3 Powerful Content Ideas for Your B2B E-Commerce Email Newsletter

 

3 Powerful Content Ideas for Your B2B E-Commerce Email Newsletter

 

Bringing in over $40 for every $1 invested (talk about huge ROI), email is one of the most cost-effective and time-tested digital marketing channels that’s particularly useful for B2B businesses. Here are a few concrete numbers explaining why:

 

– B2B marketing emails see a 23% higher click-to-open ratio than B2C emails.

 

59% of B2B marketers cite email as their top channel for revenue generation.

 

79% of B2B marketers find email to be the most successful channel for content distribution.

 

So, the power of a well-thought-out email newsletter is crystal clear. The question is – besides sending the usual promotional emails (which are, more often than not, ignored) with special offers, seasonal discounts, and personalized promotions, what can you offer to your newsletter subscribers? How do you keep them engaged with your brand using content instead of making them hit “unsubscribe” with repeated direct promotions?

 

As challenging as this is, here are top three powerful content ideas for your B2B e-commerce email newsletter to keep your subscribers interested:

 

• Listicles

 

Creating and sharing quick and easy-to-read top lists of virtually anything related to your industry is one of the best ways to keep your subscribers hooked. The subject line for this type of email should crisply explain what the recipients will gain if they go through the entire content.

 

According to studies in psychology, our minds react favorably to listicles as they provide a sum of information we would otherwise have to amass by going through separate articles, reports, or statistical analysis – all of which require additional time and effort.

 

It goes without saying that the more comprehensive the list, the more value that it holds for your subscriber. However, make sure the long list is scannable with properly formatted bullets and catchy font. Likewise, the more creatively you write the content itself – with the right blend of humor and statistics – the higher are the odds of it being enjoyed and shared by your audience.

 

Curated Content

 

To build credibility and exhibit thought leadership, every business owner should keep in touch with the latest events in their industry and share them in a personalized, easy-to-digest manner – such as an email newsletter.

 

That is, delivering handpicked information and content relevant and useful to your target audience is a great way to present yourself as a valuable source of information, rather than just promoting your products or services.

 

Such emails can be in the form of a biweekly or monthly series and, in addition, it’s a good idea to deliver the gist of each piece by writing a short blurb and place a link to the entire article.

 

Success Stories

 

You may think of it as self-promotion, but if your clients used your product/service and it helped them grow their own business or benefitted them in a substantial way, then don’t hesitate to share that information with the rest of your subscribers.

 

You can create a short case study that illustrates exactly how you contributed to the success of another business. As your subscribers are also obviously keen on growing their own businesses, sending an occasional case study would be appreciated by the readers and they’d love to dive deeper into what you have to offer.

 

Over to You

 

While there are many other tactics you can use to keep subscribers engaged, the ones discussed above are relatively low-effort and high-rewarding ones that you can implement right away. Plus, all three of these tactics will contribute to building your brand’s thought leadership within your industry.

 

Lastly, make sure to use your brand’s unique voice in every newsletter you send out and always be authentic.

 
Author Bio:
 

Aanya Rachel is the Content Manager at The Address, a coworking space in Ahmedabad. She loves sharing her industry knowledge and insights on topics related to coworking, real estate, business, and startups. She enjoys live music, traveling, and reading comic books.

How To Increase Your Business Through Digital Marketing

 

How To Increase Your Business Through Digital Marketing

 

Small-company individuals own it started from the digital age. They are using a vast width of choices to get your name around via email advertisements and digital marketing programs. The possibilities and mixtures will be virtually infinite. While that’s a massive benefit to this present entrepreneur, it might also be overwhelming. Listed below are several old digital advertisements and promotion strategies to get you all started.

 

Before dive right into, you’ll discover a couple of fundamental questions that need to be answered. Your electronic advertising program should ultimately pave the way to your long- term and – temporary small business objectives. Answer the questions before start:

 

Who is my audience?

 

Concentrate on creating client personas. They need to encircle each one of the features that you wish to get in your ideal customer, such as:

 
● Age
● Gender
● Geographical location
● Motivations
● Challenges
● Private interests
● Shopping preferences
 

Yet another valuable exercise would be to recognize the sort of customer that you don’t require and provide a wide berth to promotion content that may inadvertently attract them.

 

What is my ultimate aim?

 

Assessing your objectives before creating your electronic marketing strategy guarantees that you won’t be barking up the wrong tree. Are you currently searching to boost site traffic? Decrease cart abandonment? Build your email list, Boost average cost quantity? Create higher customer loyalty, increase brand awareness?

 

As you can see, one electronic approach wouldn’t hit every one of these regions, so plan accordingly. Which tools do not have? Assess the automated means you have already spent in and ascertain if they are viable, require tweaking, or ought to be retired.

 

By this time, you have probably already established some automated campaigns and lost cash on the resources to achieve that. It is not unusual to forget that you have got some subscription support for, for instance, email blasts. Assessing the cobwebs away and ascertain if it is still fulfilling your demands. Odds are, together with your new digital approach, you can revamp your usage of previous advertising tools and begin getting a return on your investment.

 

Primary Digital-marketing Channels:

 

1) Marketing with Email

 

Email communication is among the most straightforward approaches to stay before one’s customer base. Send purposeful company upgrades and promotions, and request customer testimonials, and remind a client they have left items within their online shopping cart software, etc.

 

Strategies for email advertising:

 

● Personalize using receiver’s title time suitably.

 

● The ideal time to ship your email is from the day or on weekends if people are not around the clock.

 

● Incorporate topic lines over 70 characters Long.

 

2) Social Networking

 

Having the capability to pinpoint target audience associates. Social networking provides powerful tools to strengthen your digital marketing and advertising campaigns. The drills we suggested earlier in the day play a role here.

 

For instance, if your perfect customer is a business professional, you will wish to concentrate on LinkedIn. Should they are millennial, and then Twitter and Instagram are more appropriate. Meet with your clientele at which they are at. For more help pinpointing the perfect social-media stations for the company, visit this article.

 
Social Networking
 

Try one of these Hints on the next social Networking Effort:

 

● Cross-promote using a Free Company.

 

● Host a Competition.

 

● Survive Facebook or Instagram Stories and Produce a Set.

 

● Re-post user-generated content.

 

● Article ‘Label a Buddy’ content comprising it into a promotion, event or holiday.

 

● Poll your followers.

 

3) Content marketing

 

Including valuable and relevant material along with your digital advertising platforms, increases your odds of generating organic traffic. Use videos, blogs, infographics, and white papers to entice clients for you based on internet search engine success. To learn more with your article advertising plan, take a look at this article.

 

Content Tip

 

For those who have marketing bits that have been especially successful using a digital medium, then reformat it to work across your electronic advertising stations. Give it a small refresh or correct the language, whether it’s unique to its primary usage. Still, if you have had success using a specific message, either call or promotion to activity, capitalize on it.

 

4) Mobile Strategy

 

A cell plan usually takes many shapes, based on the tools you’ve got available. It is possible to work effective mobile-marketing through interpersonal networking and also a mobile-friendly site. Or, you may make an authentic cell application. A cell application is useful as a result of customization possibilities.

 
Mobile Strategy
 

Advantages of a program:

 

● You can send alarms.

 

● You Can Quickly employ a client loyalty application.

 

● Your emblem appears on customers’ dwelling displays always.

 

● Clients benefit from the simplicity of performing business point and click on trades and communications.

 

There are several program construction services; therefore, you should not begin learning code any time in the future! Organizations like AppsBuilder, BuildFire, and also AppyPie allow you to customize your cellular application based on your own precise needs.

 

5) Pay-to-Play Advertising

 

A lot of options here, including paid societal networking advertisements, pay-per-play music advertisements, pay per click advertisements, Google Adwords, etc.. You are essentially creating digital billboards Except with an electronic digital “billboard,” you decide that views your advertisement, where you can make the most of your ROI.

 

Cross-promote every one of these marketing stations to make sure clients are receiving communications at which they are most receptive. Include links to an own social networking page on each email burst, make an advertisement on social networking directed toward bringing leads and get info or drive traffic for your most recent blog post by way of a link into your most recent societal networking article.

 

The key to digital marketing will be to narrow your attention when casting a broad net. Sounds oxymoronic but are confident that this is simultaneously potential. What we believe is that all of your digital campaigns need to possess a particular goal using a specific audience in your mind, and you ought to be running several campaigns at one moment.

 
Author Bio:
 

Rishabh Gupta is an SEO executive at IT Company in Malaysia, where he handles all works related to SEO, SMO, PPC, Content Writing and Email Marketing.

Know 10 Facts Why Self E-mail Server Hosting is Found Hard

 

Know 10 Facts Why Self E-mail Server Hosting is Found Hard

 

As the popularity of cloud hosting services is snowballing by the day, e-mail marketing is also earning popularity at a very large scale. To properly engage in e-mail marketing, one has to create an email server for this purpose and can host it either on its own or can take the help of an email-based cloud hosting system. Though it is very much possible to run your mail server but usually not considered the best option to opt for. But according to the latest marketing trends, the demands for email marketing are nowhere going out of fashion. The reasons given in the article will validate the point that why one should not run your mail server. Apart from some primary reasons for it being complicated and time-consuming, there are others. So without wasting any further time let’s get acquainted by all of them sequentially-

 

Creates an extra responsibility

 

Apart from handling the critical part of your business, handling an email server on top of it is a frenzied situation. The emails are going to pile up and despite all the technological advancement, you will find yourself inside a hornet’s nest. Back in the ’90s, it was comparatively very much easier to run your mail server as the number of SPAM’s was lesser to quite a considerable level.

 

Plentiful of components to manage

 

Email servers are not that easy to set up as it sounds. It requires so many important components and they all have to be modulated together. The most important components are-

 

Mail Transfer Agent

 

It is a mail transfer agent or a mail relay software that transfers mail from one computer to another using SMTP.

 

Mail Delivery Agent

 

It is a computer software component that is responsible for the delivery of email messages to a local recipient’s mailbox.

 

IMAP and POP3 server

 

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) makes sure that the message does not remain on the local device and it remains on the server and POP3 (Post Office Protocol) attempts to keep the mail located on the local device.

 

And these software requirements are not enough, your mail servers will be needing a domain name, DNS (Domain Name System) records and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate.

 

Spam e-mails are a juggernaut to deal with

 

The most undesired things of the decade are these spam e-mails and the mail server requires a multi-layer security check to prevent them from appearing unnecessarily. The spammers have become so smart that now they send spam e-mails in different formats and types. Some of the common forms in which they usually come are cheap product advertisements, fictitious hoaxes, phishing e-mails or malware. The most breakneck type amongst all is the phishing e-mails as they are usually send under the name of trusted banks and are running as fault practices just to earn easy money. These phishing spammers are qualified to be called as criminals as they are fooling people by winning their confidence to provide them with their bank account details by deception.

 

Though nothing can save you from receiving spam completely, yet there are ways to minimize them. Components like a Spam filter, antiviruses, etc. there is a possibility to minimize them if cannot be nullified.

 

But all these become tough to manage on your own if you are managing your e-mail server. Hence cloud hosting is preferred.

 

To be always updated

 

If the already mentioned challenges are not enough then there are more worth mentioning. All the spam filtering components, antiviruses, etc. feel the necessity to be updated on regular intervals. To keep a check on all the upcoming updates needs some extra hours of the day.

 

Self-E-mail server hosting is overly time-consuming-

 

All the maintenance tasks and 24/7 checks consume so much time that at some point in time it seems useless to devote so much time which is not your core job at first.

 

Troubleshooting blacklist and other similar glitches

 

Most of the people think that handling e-mail is a daily task so what hindrances can self-email server hosting can introduce. But it is not as simple as handling personal email, things like blacklisting cannot be easily discarded. Your email server once enters the blacklist, then you will be unable to send the e-mails to the intended recipients. Misconfigurations in the mail server components or faults in the spam filter etc. all these problems are not easy to troubleshoot.

 

You are the decision-maker

 

Although maintaining the mail server for yourself makes you the decision-maker but a single issue in the functionality and the whole onus lies on your shoulders. There are so many various important decisions you will have to make in the areas you might not be having full knowledge of. With all these alternatives present then why to lose peace of mind.

 

Cost is one of the major concern

 

The cloud e-mail system provides all these services at such low costs that cannot be ignored in front of all the other advantages.

 

Have to come up with freshly brewed content daily-

 

To address your customers in a better way, your mails should have customer engaging content. This coming up with fresh and distinguishable content eventually becomes burdensome. Interactive content is the fuel for email marketing and hence to be productive your emails must be integrated with constant dynamic content.

 

Less availability of hard drive space

 

In self-email server hosting, there is not much availability of hard drive space whereas dozens of gigabytes of space are required.

 
Author Bio:
 

Sanchita Mittal is a dynamic technophile, writing on all aspects of the hosting technological world. With wide and deep experience of covering all matters related to STEM, She wants to be at the forefront of technology, whether it is already applied in real life or still in the R & D lab. She has an active appearance on CloudOYE belvedere, always ready for the enthusiast technical approach.

How Email Marketing Can Boost Sales of a Business?

 

How Email Marketing Can Boost Sales of a Business?

 

As a business owner, it can be overwhelming to choose an effective marketing strategy to invest in. Especially when you have never-ending ways to promote your business on social media, blogging sites or even publish press releases to share the news with your loyal audience. Nonetheless, according to recent studies, more and more customers are interested in receiving their marketing materials through emails, making email marketing one of the most useful and result-oriented strategies for businesses.

 

Email Marketing offers the easiest ways to boost your business even better than other channels. You can expect impressive ROI as newsletters present better options for customization than social media platforms. Moreover, there are over 3.45 email accounts out there. So, considering email marketing as a sales booster strategy can be a great idea for your business.

 

Email marketing is also a budget-friendly option than other marketing strategies. A social media ad or Google ad will cost you a few bucks or more after every click. Email marketing requires less investment than that. Moreover, you have the freedom of automating newsletter campaigns with a low budget. Therefore, email marketing seems a better option to boost your business sales. Let’s how email marketing will do that for you.

 

Email Marketing can drive your business sales. Let’s see ‘how’?

 

When it comes to set your marketing goals, you expect your emails to pay off in sales. To bring increased sales, you need to share the most relevant information about your company or brand by using emails so that customers can understand the value of your products and services. That leads to increased sales.

 

But do you know what kinds of emails can bring in the sales? One of the best ways to boost your sales via email marketing is to know the variety of emails that you can send to your customers. Let’s discuss, which types of emails can be effectively used to drive your sales. Please take a look.

 

Promotional Email

 

A promotional email is a kind of commercial broadcast that is used to offer incentives with the purpose of increasing sales and revenue of a business. And, what is the better option than enticing a customer with a great deal? The motive of email marketing is to compel customers to make a purchase. By pitching a great deal will make the customer save a few bucks. Moreover, your bottom line will get a boost. Isn’t amazing? Keep in mind, these types of emails aren’t just for great deals or 50% discount offers, they can also contain other benefits like free shipping or free product trial.

 

New-Arrivals Email

 

Encouraging your customers for repeat purchases is always an important driver of sales or revenue for any business. It is more convenient to keep existing customers than acquiring new ones. So, when you add a new product or renew your stock, spread the words via email for updating your customers. In these types of emails, you can also include a link of the product to enable the customer to buy it instantly. Many famous electronic manufacturers use such emails whenever they launch a new product in the market. Add new images of the product, send emails to the relevant audience, and keep them focused on your marketing goal which is to bring in the sales.

 

Every promotional email or new-arrival email sent by you can bring your customer a few steps closer to making a purchase. That is why sending a variety of emails is considered as the best marketing strategy. These types of emails can build a trusted relationship with your customers and improve your brand awareness – both play an important role in the buying process.

 

Keep Changing the Email Campaign Content

 

People really don’t like to check emails if they know that every email is sent for promotional purposes. You have to build trust that you are offering them something valuable. Therefore, changing your email campaign content can be a good idea.

 

If this time, you have sent a promotional content in the emails, then next time, try to replace it with product information or a newsletter. That way, your audience will receive something informational and won’t mind opening a promotional email sent by you. Keep in mind, when it comes to promotional emails, you can offer coupons or things like free delivery.

 

Your Customers Should Keep Coming Back to You

 

Opting for email marketing services can help build a lasting relationship with customers. At the end of the day, you expect to convert at least one customer into a loyal customer who will keep coming back to make a purchase. A well-planned email marketing strategy helps you transform this goal into a reality.

 

Reach out to your customers regularly with encouraging content. A regular email is just like a spontaneous meeting with your customers that leads to a purchase. To keep your customers back into the purchasing cycle, send reorder emails, ‘we miss you’ emails and emails mentioning product usage tips.

 

Always Welcome your Newly signed up Customers

 

Newly signed up customers should always be welcomes with a welcome email. This email can provide them all the information about your company and its products. It will be just like a quite introduction round when a new customer enters a local shop. This email comprises introduction details and promotional content.

 

Apart from these types of emails, testimonial emails, newsletters, industry news, and holiday emails also helps in encouraging a nurturing relationship with your customers.

 

In Conclusion

 

If you own a business, then email marketing is undoubtedly a powerful tool to drive your business growth and sales. All you need to do is to leverage the actual potential of email marketing tactics. Be it a new stock notice or review request email, you should know how to use it at the right time and with the right audience. Use relevant email marketing tools that are available in the market and start sending some highly innovative email campaigns to drive sales and revenue.

 
Author Bio
 

Ajay is an Email Marketing expert at Ads and Url. He also has a specialization in SEO. Apart from SEO and email marketing proficiency, he loves to write blogs and articles based on search engine optimization, web development, email marketing, etc.

Top 8 Ideas for Your Email Marketing Campaign

 

Top 8 Ideas for Your Email Marketing Campaign

 

Introduction-

 

Email marketing is an important Inbound marketing channel for generating and nurturing b2c and b2b leads. One of the biggest reasons why marketers rely on email is that it is used widely and by people of all ages and professions. Research shows that in the US alone, 90.1% of people aged 15 to 65+ use email on a regular basis. It stands to reason therefore that you can reach much of your audience and build relationships with them if you make email marketing part of your lead generation campaigns.

 

Besides reaching wider audiences, email marketing delivers results cost-effectively. But whereas you may be aware of all these advantages and may indeed have been using email for lead generation, coming up with new and inspiring ideas can be difficult. Without new ideas, your campaigns will be dull and won’t inspire any clicks. To create email marketing campaigns that deliver results, you must be constantly innovative and evolve your approach to make your audience excited every time they see an email from you.

 

In this article, we will show you 8 ideas used and trusted by the best email marketing services and that will make your emails worth clicking on.

 

Top 8 ideas to revamp your email marketing campaign

 

1. Personalize your message

 

All lead generation services worth their salt will tell you that as the online space becomes more competitive, one-size-fits-all messages are quickly losing their effectiveness and are being replaced by personalized messages. Consumers too are asking for a personalized experience.

 

Personalized emails work for the following reasons:

 

• They appear tailor-made for the specific recipient, hence stand out among other promotional emails. More so, by personalizing, your audience will receive content that is right for them.

 

• They are more likely to be opened and read. According to campaign monitor, marketers who personalize their emails experience a 26% increase in open rates.

 

• Segmentation, a practice that enables personalization, results in better revenue and ROI. Research from DMA shows that participants experienced a 58% increase in revenue by segmenting and sending targeted emails.

 

But how, while marketing to thousands of people, can you make each one of your customers feel treated as an individual?

 

You can do so by making small changes to your emails such as:

 

• Instead of a generic greeting, address the recipient by name. If possible, the name should also be in the subject line.

 

• Customize content for your recipient. This is especially important when sending retargeting emails, in that your content should directly address what your prospect did when they were last online. Send them an offer for that product they looked at.

 

2. Increase engagement with video content

 

Video content has been shown to cultivate user interest and increase engagement. Even just including the word “video” in the subject can increase open rates. Experian, for instance, reported increased email open rates from 7% to 13% by mentioning “video” in the email subject. They also experienced conversion rates that were 21% higher where they included video in an email.

 

You can include video in your email using the following methods.

 
Embed video
 

Services like MailChimp and Vidyard make it possible to embed videos in an email. Embedding a video reduce the number of times your subscribers must click, giving them a more pleasant and efficient experience. This is especially the case for subscribers using mobile, where more clicks can quickly result in frustration, hence abandonment and fewer conversions.

 
Use a video thumbnail
 

A thumbnail is a video (or image) that typifies the content in your video. For your thumbnails to attract viewers, they should hint at the larger content in the video. Including a play button on a thumbnail is also a great way to attract viewers to click. Below is an example:

 
Use a video thumbnail
Image source: Vidyard
 

You can make your thumbnails more effective by customizing them to your audience.

 

Authenticity is key when you want to attract clicks. As such, invest some time in developing your own artwork instead of using stock graphics that may not relay your brand’s message effectively.

 

3. Include GIFs

 

In a bid to make your brand appear professional, you may put measures in place such as a set email template or specific wording and imagery. Unfortunately, this could result in marketing messages that are too formal, stiff and unnatural and near impossible to personalize. As you well know, personalization increases open rates, as evidenced by countless b2b marketing trends (including those mentioned above).

 

Granted, depending on your brand or audience, formal messaging formats and wording might be the only way to convey your message. But you can still stick to your messaging and use GIFs to give your emails more character. You can custom make your own GIFs with tools like Giphy, GIFmaker, imgflips among others.

 

One of the advantages of using GIFs is that they will help you to better demonstrate a point. For example, during their launch of XPS 12, DELL used a GIF in their marketing campaign to show people how the laptop easily converts into a tablet. Below were the campaign results:

 

• 6% higher email open rate

• 42% higher email click rate

• Increase in conversion by 103%

• 109% increase in revenue.

 

GIFs aren’t just useful in product launches. You can also include them in your welcome or thank you emails. A great example is this GIF by Greetabl, a company that specializes in gift cards.

 
image source reallygoodemails
Image Source reallygoodemails
 

So, next time you want to send a welcome or thankyou email to your clients, think about sending a GIF instead of plain text or image.

 

4. Improve your sales recovery strategy with cart abandonment emails

 

65% of shoppers abandon the checkout process before completing a purchase. This is known as cart abandonment and it is the very reason why you should put a lot of emphasis in improving your lead nurturing process.

 

You may not convince all cart abandoners to go back and complete checkout because not all leads ever intend to complete a transaction. However, some customers may have last minute doubts or just feel like they need to do some more research. Others may have a problem with their payment method or other technical difficulties. Such customers are highly likely to come back, but they need that extra nudge, which you can provide with cart abandonment emails.

 

Cart abandonment emails will keep you top of mind among customers that don’t convert. If you don’t engage such customers, they will forget you. While ecommerce emails have a 15% average open rate, data from SaleCycle shows that their abandonment emails attract more than double that average for multiple industries.

 

To increase the likelihood of conversion, reiterate the benefits of your offering in your email. You can also offer an incentive such as free shipping, free consultation/installation, free samples, or a buy-one-get one free offer.

 

Below is an example of a cart abandonment email below from New Pig:

 
abandonment email example. image from practical ecommerce
Image Source: practical ecommerce
 

5. Overhaul transactional emails

 

For most companies, transactional emails are just that; they serve to complete a transaction between you and the customer. But your transactional emails can be a valuable inbound marketing tool. Every email you send to an existing customer or lead represents an opportunity to connect and possibly convert. So why not use transactional emails for that!

 

Note that transactional emails are not just the email you send after a customer makes a purchase. Other transactional emails include:

 

• Welcome and thank you emails

• Account status updates e.g invoices, loyalty points, discounts

• Monthly billing updates

• Email address confirmation during a double-opt in subscription process

• Notification and reminders

• Support emails

• Error alerts

• Reengagement emails (with inactive customers)

 

Although transactional emails are automated and may not serve any marketing purposes, they are still important for the following reasons:

 

• They add a personalized touch to your brand.

• They are based on behavioral data, hence have high relevance and value to the recipient

• Since they trigger following an action, they are timed to reach and grab their target’s attention

• They help to build a bond between you and your customers because they are responding to something the customer is interested in.

• They close communication gaps and thereby make your brand look reliable

 

6. Try out different image types

 

There are many claims online that some images are more effective than others in marketing campaigns. Such claims may trigger questions such as:

 

• Should I use product images or images of people in my emails?

• Should the people be models or real clients?

• Is it better to illustrate or should I use real photographs?

 

It is a fact that some images have been shown to perform better than others. Nielsen Norman group for instance found that big “feel-good photos” that are decorative tend to be ignored, while images with real people attract more interest.

 

But while this may be the case, the only way to know which image will work best for YOUR audience is to experiment with different types. More importantly, as with any other type of content, images should portray relevant information, for them to be considered valuable.

 

Try out different types and A/B test them to find the ones that result in higher open rates.

 

7. Showcase your testimonials

 

Testimonials are your online version of “word-of-mouth”. A report by Nielsen shows that 92% of people trust their family’s and friends’ recommendations more than other forms of advertising. A well-timed testimonial sent to an abandoning customer may help to redirect such a customer back to their cart to convert. Similarly, a testimonial can allay doubts for customers in the consideration phase. As well, you can use testimonials to upsell your other products or solutions.

 

Note that whereas testimonials validate your brand and the expertise that you offer, they can work against you if they are fluffy or vague. As such,

 

• Only market your brand with testimonials that are specific and tangibly show positive impact. Customers may not always know what this looks like, so when asking for testimonials, ask your customers specific questions.

• More so, ensure the testimonials are given by real people. It’s always likely that your prospects will try to verify your customers’ existence, so any name you give should link back to a real person working in a real company.

• Lastly, tailor your testimonials to speak to your targeted demographics.

 

In your future email campaigns, integrate testimonials in emails sent throughout the buyer cycle.

 

8. Create habits

 

Consistency is an important element of successful email marketing. Without consistency, customers and any leads you are nurturing will quickly forget you and move on to another brand. Not only does your audience want you to send them he information they expect, they also want you to send it to them when they expect it. This approach works wonders for webinars, live videos and podcasts, and you can effectively use it to get your audience to look forward to your emails once they’ve come to expect them at an exact time or day.

 

Consistency creates habits, which will in turn benefit you in the following ways:

 
Boost sales
 

Say for instance that you send out a coupon every two weeks. After a few coupons, customers will start looking forward to them and prepare to take advantage of future coupons by buying more.

 
Educate Customers
 

Content is all about educating customers and quite often, it may take more than a series of emails for customers to feel comfortable with their level of knowledge. The more regularly you send content, the shorter the length of time the education process takes and the more effective the process.

 
Build relationships
 

Consistency will also keep you more in touch with prospects and existing customers, making it easier to nurture relationships with them.

 
Fulfill expectations
 

People subscribe to your emails because they want to receive them. Whenever you send them an email, you fulfill this need and when you don’t send, you disappoint your subscribers.

 
Building brand image
 

Consistency makes your brand appear professional and capable. If you don’t send emails on the expected date and time, subscribers begin to wonder about your brand’s level of professionalism and may deem you incapable of handling their business.

 

Conclusion

 

There you have it! 8 ideas that when implemented, can revolutionize how you run email campaigns. We appreciate that while they sound easy on paper, these ideas can take time and energy to implement, hence we encourage you to use b2b lead generation services where possible.

 

That said, as you implement the ideas we have discussed above, you need to ask yourself whether your email list is well segmented. This is because even with the best campaign ideas, you are unlikely to succeed if your message is not received by its intended target.

 

Additionally (and this is a bonus idea), implement a referral programme among customers with whom you have built trust so that they can spread your brand message on your behalf. In every email you send your regular customers, include a referral link and where possible, offer an incentive for referrals.

Email Vs. Text Marketing: Which Channel to Choose for Lead Generation

 

Email Vs. Text Marketing: Which Channel to Choose for Lead Generation

 

Email marketing has been around for a couple of decades, earlier than text messaging was even created. But did email marketing become better through its history than SMS marketing? We’ll find that out in this article.

 

The advantage of one over another in terms of lead generation is not absolute. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. There are five factors to consider for email and SMS marketing comparison.

 

1. Open Rate

 

Email is convenient to use and it’s free. This makes it useful for work, studies, promotions and etc. The multifunctionality seems like an advantage, yet it is not here. The reason is that people use multiple email accounts and they don’t pay attention to every message they receive there. Moreover, when they receive too many promotional messages, most of them end up in the spam.

 

Compared to email, people only have one channel to receive an SMS with. They don’t receive tons of text messages daily, so they pay more attention to their text messages. Besides, people prefer text messages for more personal communication.

 

Because of these reasons, text messages have higher open rates than emails. In fact, text messages have around 98% open rates, whereas email has about 20-40%. This corresponds with their ability to generate leads too, which gives an obvious edge to SMS marketing in this category.

 

2. Response Rate

 

Generally, email response rates depend on the database and content of the message. Cheaper databases have more random emails, so most messages either don’t reach anyone or end up in the spam folder. Regarding the content, private offers or other similar promotional messages tend to get higher response rates.

 

SMS response rates don’t depend on anything but the content. People prefer to receive special offers through SMS. Therefore, text messages that offer something special are more likely to get responded.

 

The actual numbers for email and SMS response rates are respectively around 6% and 45%. Moreover, most text messages are opened within 90 seconds after being received. This increases the chances for lead generation by text messaging, giving yet another point to SMS marketing.

 

3. Cost

 

Sending an email is obviously free, so it should’ve gotten an advantage here immediately. However, it is not as simple as that. Companies need bots to send automatic messages, sort them out and obtain statistics. Lead generation would be totally ineffective without those tools.

 

SMS marketing cost is mostly the price of each message. Providers usually offer the rest of sorting out and sending automatic text messages. Typically, the prices are different for each country and cell phone mobile carrier.

 

SMS marketing can cost companies from $20 up to $80 per 1000 messages. On the other hand, the price for email marketing bots start from $9 and can reach to $1000 monthly. Considering that most companies choose cheaper packages and they still help them generate leads, email wins this category.

 

4. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

 

Click through rate measures the ratio of clicks on the links that a promotional message contains. It is one of the most precise measures to understand the number of generated leads. Email CTR depends on the nature of the email campaign and its call-to-action degree. Usually, personal offers and discount messages get higher CTR.

 

SMS CTR is also affected by the type of the campaign. The issue here is that people reading emails obviously have an internet connection. Whereas text message receivers may not have one when they receive an SMS, which can affect the click-through rate.

 

Regarding the percentages, text messages have 19% CTR as compared to emails, which have only 3.2%. The main reason for such a difference is that text messages are shorter and people prefer receiving them over emails. Higher CTR means that SMS has a higher chance to generate leads, so it wins in this category.

 

5. Personalization

 

Personalization is essential for marketers because it makes customers feel special. Emails do a great job here allowing marketers to use various visuals to make their messages more appealing. Although it has a character limit, no reasonable message can ever pass that limit. This creates more room to get creative and personalize messages for customers.

 

Text messages also allow marketers to personalize offers and promotions. Most SMS providers have built-in templates for personalized offers. However, marketers are bound within 160 characters and can’t pass that limit.

 

Since email has much more space to use text and visuals, it is more practical for personalization than text messages. Thus, this gives an edge to email here, making the overall score 3:2, meaning that text message marketing is still better for lead generation. Indeed, it is more effective with a slightly higher price.

 
Author Bio:
 

Azat Eloyan is a digital marketer and mobile marketing enthusiast. With over 5 years’ experience in content marketing and SEO, he believes that valuable and informative content is the key. He currently is working as a marketing specialist at SendSMS which is providing SMS marketing service globally.

Top 8 Email Marketing Tools To Improve Your Marketing Campaigns

 

Top 8 Email Marketing Tools To Improve Your Marketing Campaigns

 

A robotic email campaign is meant for sending a series of emails automatically, triggered by the actions of email subscribers. The click rate of automated emails is much more than manually sent mails and email marketing is still one of the most effective marketing channels for businesses to achieve gigantic conversions.

 

The key advantage of email marketing automation is that it facilitates companies to obtain clients trust and hence huge return on investment (ROI). This article provides information about the top 8 email marketing tools to get the most out your marketing campaigns and boost your business.

 

1. Constant Contact

 

Constant Contact is an easy to use tool because it is user-friendly and very easy to set up. It is widely used across the globe because of its fantastic support, widespread online training, and webinars to assist you in achieving your goals.

 

This tool is also used to manage event invitations and registrations. Its drag and drop features make designing and customization of email templates very simple. Moreover, mobile mobile-responsive emails have generated that fit on any device.

 

2. Litmus

 

Litmus is an extremely flexible tool used to test and track email. It is free for a 7-day trial period and you have to pay after that. This tool enables you to test your emails in usual web-clients and all famous mobile devices like Apple, Android, etc.

 

It provides efficient link testing by putting the email during a landing page test and very soon you get data about that email with full results for each link. The ESP tracking report will show you the required subscriber data like where the mail was read, time spent by the user in reading that mail, and whether it was forwarded or printed.

 

3. Mail Chimp

 
Mail Chimp
 

Mail Chimp is a great tool to collect statistics, send emails, and enhance the performance of your marketing efforts. The dashboard of this tool provides options to import lists, build and launch campaigns, and continue to grow your audience.

 

You can also choose to mail everyone or only a particular segment in your list and the process can also be easily customized as per your needs. Besides triggering emails, it also offers integration of social media to post the routine updates.

 

4. Drip

 

Drip is a very resourceful email marketing tool including various features like message personalization, complete data analytics, , integration with e-commerce platforms like Shopify, etc. Both text-based and visual tools are available for generating emails which you can use to make effective image-driven marketing campaigns accompanied with follow-up messages to individual users.

 

It also has a conversion tracking feature which enables businesses to monitor and control the performance of their email marketing campaigns.

 

5. Mailjet

 

Mailjet provides a convenient way to merge template-based marketing and transactional email sending in a sole app. Its inbuilt libraries allow you to include Mailjet support to your app in many languages like Python, PHP, etc. and integrate with open source platforms like WordPress and Magento.

 

The A/X testing feature of this tool helps you to test 10 distinct versions of your email so that you can determine which one is most appropriate for your purpose. You can also judge the performance of your previous campaigns against the current one and thus overcome the shortcomings for future campaigns. You can utilize the app’s UUI to build a campaign or use API integration and apply some code statements to initiate a formatted email campaign to your acquaintances.

 

6. Sendinblue

 
Sendinblue
 

Sendinblue software provides automation for both email marketing and SMS messages. You can use the drag & drop builder of this tool to make highly-engaging emails, robotic workflows, and segment users. You can continuously enhance your outcomes by A/B testing your subject lines.

 

7. Gumroad

 

The email feature of this tool allows you to group and store potential clients besides existing customers. You can then subdivide them on the basis of many features and send updates regarding your products. You have the option to customize the landing page as you wish, change colors or use CSS for any style.

 

8. GetResponse

 

GetResponse comes with an autoresponder tool to email your newsletters that are also integrated into your calendar. You can use drag and drop features for better calendar management and obtain leads with high converting landing pages. It also provides ready-made funnels to build a whole marketing campaign.

 
Author Bio:
 

Paru Saxena is the Sales head at TechIngenious, the leading company having top mobile app developers in India. He is passionate about writing and has been writing for the last 5 years. He has vast experience in digital marketing and web application development.

Things to Be Changed In Your Email Outreach

 

Things to Be Changed In Your Email Outreach

 

Outbound cold messaging has been in the market for a quite some time. However, what worked in the year 2014 might be obsolete now. That means you have to change your approach and make necessary changes to make sense out of your email outreach. Most importantly, you should get meaningful results. Let’s have a look at those aspects.

 

Stop littering inbox mindlessly:

 

If you are throwing e-mails like throwing leaflets from a helicopter, then you better get mindful now. Its never going to work. First, when you throw e-mails like leaflets, you are going to annoy people. That is not all; you are throwing e-mails without even seeking permission and this will greatly affect your credibility and sense of responsibility as a service provider.

 

Second, even if you manage to make some people get interested in your email, you are not going to get desired results because there is a certain difference between curiosity and true business relationship. Hence, make sure that you choose your prospects rightly and send highly personalized email.

 

Customize the template:

 

You might have heard a lot of telltale about stunning templates awesome effects. However, all those notions are just as bizarre as expecting your customers to read template that you have copied from the web. That is true! When you copy a template, you relegate your authenticity in the event because your readers are not going get surprised by this super idea of coping templates.

 

In fact, you should be more objective in your approach while creating templates. For instance, you have to know your audience groups’ browsing habits to craft effective templates.

 

The image below is a template creator that can help you in customizing your template. You can look at other’s e-mail template to understand how they craft their place. Learn, apply and grow.

 
Customize the template
Image source: contentauthority
 

Test your campaigns:

 

If one e-mail campaign fails to bring results, then it does not necessarily mean that you should stop sending cold e-mails. In fact, you should try different kinds of campaigns.

 
Test your campaigns
Image source: trynotlaughs
 

The above image is a screenshot of e-mail marketing analytic tool. You can certainly look at the open rate, click rate, CTO rates, bounce rate and unsubscribe rate to identify where things are going wrong.

 

After identifying the core areas where things look a little murky, you can craft emails again. For instance, a badly crafted subject line can affect your click rate. Similarly, an email with the less effective copy matter can increase the bounce rate. That is true! Small things can impact the overall performance of your e-mail campaign. So, make sure that you have the eye for detail. Experiment with a few formats and you will see that one will just work fine.

 

Do not start selling at your first email outreach:

 

If you think that you can persuade your prospects to buy your products and services, then you should be reevaluating your expectation. It is literary impossible to make a sale at the first attempt unless the prospect is in dire need for your products and services. Unfortunately, the chances are really remote for such situations.

 

So, make certain that you approach it humanely. Start a conversation, intrigue, welcome, introduce yourself and be keen on knowing your prospects. You cannot just build relationships just in two emails. Actually, it takes time to build relationships. So, ensure that you do not go overboard with your selling ideas.

 

Show a sense of urgency:

 

It is understandable that you want to read emails at your convenient time but you have to remember that it is not about what you like; in fact, it is about how responsive you are. If you fail to show interest and do not reply to your clients’ emails, then you might lose them. Out of a hundred emails, you might get one reply and you should never miss that opportunity to reply to the customer. You can end up making a huge deal if you respond properly.

 

Have a lean approach:

 

You might want to send e-mails in bulk but that is not an ideal way. Undoubtedly, you can reach more people but you need to get a bit more precise if you want to get better results. Make sure that you create small and different groups. Divide them and define the appropriately.

 

After defining the groups, create different campaigns for each group and send them. That is not the end-game; in fact, you should be testing the campaign’s efficiency by looking at the open rate and other metrics. For instance, if you discover that certain subject line has a better open rate, then you should try to create similar subject line.

 

Automate but remain human:

 

The new age digital users are looking for personalized communication. Therefore, you should personalize emails. There are various tools like Woodpecker that can send bulk emails that would be delivered to the inbox exactly the way you would send an e-mail manually. By sending e-mails through automation tools, you might get more replies.

 
Automate but remain human
Image source: Vabout
 

Consider deliver-ability:

 

The deliver-ability of your e-mails depends upon various factors that include the quality of your domain, server configuration, e-mail copy, delivery setting and quality of your client base.

 

Any factor lacking the quality can hamper your deliver-ability. Hence, ensure that you find out those deliver-ability factors so that you can change settings and your approach to get better results.

 

The below-mentioned snapshot explains those factors clearly and how it impacts your discoverability. It is not difficult to understand those metrics.

 
Consider deliverability
Image Source: Wassily
 

Final note:

 

You should go beyond the idea of numbers, data and metrics. It is understandable that people emphasize too much on numbers; however, you should be concentrating on results. A good open rate might look like glorifying factor but it would make no sense if it fails to deliver you results. So, ensure that you look at the metrics without getting overwhelmed by the idea of numbers.

 

The above-mentioned tips should be able to help you in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of your email content. Note; you need to be alert because what works today might become obsolete and ineffective soon.

 
Author Bio:
 

Shiva Kushwaha is a lead blogger and content marketer working with Ranking By SEO. He has been working in SEO industry since 2013. He has written on different digital marketing topics including, SEO, Link Building, Content marketing and so on.

 
Twitter: – https://twitter.com/bloggerShiva
LinkedIn:- https://www.linkedin.com/in/shivakushwaha/
Facebook: – https://www.facebook.com/shivakushwh

How To Be Creative with Your Email Campaign?

 

How To Be Creative with Your Email Campaign?

 

Email marketing is still one of the most tried and tested pillars of digital marketing, and ways to reach customers.

 

Different marketing trends have come and gone, but email marketing still stands as a steady source of traffic and conversions.

 

According to Campaign Monitor, email marketing delivers an ROI of 3,800 percent meaning about $38 are made for each $1 spent in an email campaign.

 

Drumming up inspiration for new ideas isn’t easy either, but, with the same routine, your email campaigns tend to have stale content, become flat, and the performance suffers.

 

There are many tools and creative ideas you can use to get the wheels turning again, inspire, and improve your next email campaigns.

 

What follows are some creative and interactive ideas you can use in the never-ending fight to stay fresh, while keeping your audiences engaged.

 

You can pick what appeals to your own audiences and put your own spin on them.

 

1. Try new things

 

The fear of the unknown is real, especially when you’re not sure how your audience will take your new spin on email marketing.

 

However, not everyone gets it right at their first try so there’s need to iterate, improve, and adapt.

 

As long as you know your audience, and focus on each individually, you can try out new things and bring your email campaigns alive.

 

2. Observe punctuality and spark their interest

 

Bringing traffic and conversions remain the top challenges for any business. Email campaigns are driven to aid these.

 

Maintain strict schedules for your campaigns to make these more effective.

 

People tend to wait eagerly for future editions of different content types, so why not emails? Keep your content interesting and if it appeals to your audience, they’ll yearn for the next one all the time.

 

Set a date, topic, and theme, and stick to this routine. It makes your campaign seem reliable.

 
Observe punctuality and spark their interest
 

3. Animate, Animate, Animate

 

GIFs are probably one of the most popular animated tools you can use in your email campaigns. They’ve become building blocks on the web and are interactive, fun and engaging.

 

They blend anywhere, cost almost nothing, and can deliver powerful messages easily, as they draw the attention of your audiences.

 

Find GIFs that represent what you want to communicate or convey. Improve your email campaigns by designing them creatively. Recipients love to see something different all the time.

 

4. Use imagery

 

We cannot overstate the fact that a picture is worth a thousand words. But this doesn’t just mean picking any image and pasting it to your campaign.

 

Find images that work and that would perform better, then make iterations while gauging performances of the content.

 

These constant alterations ensure that you reach the best conversion rates from your email campaign.

 
Use imagery
 

5. Add social proof

 

There’s nothing like free marketing and more so from user reviews. These boost your popularity, giving users opportunities to chime in while sharing what they think.

 

Positive user reviews help spread the praise from others about your brand. You can check out social media channels like Twitter or Facebook and others to pick a few positive reviews and use them in your email campaigns.

 

This is a great way to do it as getting people to write reviews isn’t easy – not many are willing to do it.

 

6. Video

 

You cannot underestimate the power of video content.

 

Showcasing videos in your email marketing campaigns increases engagement and interest in users, helping the emails get better performance, while reaching a wider audience.

 

Embed videos but make sure they’re as easy to play as possible, by setting them up to play once readers click the play button. Videos help increase overall value and engagement metrics.

 

Conclusion

 

Email marketing is both powerful and can deliver conversions affordably. If you want better performance and results from your campaigns, don’t stay in the rut.

 

Use these and other ways to format and/or present your email content so your campaigns don’t stagnate.

 

Get innovative and deliver emails reliably to keep your audience tuned in to your brand regardless of the clutter and noise around them.

 
Author Bio:
 

Sam Zaman loves to write on technology & related stuff. Ecommerce, mobile and internet marketing equally drive her interest. Likes gardening and experimenting with new recipes. An avid reader and absolutely mad @bout donuts. She is long associated with Mofluid.