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If you’re active online, you likely have an email. You also probably have a social media account (or several). And, you’ve probably seen ads, promotions, and content from businesses on both. Email and social media marketing are both very popular ways that businesses use the digital sphere to market themselves to customers. And for good reason - they’re both effective. But many marketers focus on one or the other and they’re missing out on the benefits of using them both.
Much like salt and pepper, email and social media marketing are good apart but better together. To understand why, let’s first look at them separately before we explain how they can work together to strengthen your marketing efforts.
When you checked your email this morning, did you scroll through a few email promotions from businesses? Of course you did! Email marketing is the most heavily used form of digital marketing - so much so that it can sometimes become an annoyance (how many times have you clicked “no thank you” today?). But the fact is that email marketing is so popular because it works. In the simplest terms, email marketing is the act of sending marketing materials via email directly to customers who have signed up to receive them. 99% of people check their email every day, many of them first-thing, so marketing there is a lucrative and worthy activity for any business.
So how exactly does it benefit you? People subscribe to your emails because they are interested in your company and want to be kept up-to-date on the latest news and promotions. When your email marketing is done correctly, you’re providing those customers with useful, interesting information each day, directly to their inbox (so they don’t have to search for it). This keeps your business fresh in their minds and helps you stay relevant, strengthening your relationship with them. It also pushes your promotions directly in front of interested customers as opposed to appealing to the masses.
As a business, we all want new customers - but keeping the lines of communication with your existing ones open is equally important, and that is done through email marketing.
We all have a favorite social media business. They may appeal to you because they are funny, innovative, inspiring, or heartfelt; the point is, they do appeal to people, and they keep you coming back for more. This is the result of a well-done social media marketing campaign. Businesses use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube to market themselves to the public, often very successfully. Social media has 3.2 billion daily users, making it a very big pond full of many waiting fish.
Social media is so important because it allows your business to reach new customers by connecting with your current ones. Through shares, likes, and comments (especially tags), a business can boost its organic reach and get in front of new consumers on a daily basis. It’s also one of the best ways to build your brand, as the tone and type of content you post on social media helps visitors understand and connect with your business. All around, social media marketing is a crucial part of your marketing campaign.
At first glance, it may seem like email and social media marketing are at odds. After all, email marketing only connects with current customers, while social media marketing engages new ones. How do you choose just one?! The strongest marketers don’t. The two can actually co-exist quite nicely, and when integrated they take your marketing efforts from meh to marvelous.
So how do you do it? It’s easier than you think. Think of this as a kind of fishing pole (there’s that fish reference again). Your social media account can get new customers to bite, then your email marketing reels them in and keeps them hooked. Here are a few examples.
Social media is a great place to promote your emails! Use your social media accounts to give teasers about your email content or promise exclusive email-only offers to entice followers to sign up. By promoting your email subscription through your social channels, you can increase your mailing lists and then turn those casual followers into loyal customers. It’s like having your coffee and drinking it, too!
Don’t assume that your email audience is aware of your social presence! The next time you send out a marketing email, try including links to your social media pages. You can do this by simply adding clickable widgets to your layout and pointing your viewers in their direction. Add a helpful call-to-action to point them in the right direction.
Better yet, take it a step further and encourage your email readers to tune into your social media accounts for specific or ongoing information (like promotion or event details). Letting them know that you’re active on social media and giving them a reason to tune in will both boost your social followers and increase your brand awareness.
Crafting email content can be hard, especially if you’re sending them frequently. Social media can help you decide what types of content your audience is looking for, and it also lets your content play double-duty. Use content that has high engagement from your audience in your emails! This can be facebook posts, Instagram photos, or even follower’s comments. You’ll already know that your audience is interested, and you can promote your social accounts at the same time. Win-Win!
If you aren’t a marketing whiz, this may seem a bit overwhelming. The good news is, we can help! Bis Designs helps businesses just like yours create killer marketing campaigns through email and social media (and more). Contact us today to get started!
When it comes down to it, email marketing is all about getting the basics right.
Yes, you should be segmenting your lists and yes, paying attention to those open rates and conversion rates are important but you also want to invest time in strategies like positioning, voice and value of your emails. These 5 tips may seem basic but you’ll find that many of your favorite emails coming through your inbox, the ones you open every day, employ the tips in a single email. For best results, apply liberally.
Create an exclusive club.
Making your email subscribers feel special is a great way to generate excitement for the content or offers you send them. It’s also a powerful community-building tool.
Exclusivity can be subtle, like the Apple example below. Whenever Apple launches a new product, customers camp outside their stores to get their hands on the latest device. By offering a pre-order, Apple can cash in on that excitement without putting additional stress on their retail stores. With free shipping as an added incentive, these emails will no doubt drive huge sales before the next iPhone is even released.
Ask for Feedback.
As long as you’re not too pushy, it’s okay to ask for feedback. Find a way to ask without making it sound like the feedback is for the company’s gain but rather to help you, as a business owner, find ways to make their service better. Here is an example:
Get personal.
Email is a great way to humanize your brand. The inbox is an intimate place, mostly used for personal conversation. Your presence there is a privilege, so do your best to write like a human. It’s okay to talk about challenges, obstacles and even failures. Readers can relate since they are likely facing similar situations, whether in business or in their personal lives. Even quotes from your company’s CEO can go a long way, like the example below.
Tell readers what to do next.
One big mistake people make with conversion is failure to make the next step completely clear. How can someone convert if they aren’t sure what to do next?
Conversion rate experts stress this over and over again: “Be clear and direct with your users, telling them exactly what you’d like them to do.”
The idea is simple: just add the webinar to your calendar. Not only does this reinforce the behavior pattern of clicking the emails, but it also increases the chances that the registrants actually attend the webinar. Once it’s on the calendar, they will get alerts from their phone and/or computer…it’s like free marketing!
Keep readers on their toes.
This tip is unconventional, but it’s proven to work.
On one hand, you want your readers to know what to expect in your emails. In our case, here at BIS Designs, that means a new blog post every Wednesday. Our readers know there will be a new blog post each week but they don’t know what topic will be covered until they receive an email once the new blog has been posted on our website.
Conclusion
There are plenty of tips out there about how to increase your open rates but you also want to concentrate on becoming and remaining valuable to your clients and customers. If you have any additional tips to share with us, feel free to share in the comments!
RELATED:
5 Ways to Get Creative with Email Subject Lines
Author: Stephanie May
Phillip Long - CISSP, CEO of BIS Technology Group, along with his team of marketing and information technology experts, will walk you through an overview of what your business should be doing to protect your data and plan your digital marketing strategies.
About BIS Technology Group
BIS Technology Group is the technology leader on the Gulf Coast and is comprised of four divisions: Information Technology, Web Design & Digital Marketing, Office Equipment and Business Consulting. Together these divisions help local businesses exceed expectations and allow them to group to their full potential while minimizing risks. To learn more about BIS Technology Group, visit bistechnologygroup.com.
You may reach out to us at: Phone: 251-405-2527 Email: plong@askbis.com
The most common question from marketing clients is “How do I get more leads for my business?”
There are plenty of practical methods for generating quality leads. Blogging. Sharing and caring on social Media. Strategic landing pages. Event marketing. Email. Most marketers are using all of these channels and more. So why aren’t the majority of brands drowning in qualified leads?
Research shows that 65% of marketers are still struggling to figure out which content is effective. 60 percent are unable to produce engaging content. Only 23 percent of B2B marketers have moved to a customer-centric organizational structure. A lot of marketers are still missing the mark, using content to appeal to customers, rather than to provide value to customers.
If you want to get more quality leads, you need to do better quality marketing. The trick to doing that is to first step back, in order to move forward. Go back and refine your buyer personas. How can you better meet their preferences and expectations? Look at where you can improve your blog, email and social media content to better serve your audience.
No more bull running in a china shop approach and generating mediocre content and tossing it at your audience. No more throwing dollars at Facebook ads and waiting for the leads to roll in. Here are the hacks that will help you refine and improve your marketing and truly excel at lead generation.
UP YOUR CONTENT GAME
You should always be on the quest to enhance the type of content you are using. Content marketing goes far beyond blog posts. Consider investing more so you can deliver a premium level of content.
Your content should be engaging and “pretty”. All photos should be of great quality, captions should be short but interesting. Ever notice how television commercials use a short amount of time to catch your attention? The attention span of the average human is not very long, so you need to catch their attention with your graphics, photos and captions on social media within a glance. Blogs and email campaigns need to have clear and concise titles or subject lines.
SIMPLIFY YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN
Dynamic isn’t always a good thing when it comes to trying to get across a message. With website design, the more complex, the bigger disaster you may have on your hands.
Keep your website design clear and to the point. That doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. It does mean avoid excess text, confusing visuals and too many concepts. What you do what is a clear message and navigation bar. Lots of white space. Use website real estate for the essentials for getting leads, like forms and contact info.
You don’t want your design to scream when a prospect lands on your site.
BETTER PERSONALIZE YOUR EMAILS
How are your email open-rates? Small businesses get around a 2 to 3 percent open-rate percentage, and larger companies get closer to 10 percent or even more. Overall, the average hovers around 4 percent.
The goal should be to improve your email rates to help get more leads. How to do it? A simple trick is to use more personalized messaging. With the style and tone expectations of your target audience in mind, see if your emails make more of an impact with a more conversational tone. Try adding an image in the closing signature – a staff member whose name is on the emails. Use names and first person tone of voice in the subject line, greetings, and closings. Segment your emails with your marketing software to ensure the right people are getting the right messaging depending on where they are in the sales funnel.
Research has shown that personalization leads to six times higher email transaction rates. Worth a shot!
KEEP REFINING
You don’t necessarily need to revolutionize your marketing strategy to get more leads. You may see the results you’re after simply by making a few changes or trying new techniques. Try these hacks. Measure their impact. Then keep making them better. You’ll get more leads as long as you continually prime your marketing for the people you’re trying to reach. For more tips and to hire a team of marketing professionals to handle this part of your business for you – contact our office.
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To create a winning content marketing strategy, you must take a look at what you have done in the past and assess why you didn’t reach your goal. When we meet with business owners along the Gulf Coast, we provide them with a free digital marketing consultation. We look at what they are currently doing that is working, not working, where they are, and where they can improve. Our team of digital marketing specialist will analyze current market trends and determine where they can best dominate their industry.
There is more to just posting on social media and paying for boosted ads on Facebook. It isn’t so much about the amount you post on Facebook anymore. By delivering the right content at the right audience, your opportunities are endless. Stop beating yourself up over not getting much engagement, or what little engagement is from a friend, family member, or co-worker. We’ve all heard the saying. “Content is king,” but the truth is not all content is created equal.
In this blog post, we will discuss five simple steps for you to create a winning content marketing strategy.
People have very short attention spans. We live in an age of instant gratification. We have been taught that we can get any information we need at our finger tips in seconds thanks to smartphones. We are in an age of digital advancement that changes in a blink of an eye. How are your everyday business owners to keep up with these changes and appeal to the right audience?
It is said that marketing to everyone is marketing to no one. You must decide which specific market you are going to target to and stick with it. A retailer of women’s clothing may decide to target women of a certain age, income bracket, and geographical area of residence. It’s not enough to just run an ad targeted at these ladies. You must appeal to them with your message.
How do you captivate this audience to draw them into your business? Think like they do. Find out what they like to do and what they have in common other than just clothes. Maybe many of these women are soccer moms. What kind of car do they drive? Where do they like to eat out? Where do they hangout? By finding these commonalities, you can figure out how to speak to them and get their attention. Every clothing retailer is targeting them, but not everyone can target them the way you can. Dare to be different in order to be successful.
Let your social media post or email targeting campaign be a message directed at them as if you are talking directly to one person. Allow them to feel like you truly understand and get them in a way that makes them feel important, appreciated, and understood.
The way that you target the example audience in this step isn’t much different than you would approach anyone else. Just realize that some target audiences need more social proof, more or less words in order to create a winning content marketing strategy. Remember, to captivate an audience, you have to genuinely know them.
Images matter in all aspects to create a winning marketing strategy. Your images must be high-quality, high-resolution, captivating, and visually appealing. You want your images to portray the image and lifestyle that your brand offers. You want less of advertising, product images, sales pitches, and other gimmicks. Be more strategic with the authenticity and frequency of your advertising, but don’t limit yourself to the possibilities of lifestyle posts.
When it comes to the resolution of images, any photographs you take should be with a camera that has a minimum of 12 megapixels. The higher the megapixels the better quality of images you will have. Stock images can be a great source of imagery, but be selective in your choices. Many images are overused. Dig a little deeper when choosing images that are available for stock because anyone can access them.
When in doubt, hire a professional photographer. Choose a photographer that is experienced in the type of images you need. One who photographs people well may not be able to photograph product images for your e-commerce, and vice-versa. There are diamonds in the rough that can photograph anything.
Giving a clear and concise call-to-action is where many businesses miss the boat. They don’t want to come across as rude or bossy by limiting themselves on effective digital marketing. You want to tell you visitor what to do in the next step of the process so they don’t get lost along the way. You prompt them with buttons that say, “Buy Now”, “Request A Quote”, “Call Now”.
If you are familiar with a conversion funnel, you know that taking a customer from the wide part of the funnel to the small part can sometimes be tricky. If you have delivered a compelling and captivating message and successful brought the visitor to your website, then you have done half the work. The rest is easy, you just have to point them in the right direction.
CTA’s that give specific and short directions will get more traction than one that is vague or makes the user have to do more work. Try to avoid CTA’s like “learn more” or “read more” as they aren’t usually relevant to what your business does. These CTA’s work for bloggers and journalists, but not necessarily for a retailer or other services. You want your visitor to have the best user-friendly experience that entices them to return again and again. Feel at ease consulting with specialist to determine what you can do best to create a winning content marketing strategy for your business.
When speaking with most business owners, we find that not many are familiar with the digital marketing term ‘landing page’, the purpose of landing pages, and how they can drive more business. What is a landing page? Essentially, a landing page is a one page website that gives the visitor a specific message and strong call-to-action. This page is different from your traditional webpage or blog post. We are delivering one particular message in order to capture the users email address in exchange for information or other special items.
Even if the landing page does not generate a sale, you capture email addresses of those who expressed an interest in what you do. You can use an email marketing campaign to convert them later. For now, we will just focus on the landing page and how you can get it in front of your potential customers.
Use a paid ads strategy to direct traffic to your landing page such as: Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and Google AdWords. Go where your audience is and find out what they are searching for that is relevant to what you do. The best thing about paid digital ads is that you get to select who seems them. This is why it is imperative to really know who your audience is so that you can better serve them.
It’s going to take some time to adjust and create a winning content marketing strategy. You are going to need to continually test and adjust your strategies until you find one that works the best. Algorithms, rules, regulations, and requirements, are constantly changing. It can feel disappointing to not generate as much or any sales from your paid advertising.
We find that business owners get burned on paid social media ads because they don’t really understand them. They usually use to broad of an audience because the reach appears more enticing. In all honesty, you will get better results with a narrow audience reach of 1,000 people than 1,000,000. Otherwise, you end up wasting a lot of money on paid advertising to the wrong people. This is another reason why it is best to really get to know your customer base.
The end goal is to convert people from visitors to paying customers. You can have the best products and services in the world, but without a proper content marketing strategy, you miss out on full profit potential. Whether you want to appeal to your local geographic or worldwide, the sentiment of the content is the same, it’s just delivered on a different level.
Use these five steps when you being to analyze your digital marketing plan. Rinse and repeat. The digital world has an excess of potential that’s waiting for you to capitalize. If you are utterly confused on how to do this and would like a free digital marketing consultation, please call us today to book your appointment with our specialist.
Phillip Long, CEO of BIS Technology Group, along with his team of marketing and information technology experts, will walk you through an overview of what your business should be doing to protect your data and plan your digital marketing strategies.
About BIS Technology Group BIS Technology Group is the technology leader on the Gulf Coast and is comprised of four divisions: Information Technology, Web Design & Digital Marketing, Office Equipment and Business Consulting. Together these divisions help local businesses exceed expectations and allow them to group to their full potential while minimizing risks. To learn more about BIS Technology Group, visit bistechnologygroup.com. You may reach out to us at: Phone: 251-405-2555 Email: info@askbisdesigns.com
For years now, marketing strategists have pondered whether good old fashioned email marketing is going to fall by the wayside with all the various digital marketing options that currently exist. But never fear, emails are not going anywhere any time soon.
A technology market research group has estimated that by the end of 2016, there will be: • 4.6 billion email accounts • 7% more emails landing in our inboxes
Across the board, analysts are responding to that question with the main ‘do it or die’ strategies to combat getting lost in the shuffle.
a. Mobile devices are now the principal devices used in opening emails. b. There’s a 23% higher click-through-rate with responsive templates. c. 65% of total email opens occurred on a mobile phone or tablet in Q4 2015, compared to 54% in Q3 2015. - Experian “Quarterly email benchmark report” (Q4 2015) d. B2C emails get 57.4% more opens on mobile than B2B email, ranking 42.78% opens on mobile for B2C compared to 27.18% for B2B. - DDMA “Nationale email benchmark 2015” (2015)
*One thing to note is that there is a difference between a responsive email versus a mobile friendly email. Responsive emails respond to different devices by adjusting the text size and layout of the images. Mobile friendly emails do not change the design for smaller devices. This results in emails often having text that is too small to read on a mobile device, forcing the users to zoom in.
a. “Batch & Blast” is out. b. Focus on hyper-personalization. Go beyond “Dear First Name.” • Use data analytics and CRM tools to gather more data about your customers. c. Send different emails based on the unique qualities of your various subscribers. • Where are they in the customer journey? • Group them by shared demographics. • Group them by differing buyer personas (psychographics). d. Write emails that subscribers feel were made exclusively for them. e. Click-through rates have said to improve 14%. f. Conversion rates have gone up by 10%.
* You can segment for a variety of groups depending on what information you asked for on the sign-up form and what data is provided with your email analytics software.
a. Make sure your email marketing messages are full of useful content and, if applicable, persuasive offers. b. A good balance is 90% educational and 10% promotional. c. Subject lines are vitally important. Keep them short and sweet (less than 60 characters ideally). d. Keep the look uncluttered. Keep copywriting concise and balance design with enough white space.
a. Test different subject lines – some shorter than others, some possibly humorous. b. Try different wording for Call to Action buttons. c. Try testing with emails that include no images (plaint text emails). d. Test who you want the email to come from – the sender name.
a. Allow for a budget to get the type of data collection and analytics information that’s best for your business. b. Budget for internal resources (staff) needed to implement and manage the technology and email communication. c. The budget should also include allowances for testing to gain refined insights about your customers.
It’s been widely accepted that the return on investment (ROI) for email marketing is roughly about $44 back for every $1 spent. This healthy figure is mighty impressive, especially when you consider it’s factoring in many low-performing email campaigns to get the average number.
The Direct Marketing Association says their best practices include “aggressive, smart spending on technology and services.”
Because of the increased demand for more personalized and relevant content, budget allocation for these advanced data analytic services is needed to keep companies earning an impressive ROI.
By creating dynamic content with a focus on customized emails, businesses provide their subscribers with useful information and ultimately develop strong relationships. Once this level of customer loyalty and brand recognition is reached, the less chances your emails have in getting marked as spam. BIS Designs offers customized email marketing services for clients in Mobile and Baldwin County, Alabama, to fuel their business through effective and well-thought out emails and newsletters. Download our free marketing plan and learn more about how to boost your business’ ROI with email marketing. You may contact us through our website or call 251.405.2535 to speak to one of our digital marketing professionals.
Sign up for our FREE webinar on February 25th at 2 p.m. CST to listen to us discuss our best campaigns to generate leads and new emails. You can ask questions and listen along. This is a useful webinar both both business owners and marketers. Sign up for the webinar.
If you’re a business, big or small, you need to have a running list of email contacts for marketing purposes. This means collecting your current customers’ emails along with potential customers’ email addresses. Having a running list of emails from your customers and prospects provides valuable ways to marketing your target audience and keep them informed.
Whether you are sending an email blast out about the latest updates and news within your company, promoting a new service or product, or notifying customers about an issue or update that could affect their business, it’s important to communicate with your target public via email.
But for many businesses, particularly small businesses, it’s tough to collect emails, especially if you don’t have a strong email marketing game plan. Even if you do, your current email list will shrink by the end of 2016, specifically by about 22.5%. Email addresses change, get deleted, people leave companies for new ones, and people opt-out of your email marketing. It’s just a fact of email marketing, but you need to have a strategy to tackle that shrinking list.
We use a strong email marketing strategy at BIS Designs, Inc. It’s essential to keep our customers informed and to reach out to prospects and qualified leads. Obviously, we keep an active list of all our current customers and that list is not hard to retrieve, but for generating new emails we use a couple different methods. We also have great advice for B2C businesses, as B2B and B2C marketing can differ.
1) Run online contests and giveaways
This is one of the easiest ways to gain emails. If your business is active on social media (which it should be), run a contest or giveaway that people will want to enter and have participants sign up using their email address. Make sure you specify in the contest or giveaway rules that they are agreeing to be opted-in to your company’s email marketing campaigns.
If you’re going to promote on social media, make sure you always create a landing page or form on your website as well. This will direct traffic to your site and make it easy to submit their information.
2) Create valuable, meaningful content
The saying, “Content is king” really rings true here. People sign up or get added to email lists and then get spammed with irrelevant or badly-written content. Provide value to the reader. This in turn can encourage them to share the email with their friends or colleagues- make sure you have social shares buttons and “email to a friend” buttons on all your emails to make it easy for them to share.
3) Make sure you create specific email lists for your groups
Not everyone in your email list will want to receive an email about a specific product or service. Make sure you send specific emails to specific groups who will be most interested in what you have to say— or else you will have opt-outs and unsubscribes.
4) Have a sign-up form on your website
This is a big one. It goes hand-in-hand with # 1. If you don’t have a way to sign up for emails on your website, then you are missing a huge avenue to gain emails. Very likely, your website visitors are interested in your business and products— that’s why they are visiting your website. Those people are qualified leads that you could market to, and they will more than likely want to sign up for emails from your business. Take a look at our sign-up incentive on our home page.
5) Consider creating a Sign-Up Popup on your website
You’ve seen them before: They are a popup that takes up a good bit of space and asks the website visitor to sign up for more information on a topic. You can easily exit out and continue on the website, so it’s not forcing anyone to sign up, but it’s giving them an easy avenue to enter their information by taking the option to sign up to them and not the other way around.
Mail Chimp offers this service.
6) Host an Event
This goes beyond just email marketing, as hosting an event is another marketing tactic that can do wonders for your company. Whether it’s a luncheon, seminar, webinar or phone conference Q & A, and all these events need email addresses to register. Plus, it puts your company in a thought-leader position in your community. Check out BIS Designs’ events for guidance (We have a webinar on this topic on Feb. 25th!).
7) Cold-Calling
Sure, it’s not the most exciting or fun task, but cold calling on a list of qualified leads is a way to introduce yourself over the phone and ask to send them more information via email. One of the best resources to create a call-down list of your local Chamber of Commerce directory for small businesses.
8) Promote your sign-up forms on social media
Make sure you have a clear way for your social media followers to sign up to your email list. On Facebook, tabs (we like Woobox) or the Call to Action button is a great way to take visitors to the sign-up landing page on your website. Make sure you consistently promote sign-ups in your social media posts with a link to the form.
9) Use social media advertising to promote your company and encourage sign ups.
Make sure the link in your advertisement takes the visitor to a sign-up form with the incentive. Either to “learn more,” “download a free ebook or white paper,” or “to get a free coupon or discount.” Give them a reason to sign up.
10) Partner with another company
Co-host a webinar or event or offer that will generate sign ups through your partner’s audience along with yours. Share leads with each other.