makes them tick, and create opportunities for conversion through effective messaging.

If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content that’s published consistently, check out our Content Builder Service. Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today–and generate more traffic and leads for your business.

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[brianobrienny]

Why SaaS Businesses Need To Get Branding & Content Right

Today’s SaaS businesses must learn how to get ahead in an increasingly competitive market.

There are currently over 10,000 private SaaS companies, and the average startup spends 92% of its first-year revenue on customer acquisition. So, it’s vital that SaaS companies have a strong branding and content marketing strategy in place to stand out from the competition.

Marketing SaaS products can be more challenging than marketing a traditional software product. Brand awareness is often an issue as many SaaS tools are produced by startups and small businesses that are not established in the marketplace.

SaaS tools also change more frequently than traditional software. It can be difficult to keep your audience up to date and position your product above your competitors.

Quick Takeaways

It’s not enough for SaaS companies to have a good product. Branding and content are critical to rise above the competition.

Developing a strong brand personality and voice is vital, as is clear brand positioning.

Content and brand storytelling is a great way to get exposure for your new SaaS business.

Establish a Strong Brand Presence and Voice

Setting your brand apart from the competition is critical in an overcrowded marketplace. With many SaaS solutions having similar functionality and pricing, potential customers are likely to choose the option with the strongest branding.

Focus on your brand’s unique selling point. What makes you a better choice than the other options?

Gartner points out that today’s consumers are so flooded with information that they can be too overwhelmed to make a purchase decision. So establishing a strong brand is critical.

The key to successful brand positioning is clearly explaining the problem that your SaaS tool solves. For example:

Asana simplifies the problem of excessive workloads by simplifying project management.

Hubspot solves the problem of having too many marketing tools and having difficulty following up leads.

Slack solves the problem of communication between teams being in several different places.

Zendesk solves the problem of customer support tickets being lost or taking too long to resolve.

Docusign solves the issue of documents and contracts needing physical signatures when communicating remotely.

Dropbox solves the problem of keeping files synced between different devices and sharing them securely with others.

It’s common for SaaS companies to get so caught up with promoting their features that they overlook branding. But in a world where many similar products and services are vying for attention, branding is vital to get your name noticed and remembered.

Just consider the instantly recognizable logo and imagery of Slack as a great example of how to do branding right.

The Importance of Content

Sometimes a good old-fashioned blog post can be the best way to let the world know about your product or service, particularly if you’re a brand-new company. But it’s got to be told in a story format.

Content Marketing for SaaS is so important for the fast-moving tech sector mainly because you can show results. Brands can use the “newsjacking” technique to jump on new trends and news stories and to raise awareness for their SaaS solutions at the same time.

Content marketing is not only important for getting the word out about your expertise. It also helps you to get links and mentions in social media and traditional media. Being mentioned in media publications also brings legitimacy to your brand, increases customer trust, and can be a big boost for SEO too.

A mention or link in a big online publication could bring you a huge increase in instant traffic, thousands of potential new customers, and that all-important social proof.

Investing in content marketing can be a very affordable form of PR too. You don’t need the services of a PR agency. A well-written article with data, images, or a newsworthy angle can do the job just as well.

Get Serious About Social

According to research by Sprout Social, 84% of consumers would prefer to buy from a brand they follow on social media over a competitor brand.

Your social media accounts are as important to branding as your logo. Ensure that you have clear social media guidelines written up, including details on brand “voice.”

With social media, it’s particularly important that your brand has a personality. Nobody wants to follow dull and generic corporate social media accounts.

The personality and tone of the language you use on social media is an important part of your branding. Make sure it matches your audience.

For example, time-tracking SaaS Toggl represents its friendly and fun brand personality on Facebook with casual language, emoticons, and colorful graphics.

According to research from Sprout Social, the brand personality traits consumers most value on social media are honesty, friendliness, and helpfulness. Keep this insight in mind when creating your brand personality.

Why Saas Businesses Need To Invest in Content Marketing

Many SaaS brands are not household names like traditional software companies such as Adobe and Microsoft. Because of this, they need to work harder on brand awareness. Small companies also have a smaller budget to work with than the industry giants.

Plus, SaaS companies need to focus on building long-term relationships with their customers. Most SaaS brands are hoping to retain customers for several years. This is quite different from marketing traditional software, which may well focus on making a single sale for each customer.

These factors make content marketing an ideal fit for SaaS brands. High-quality content can inform an audience that your brand and product exists and demonstrate why they may need it.

SaaS solutions are often more affordable and flexible than traditional software. SaaS brands can use these advantages to promote their product. But some companies remain unaware of what exactly SaaS is or that it would be a good fit for them. Educational content can help these companies to understand the benefits they will get from switching to SaaS.

If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content published consistently, check out our Content Builder Service. Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today — and generate more traffic and leads for your business.

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