business planning Archives - Page 3 of 12

January 23, 2022

Why You Should Take Advantage of Social Media Stories

To Increase Brand Awareness and Exposure

Social media stories are highly shareable content, making it easy to increase your exposure and awareness on the internet. Bringing value to your audience ensures that they want to share it with their peers, increasing your views and exposure. A vital step to the success of any business on the web. It’s simple, the more people you can get to view your content, the more likely your viewership or audience will grow. Social media stories are another creative and interactive avenue to do this.

Struggling With Social Media? A Calendar And System Can Help

To Humanize and Personalize Your Brand

Social media stories are powerful because they are viewed as a more personal and less informal way to communicate with your audience. Showing your human side effectively increases your reputation as a business, as many viewers see this as a more trustworthy trait. This inspires more trust and credibility required to transition your readers or viewers into loyal or paying customers. Being more personable and human also shows your relatability beyond your business responsibilities and goals. You can understand what your audience goes through daily.

To Increase Audience Engagement and Interaction

Audience engagement is how you keep them interested in your business. It also provides them value or solves a problem, further increasing your exposure and reputation as a brand or business. Again, the more value you bring, the more successful you will be. Engaging content keeps your viewers wanting more and provides you more resources to update and perfect your products or services.

Take advantage of these benefits by adding social media stories to your marketing plan today. The more tools you use within each platform, like stories, the easier it can be to build your awareness and exposure as a business while improving your audience engagement and participation. In other words, not taking advantage of social media stories is a poor decision and only shows your audience that you don’t care to adapt or provide them more value.

January 15, 2022

Four Ways to Reduce Your Email Unsubscribe Rate

Customer retention is a top priority if you are a business owner or email marketer. It is quite well known that it can cost five to twenty times more to find new customers than to please the ones you have. Therefore, if your unsubscribe rate is below two percent, you are currently on the right track and should strive to keep it there or even lower.

The following are four ways to reduce your email unsubscribers and build a more sustainable list:

Audit Your Email Funnels Often

Better segment your readers, be sure they have a consistent schedule, not too long or too short, watch out for spammy looking content, segment by interest, and add them to multiple lists.

Plan and Map Your Content

Add in value and fun content, don’t just be a salesperson. Be cautious of your titles, as they are your first impression. Don’t use click-bait or sound obnoxious. Instead, speak to them naturally and let them know exactly what they will get out of the opening and reading your email.

Personalize and Incentivize

Be generous to get back what you are worth. If you only focus on what you get out of each email, then the content you are providing lacks quality. Instead, it would help if you concentrate on your audience and what they need the most for it to come back around to you. Then, keep the content personalized and find ways to incentivize them to continue engaging or reading your content. Giveaways, free downloads, or discounts are a few ideas.

Engage and Follow-up

Don’t ignore your audience once they become a subscriber or paying customer. The point of email marketing is to grow a sustainable and active audience that you can communicate with for the long-term. It is not a one-and-done strategy.

How To Improve Your Email Marketing ROI

Keep up with your audience by sending free educational material and asking for feedback or other questions that help you improve your content and overall value as a business. The more you engage and ask questions, the more you get to know your audience to become a better information source, improving your business’s growth and suitability.

A Harvard Business Review report states that simply increasing your retention efforts by as little as five percent can improve your profits by 25 to 95 percent. Showing you just how valuable keeping your unsubscribe rate low can be to your email marketing efforts. If you want to maximize your revenue and keep your subscribers interested, reviewing your goals, content, and getting to know your audience more is vital to your success.

January 15, 2022

Five Email Marketing Tips to Boost Sales

Email marketing is the most effective marketing strategy to date. Even compared to social media marketing by nearly 40% more. Industry or niche doesn’t really matter; you will see a high return on investment if you implement the proper email marketing tips and strategies.

These are the five email marketing tips you need to follow to boost your sales and increase your return on investment:

Enhance your Opt-Ins and Acquisition Process

You must generate leads by strengthening your acquisition process or opt-in forms. This is the content used to persuade viewers to subscribe to your email campaigns. Small eBooks, discount codes, or simple newsletters are a great place to start. Make sure the opt-in you use is what your readers want or need, and be sure to execute on that promise as soon as possible. If you know your audience struggles in a certain area, then this is the best place to start when developing opt-in or lead magnet content.

Value Your Subject Lines

While subject lines are short and sweet, you should take the time to craft the most compelling one. In fact, you should create at least two to three for every email you send and test them among different subscribers to pick the one with the best return eventually.

Perfect Your Call-To-Actions

Always include a call-to-action and be sure it is consistent between email and campaign. Don’t add more than one type per email, or you will likely split or confuse your subscribers. Instead, pick one goal and then perfect the call-to-action to optimize your chances of accomplishing it.

Focus on Personalization and Quality Content the Most

A huge benefit to email marketing includes how powerful it can increase your authority, credibility, and trust as a brand. The more personalized, engaging, and valuable the email content, the more likely you will convert your subscribers to paying customers. Valuable and quality content is key to gaining their trust and believing in your word. It’s simple if your target audience doesn’t know you very well, they are less likely to trust you with their money or time.

Create Multiple Landing Pages for Each Campaign

If boosting your sales is your email marketing goal, as it is for many, then you must create landing pages for each campaign you create. Landing pages are sales pages that further describe, entice or invite someone to join or purchase their products. Your call-to-action should lead them right to the landing page.

Work On Your Funnel Each Week And Continue To Branch Out

Be sure to follow these email marketing tips or use them to audit your email marketing process to ensure you are doing what you need to boost your sales. Working on each part of the email marketing process is your key to success.

January 8, 2022

Five Actionable Tips to Boost Your Email Opt-In Rate

Your email opt-in rate is the percentage of those who visit your website compared to those who become email subscribers. The higher the rate, the more email addresses you have to better market and communicate to your target audience. In other words, the imagine you had 1,000 people visit your website this month.

Fifty of those viewers decided to provide their email and opt-in to your campaign. Therefore, your opt-in rate would be five percent, the average that many other businesses see. An opt-in rate that is two percent or higher is said to be on the right track. To determine your opt-in rate, use the following formula:

(Monthly or Weekly Opt-In Subscribers/ Monthly or Weekly Website Viewers) * 100

(50/1000) * 100

0.05 * 100 = 5%

Opt-ins are materials that hook your audience in by providing them high-value content in exchange for their email address or cell phone number. Once you acquire their information, you lead them through your email marketing funnel to hopefully persuade them to be paying loyal customers. Therefore, improving your opt-in rate is important to running a successful email marketing campaign.

These five tips will help you boost your email opt-in rate:

Use Pop-Ups

Pop-ups can be a great reminder for your viewers as they are leaving or browsing your website. However, don’t overuse them as they can quickly become annoying and make them click off altogether. Many readers expect a few, but if they pop-up too frequently or make it too difficult for them to browse the site, they will simply get discouraged and leave.

Make the Opt-In Process Obvious and Easy

Be sure to optimize the signup process to the mediums your readers use the most such as smartphones. If the opt-ins or lead magnets are not optimized for their cell phones, they won’t be able to complete the process. Many readers will abandon a brand or business altogether if they refuse to learn how to adapt to their audience as well. Keep the opt-ins organized and straight to the point. Don’t overload the reader with too much information. For the most part, the opt-in should be scannable and understood in a few seconds.

Add Prominent Testimonials

Show social proof with customer testimonials. Make them obvious and near the signup button to show your readers that you are trustworthy. If others are seeing the benefit you promised they will want to participate.

Use the Fear of Missing Out

Urgency is a useful tactic to get your readers to act now. Discounts with deadlines or early bird tickets for hands-on classes are great examples of these. Most people can’t pass up a good deal, nor do they want to miss out.

Invite Them to a Call or Webinar

Humans love to feel like they are important or part of a community. Not only that, inviting them to a short one-on-one call or free webinar makes them feel more valued and that there is a real person who cares on the other side. It shows that you are there for more than just monetary gain. Increasing their trust and loyalty to the business.

Overall, providing value is key to increasing your opt-in rate and achieving your email marketing goals. If you don’t have valuable content to provide nor follow these six tips, it’s likely your email opt-in rates will be poor, destroying your sales and overall email marketing conversions.

10 Content Marketing Tips for Email Marketing Success

December 26, 2021

Best Practices for Email List Segmentation

A MailChimp study conducted in 2017 on the “effects of list segmentation on email marketing stats” highlights the importance of list segmentation. In fact, it showed improved open rates by fourteen percent, increased click-through rates by one-hundred percent, and even better decreased unsubscribe rates by nine percent. Again, showing you just how valuable it is to your email marketing campaign.

List segmentation is the process of organizing your subscribers based on certain factors. For example, understanding that not all your readers or potential customers are the same, even in the same industry. Most of your readers or customers will be on a different buyers’ journey too. Common ways to segment email lists include:

Demographic segmentation – This is the information sorted based on age, gender, occupation, income level, education level, and family.
Geographic segmentation – When readers are sorted based on their country, city, language, or other information based on their location or where they reside most often.
Behavioral segmentation – This is by far the most important way to segment your lists. This includes information based on how they browse your website, interact with your emails, or when and how often they purchase your products.

Try these best practices when creating email list segmentation:

Keep It Simple

You don’t need to go overboard. Instead, pick a few key pieces of information that work for your industry and goals to know where to start and how many segments to create. For example, if you are a women’s clothing store, you would likely segment based on their gender, age, and purchase history.

Use Buyer Personas

Buyer personas should be used at every stage of the email marketing process, list segmentation included. If you truly understand your audience, your buyer personas are like guidelines for crafting the perfect emails. They have details that outline your target audience according to their interests, behaviors, and geographic and demographic information. Thus, allowing you to control and create the perfect process before anyone signs up.

Automate with Tools

Automate the process and keep track of results easily with email marketing tools. These tools will keep track of your readers and their behaviors and organize the lists to maximize your goals and do the bulk of the work for you. This way, you can use your time crafting and developing quality email campaigns.

Overall, list segmentation aims to ensure that each message sent and received gets to the right audience member at the right time for maximum conversions. The more organized and targeted your email lists are, the more likely you will achieve your email marketing goals.

December 26, 2021

The Importance of Email List Segmentation

Separating your email list subscribers into different segments of your audience is the process of dividing up your subscribers or customers into other flows or email sequences. When subscribers sign up to your email list, they will not receive the same emails as everyone else at the same time as they go along with the email campaign. Thus, segmentation allows you to better market and communicates to your new potential customers and readers.

Most lists are organized based on three different factors: demographics, geographics, and behavior. Depending on your niche and marketing goals, you will need to organize them differently. However, the most popular way to segment lists includes how they behave on your websites and with your emails.

Once they are opted-in to your campaign, readers are then divided based on how they interact. Do they open more often than others? Do they click-through links frequently? Then it would be good to put them on a different path than those who are less likely to open or click-through your emails. They likely don’t need an aggressive approach and are clearly interested in your products or information.

Reasons list segmentation is an important step of the email marketing process:

It Allows You to Send More Targeted Information

Most businesses will have more than one buyer’s persona, which means not every email you send needs to go to every lead or customer on your list. It also means you likely have more than one goal in mind when it comes to email marketing. Segmenting allows you to pick certain keywords or information in order to organize and better target them with different key pieces of content.

For example, readers who have bought your products are more likely to get content about the products they purchased or new products to try. While new subscribers who have not purchased a product will be reading content on why the products benefit their life and possibly information about you and your business or other emails to get to know them better to further convert them into paying customers.

To Increase Overall Conversions

List segmentation better targets your readers, which allows you to communicate more effectively. When you understand at what point of the buyers’ journey they are on, then you have a better chance at maximizing your opportunity.

To Improve Engagement and Reputation

Clear communication and understanding your audience are key to increasing your conversions and running a successful email campaign. Better communication provides more value to your customers, further building your reputation and improving your engagement—two important metrics for running and creating a sustainable business.

As you can see, the key to list segmentation is to ensure the right emails are being sent to the right people to achieve your email marketing goals better. If everyone receives the same emails and you ignore primary information about your target audience, you are likely not communicating to them effectively enough to produce results.

December 26, 2021

Five Common Email Automation Flows to Implement

Email automation flows are exactly what they sound like. It is a set of emails sent automatically to subscribers to streamline and enhance your email marketing process. Automation can be set biased on time or a certain set of events, such as signing up for a newsletter.

Automation will send them a welcome email. It will also ensure they receive the other emails in the series consistently. What’s more, is it can better segment your list to target and refine your communication to see better results and conversions. It would be impossible and highly time-consuming to send each email yourself, which is why email automation is key.

Here are five common email flows to implement in your email marketing strategy:

Welcome Email Series

First, establish the connection with a welcome email. If someone subscribes to your list, you should never neglect the opportunity to say hello and thank you for joining the community. They need to know at first contact what to expect and when to expect it.

Abandoned Cart Email Series

This is a straightforward reminder crucial for e-commerce businesses that send reminders to customers’ inboxes that they left items in their cart to purchase. Often times this is a great opportunity to incentivize your customers to continue with a small discount.

Personalized Discounts

Asking for a birthday, anniversary, or other personal information is a great way to set up an automated series personalized to that specific subscriber. Then, when their birthday or anniversary comes around, you get the opportunity to make them feel special by recognizing their special day.

Post-Purchase Series

This is a set of emails sent after a subscriber makes a purchase or follows a certain call to action. This shows that you appreciate their business and hope to continue to provide value to them. It also ensures they use the products or services correctly to maximize their usefulness. This is also a great time to ask questions and give feedback to establish your trustworthiness and credibility further and improve your customer experience.

Value Drive and Educational Email Series

Also known as lead nurturing content, this is a series of emails that focuses on further building a connection with your subscribers to keep their interest and understanding about your business, products, or services. The more education and value you provide your subscribers, the more likely they will become loyal customers.

Remember, automation is there to keep you consistent and help reduce tedious and mundane work. It does not mean you can let it go and ignore it. If you want to crush your email marketing goals, always keep track of the results and test new automated series to see which ones your readers like the most.

December 18, 2021December 18, 2021

Common Email Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

While email marketing may be the best way to engage and increase sales, you can easily make mistakes. The email marketing process requires preparation, review, and evaluation to keep it running smoothly and successfully. Unfortunately, if you don’t know what you are doing, you can fall into some common poor habits that result in a poor return on investment.

The following are some of the most common email marketing mistakes and how to avoid them:

Only Using Email to Make a Sale

If the only emails you send are promotional and full of sale links, you are already doing a disservice to yourself. No matter how many links you try to send, the value you provide will translate into real results. Use email to teach your readers something you want them to know instead, and even better, make sure it solves a common issue or problem for them. Then add other smaller promotional sequences throughout.

Ignoring Your Bounce Rate

Meaning the deliverability of your emails is likely poor as you are probably ignoring key steps to ensuring your subscribers get your emails. For example, using emails with your website works better than third-party addresses like Google and Microsoft. Using third-party addresses can easily signal spam warnings, while using your email address better verifies your authenticity.

Poor Goals and Understanding of Audience

Lastly, not taking the time to understand your goals and audience fully leads to poor quality content and communication within your email campaign. Email marketing is powerful because subscribers view it as more personal – providing you the opportunity to form a deeper connection and understanding through personalized and quality content.

Disregard of Subscriber Mediums

In other words, you are ignoring the device your readers use the most to read and engage with your content. This is crucial as not every email service provider or platform is optimized for mobile devices. However, smartphones are far more available to people than computers. Meaning most of your subscribers likely read your emails and other content on their phones. Therefore, you must ensure your content is optimized to view and click-through for mobile phones.

Poor Call-To-Actions or None at All

Every email should have a clear goal which means they should also have an easy-to-use and understand call-to-action that translates to achieving it. An email without a call-to-action is like a company without a business plan.

You must avoid these common mistakes if you want to see high conversations and a return on investment from your email marketing campaign. Lackluster call-to-actions, poor follow-up, nurturing, and understanding of your audience can all potentially affect your email marketing results.

December 18, 2021

How to Write a Lead Nurturing Email Campaign

One way to grow a loyal audience with a strong relationship that understands your business value is through lead nurturing email campaigns. These are personalized and automated emails sent to subscribers throughout their journey with your business.

It is designed to maximize the potential of your email list and to ensure its sustainability. It’s about not neglecting the leads you worked so hard to get in the first place. Statistics show that it costs a lot more time and money to find new leads than to nurture those you already have.

The following are a few examples and tips to creating lead nurturing email campaigns:

Start with a Welcome Email Series

The moment someone opts in, you should thank them and introduce yourself. This is also a great moment to encourage them to reply by asking them a few questions about themselves and what kind of problems they are dealing with. This opens up the relationships and gives them a basic overview of your value and business goals. Make the reader feel like they made the right decision to opt-in.

Create Weekly and Monthly Newsletter or Updates

Keep your readers up-to-date on trending topics, news, and updates within your business and industry. Please don’t use these messages to sell. Instead, use them to educate and get your readers more engaged in other communities such as your Facebook Group. Tell your audience about new products or services you are working on and any additional valuable information they can use.

Send Segmented Promotional and Educational Campaigns

Use birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates and information to your advantage. List segmentation allows you to send more personalized messages and education to those who care about your content. It also allows you to tailor and target your message better as no two readers will be the same or on the same buyers’ journey.

Always include a Follow-up and Way to Reply or Engage

Send emails that ask for some feedback and a way to engage further or reengage your subscribers. Invite them to other social media pages or tell them to reply to the email. The replies you get can ensure the content you create is valuable and solves their problem.

Don’t let all the hard work of finding your email subscribers waste with these lead nurturing tips. Instead, learn to enable them through the email marketing journey to maximize your results and success better. Don’t be like the average forty-eight percent of salespeople who give up or fail to follow up after the first initial contact.