Tag: setting goals

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Four Ways to Make Your Social Media Stories Stand Out

While social media stories are a good tool to market and advertise your business, they can easily get lost in the competition. Over five hundred million active users post Instagram stories alone – showing you just how important it is to make valuable and important content that stands out to your target audience.

 

Here are four ways to make your social media stories stand out:

 

Show Behind-The-Scenes Content

 

Give your audience a view of what it is like to be you behind a business every day. This is content that many viewers are interested in and attracted to. It also allows you to show a more vulnerable and personal side that your audience will admire. Social media stories are powerful because they are seen as less informal and more direct. Behind-the-scenes content is a great way to take advantage of it.

 

Post During Audience Active Hours

 

Post content when your audience is the most active. Not only does it make it more engaging to your viewers, but it also shows that you are aware of their needs while making it easier for them to view your content. You don’t want them to rely on coming to you, and many stories only last twenty-four hours. Therefore, posting content when they are active increases your exposure, engagement, and overall success.

 

Actually, Tell a Story

 

Don’t click bate or post generic content to your social media stories. Actually, plan out a consistent story that provides value, whether that be through new information or relatable entertainment. Stories need to be just as valuable, if not more, than your other posts to keep them engaged, interested and to persuade them to become loyal customers.

 

Ask Your Audience to Share Their Opinion

 

Always get your audience involved in some way through the platform features by asking them questions, submitting their own content or simply replying to your story. The more active and involved your audience is, the more likely they will convert into loyal or paying customers. Getting their feedback also allows you to improve your content further and provide superior value that your competition can keep up with.

 

As you can see, making your content stand out is really about highlighting and showcasing your audience. If you have good content and understand your target audience, you won’t have any problem creating quality social media stories that stand out. Solve a problem and get your audience more involved to see more results and benefits with your social media stories.

 

 

 

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Four Tips to Enhancing your Email Call-To-Actions

Call-to-actions are vital to your email marketing campaigns. It is the material that instructs your audience to do something in order to get the conversions you need to grow and build a sustainable business. If you don’t tell or show your audience what you need them to do, you are unlikely to succeed.

 

Call-to-actions are like a guidebook that instructs your readers on where to go and what to do. In fact, you can increase your click-through rates by over 300% just by adding one single call-to-action, according to a WordStream report and further highlighting the importance of adding them to your email copy if you want to run a successful email marketing campaign.

 

The following are four tips to enhance your email call-to-actions to increase your conversions and run a more profitable email marketing campaign.

 

Use a Button and Colorful Graphics

Buttons are easy to see and obvious to most readers. They are eye-catching, clear, straight to the point, and easy to understand and use. Buttons also can improve your results by nearly 28% more than call-to-actions without them. A big red “buy now” button or “read more” is more obvious and easier for your subscribers to understand. Making it more likely for them to follow through if your products and services are what they need.

 

Use Action-Oriented Words

“Get the discount here” or “Try your free trial today” are perfect examples of action-oriented words that should be used in your call-to-actions. These words inspire your readers to do something and grab their attention.

 

Keep it Short and Urgent

Too much information or crowded images only persuade your audience to click away instead of click-through. It can also be confusing and overwhelming, allowing your readers to second guess instead of making a quick decision.

 

Using a sense of urgency and clear and direct information increases your click-through rate because people fear missing out. However, be sure to use this appropriately and not take advantage or misuse your readers. Urgency should be to inspire, not to take advantage of.

 

Highlight the Value Proposition

When deciding on what copy to use, be quick and to the point by highlighting the most valuable part. What are your readers getting out of doing the action you ask of them? Is it at a discount, more education, a chance to participate with others, and a bigger community? If you lead with this, it will be easy to get your readers to take action.

 

Don’t neglect your call-to-actions. Make sure your CTAs align with your goals and objectives to each and every email copy and campaign you create. Please keep it simple, direct, and obvious, and don’t forget the power of call-to-action buttons.

Lead Magnet Ideas You Can Use

 

 

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Four Email Follow-Up Strategies to Implement

Did you know that, on average, only about two percent of sales are made on the first initial contact? This means those who use email marketing successfully see most of their profits through their follow-up strategies. If you don’t follow up with your subscribers after the initial contact, you are not using email marketing correctly or to its fullest potential.

 

Every great sales person knows that you have to reach out and communicate with the same lead more than once to grab their attention and hook their interest finally. In fact, research shows that nearly eighty percent of sales come from the fifth contact, which jumps significantly compared to the two to ten percent of sales you see from the first to the fourth follow-up.

 

Meaning you shouldn’t be the one to opt-out or give up; leave that up to the readers and implement these five follow-up strategies to improve your email marketing sales:

 

Say Thank You and Ask for Feedback

When an audience member signs up for your list or purchases a product, an automated email to thank them or ask for feedback should happen. The feedback you get allows you to make sure the process is easy to complete and that the products or services you promoted throughout your emails provide the value you promised.

 

Add Value and Personality

Show subscribers your brand’s personality, which is often your personality. Show them that you are there for more than just monetary gain. This means you should always find ways to add value and your character when sending an email. While many of these messages are automated, you should make it obvious or the same every single time.

 

Keep it Short, But Not Too Short

Emails between fifty and 125 words have often been the most successful, especially when increasing click-through rates. Too little information provides the incorrect amount of time to marketing to your readers, while too-long emails distract and overwhelms them. Thus, showing you just how crucial it is to make sure your emails are direct and to the point to make sure they follow your call-to-action.

 

Add Personalized Support

Send periodic emails to invite your readers’ personalized support through one-on-one calls or even creating support groups within your community. The point is the remind your readers that you are there for them and someone they can reach out to if they need it.

 

Don’t expect results right away from one email or opt-in sequence. The power of email marketing starts with continuously getting to follow-up with your interested readers more directly and personally. The more personalized and valuable the follow-ups, the more likely you are to see positive conversions. Give your readers the trust and credibility they need to transition into loyal and paying customers through proper follow-ups.

What is Email Deliverability and How to Improve It

 

 

 

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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.

 

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Four Tips to Creating an Effective Email Sequence

An email sequence is a set of emails sent to specific groups of subscribers or readers on your list. These sequences are either trigger-based or time-based. Trigger-based usually means particular sets of criteria such as demographics or behaviors that your subscribers perform will automatically send emails in the order you set up.

 

A few of the most common behaviors include their browsing behavior, paying customer or downloading your content. Time-based can be a certain number of days after a purchase, the subscriber’s birthday, or anything based on any amount of time passing. Triggering a thank you or welcome email right after opt-in or purchase is another email of time-based sequences. These criteria should be set depending on your niche and email marketing needs. However, the way you craft the material is vital to your overall success.

 

These tips will help you develop compelling email sequences:

 

Outline Your Purpose

First, you must know your goal, and in order to do that, you must know your audience, including the kinds of problems they are dealing with. Second, what is the overall purpose of sending and creating the email sequence? Don’t just create an email sequence because you know it is the best marketing strategy out there. It helps if you have a clear goal and understanding of the email sequence too.

 

Perfect Your Title and Subject Lines

Your titles are important to increasing your open rate. This metric allows you to keep track of how your content or emails perform in front of your subscribers. If your open rate is not what you want it to be, it is likely due to your titles or subject lines. Make sure they are relevant, short to the point, and have your most important keywords in the beginning for a few quick tips on creating the right email subject titles. While they may be short, you don’t want them to be boring or crowded with too much information to look like a spam email.

 

Always include a Call-To-Action

For every goal you set, there should be a separate call-to-action that helps you to achieve it. But, again, make sure it is easy to understand, complete and obvious to your reader.

 

Be Specific, Clear, and Educational

Keep each email straight to the point, and don’t make it too long. Always use your email as an opportunity to educate and provide value to your customer. The point is to exceed the expectations from the start to gain their trust and commitment. The more educational content you provide with accurate information that helps your subscribers, the more likely they will trust your authority and establish your credibility.

 

Be sure the time and effort you put into your email sequence are worth the investment. Follow these tips to craft an effective email sequence to see the return on investment you need and achieve more email marketing goals.

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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.

 

 

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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.

 

 

 

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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.

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What To Look for During an Email Funnel Audit

Stop neglecting your email funnels. Just because you have them automated doesn’t mean they will be successful. You need to add an auditing process to your email marketing campaign schedule to ensure the work and content you are creating is designed to maximize your success.

 

Here’s what to look for during an email funnel audit:

 

Goals and Value

The first places to review are your goals and value as a brand. Make sure your marketing goals align with the value you provide to your target audience and overall message as a brand. Starting with your goal is how you develop cohesive content that achieves results. It also ensures you understand your target audience and how you provide value to them. Next, write down these goals as you go along the auditing process to ensure that each part of the campaign matches and achieves them.

 

Abnormal Metrics

The four key metrics to keep track of are open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, and return on investment. These numbers can give you an understanding of where to improve your content. For example, if you have a high open-rate but low click-through rate and your readers are not unsubscribing, you know that your titles are working, but there is a disconnect between the call-to-action, objective, and email content.

 

Email Flow and Segmentation Organization

Another area to review is the structure of how your content is sent and how your subscribers are organized. For example, each subscriber should be in more than one segment or email sequence to better increase your conversions and communication with that reader.

 

You will also want to take a moment to review this list to weed out any inactive subscribers and make sure they are in the appropriate segment. Lastly, you want to ensure there are not too many emails in each sequence and that they are organized to match your email marketing goals.

 

Content Value and Quality

Finally, and most importantly, is the evaluation of all your content within the email campaign. First, you need to make sure each email is organized and achieves the goals you were set out to do. Then look to make sure the email infrastructure has everything required as well. Some questions to answer when reviewing the quality of your content are:

 

  • Does it align with your marketing goals and company values?
  • Do they each have one call to action? Are they clear, obvious, and organized?
  • Are your messages and call-to-actions consistent throughout the entire funnel?
  • Are they personalized to your readers and the buyers’ stage they are on?
  • Do the titles hook or grab your attention?

 

As you can see, evaluating every process of your email marketing campaign is key to running a successful audit. Each must work together to successfully persuade or guide your audience into becoming a loyal subscriber or paying customer.

How to Easily Crank out Content Daily

 

 

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The Three Keys to Optimizing Your Email Content

Maximizing your profits and effectively communicating to your audience is required today to be successful in business. Without quality content, email marketing would be dead. Without content to engage with, there would be no reason to use it as it wouldn’t correctly engage, educate and persuade your audience. Without it, you can’t convert them into paying or loyal customers. Therefore, you need to learn and understand how to optimize your email content to maximize your email marketing success.

 

The following are the three key pieces required to optimize your email marketing funnels fully:

 

Value-Driven

The point of emails is always to find ways to educate and add value to your subscribers’ life. Education is the best way to persuade or direct your audience to make a purchase. You don’t need to and shouldn’t constantly be selling to them. In fact, if the title looks like an obvious sales pitch, they are unlikely to open.

 

Only about one out of every four sales emails is opened. However, if your readers know that they will gain value every single time they open your email, they won’t want to leave. They understand that you need to sell products or services at the end of the day to see a return on investment. If they find value in your content, products, and services, it will come around. In other words, don’t make sales your only point of focus.

 

Engaged and Personable

All content should be engaging and personable. This means your readers feel like they are talking to a human and are forming a deep connection. It inspires or drives them to take action and makes them feel more involved or important while reading your email. The more interactive and humanized the content, the more trust, and credibility you establish that grows your audience and conversions.

 

Personalized

You may feel like you can’t write. But the truth is if you simply write as if you are talking to a friend or loved one, you’ll do better. Write how you speak and edit later. A natural conversation with automated personalized features like adding their name goes a long way. Not making an effort to use personalization will be obvious to your subscribers. When you don’t personalize, you make your readers feel unimportant and that you are only there to get something from them instead of providing value in return. Personalization shows you value them as an individual and strengthens the customer experience and relationship.

 

Be sure to follow these three keys to optimizing your email content if you want to see more conversions. Increasing your click-through rate and return on investment is reliant on valuable, engaging, and personalized content. Commit to always getting to know your audience, tracking your metrics, and asking for feedback to improve your content and increase your email marketing success.

 

 10 Content Marketing Tips for Email Marketing Success