Month: August 2016

Improve Your Email Open Rates – Part 1

Nancy Boisvert Newsletter , , , , , , , ,
email open rates

We all know the stats. Open rates for emails often suck.

In an era when inboxes are flooded with emails on a daily basis, all screaming for attention, how do you get noticed?

Email communication is the norm. But getting people to open your emails and to engage with the content is a challenge. In an effort to help you improve your open rates, we’ve decided to post a three-part series on improving your email open rates. Today, in Part 1, we are offering you seven tips to help you write enticing and engaging subject lines.

Your subject line may just consist of just a few words but, just like the headlines in print media, it is the most important part of your email. If you haven’t captured the reader’s attention and created some intrigue, it is unlikely that your email will be opened.

Here are seven tips to help you with your subject lines:

1. Be sure that you are offering your audience something of value. Avoid providing rehashed content that can be found anywhere on the Internet.

2. If you have something great to offer, be direct. You don’t need to add fluff.

3. Get your readers attention by creating some intrigue. Don’t reveal the whole story.

4. Make sure that your subject lines are personal. Treat your reader like a friend and your email is more likely to be opened.

5. Don’t get hung up on grammar. I know, I’m one of those folks who is a bit of a stickler for correct spelling and grammar. But in some cases it pays to be more conversational. You’re not writing an essay; you’re communicating a message. Just be sure that your message is clear and that you’re not confusing people (for instance, affect and effect have completely different meanings).

6. Experiment with your subject lines. Regardless of the email service you use, you should have the option for A/B testing. Try out different lines and see what gets you the best open rate.

7. The golden rule is to always offer quality content. If your subscribers are used to getting great content from you, you’re more likely to get a great open rate even if your subject line isn’t the best.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

5 Ways To Improve Client Rentention

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client retention

Do you have loyal customers?

It’s one thing to obtain a client; it something else to keep that client.

There have been statistics as long as there have been sales. Depending on your industry, the rates might vary slightly, but overwhelmingly the statistics support the case for keeping your customers happy.

It costs a significant amount more, both in time and actual cash, to obtain a new client. However, once you have obtained that new customer, the costs to service and maintain that customer are markedly less. Therefore, doesn’t it make sense to ensure that you are retaining your customers?

Ask yourself the following five questions to see if you can improve your client retention rates:

1. How do your customers currently use your products or services? It makes sense that the more your clients are using your products or services, the more likely you are to retain them. Keeping your clients informed and engaged is a key element of client retention.

2. Do your clients know about all of the features products and services that you offer? Be sure that you are communicating with your customers on a regular basis, keeping them informed of the full scope of your offerings. If they don’t know that you can provide them with an additional service or benefit that they need, they may look elsewhere.

3. What’s the likelihood that your client would recommend your company to a friend? It’s true; referrals and testimonials are the best form of flattery. If your customer is happy with your services and would be willing to tell a friend about you, you are likely to retain the client – at least as long as you continue to provide them with the quality of service that they have come to expect from you.

4. Is there anything that would make your customers stop doing business with you? Communication with your clients is not only important as a means to keep them engaged with you, but is also an essential part of making sure that you are providing the services and products that will keep your customers loyal to you. Ask your customers if they are happy with your services. Find out if you are meeting all of their needs and expectations, or if there’s anything else that you can do to help them.

5. What, if anything, would your clients change about your company? Again, communicate, communicate, communicate! Phone your clients. Email them. Send out surveys. Ask questions, even if you’re not sure that you want to know the answers. If you are not meeting the needs and expectations of your customers, you can be guaranteed that they’ll find what they need somewhere else.

A happy customer is a loyal customer. And a loyal customer will bring you referral business. Treat your customers with respect and let them know that they matter.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Get Better Results from A/B Testing

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AB Testing

Are you using email marketing in your business?

I’m sure you are. Digital communications and digital marketing constitute a large portion of business promotion.

Nearly everyone has some form of email communication, whether it is a newsletter, a product promotion, or business prospecting campaign. And, if you are looking to achieve better results, you should be employing some form of A/B testing.

Simply put, A/B testing is trying different subject lines. We all know, just like in the “old days” of print newspapers and magazines, headlines are what draw the reader into the story. With people receiving hundreds of emails every day, it’s important that your subject line is one that will attract the most opens. After all, if your email is being opened, you’re not engaging your audience, nor are you selling any product.

With this in mind, consider the following for points to improve your A/B testing:

1. How do you develop an A/B test concept that actually gives you the results you looking for? As marketers, just like most people immersed in their own industry, we can’t always trust our own ideas. One of the ways to develop a great a be split test is to engage a handful of your clients and ask them to work through your sales funnel. Then, have them go through a competitor’s sales funnel and let you know how yours compares and where it can be improved upon.

2. What were the results from your last A/B test? Like every other marketing campaign you undertake, it is critical to review your results. Take your last campaign and compare the open and engagement rate as compared to previous campaigns. If you’re results were better this time, why were they better? Conversely, if they were worse, what changed?

3. What was it about the more successful version that users preferred? Was it the topic you covered? Was it the way it was presented? Were there too many or too few words in the version that did not work as well? What did users prefer about the winning version?

4. Was there anything that they preferred about the version that did not perform as well? Never negate the value of something that doesn’t perform as well as you want or expect. We build on things that are less successful to create winners.

All marketing campaigns, in order to either be successful or to allow you to build success, require a “post-mortem”. By tearing apart all aspects of your campaign, you can more easily identify those elements that were successful and those that did not perform as expected. An email campaign is no different, and proper utilization of an A/B tool can be a trailblazer to a successful email marketing campaign.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

6 Steps To Improve Your Content Marketing

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content marketing

Is your content marketing working for you?

To be relevant online, it is important that you are continually providing fresh, new material. This is not only critical for search engine optimization, but also to keep the visitors to your website -your clients and prospects – engaged and interested. You have to give them a reason to keep coming back. After all, if they’ve already seen everything you have to offer, why would they come back? And, of course, if they don’t come back chances are they’re going to miss something new when you do put it out there.

But you can’t just randomly put up content. You need to be original. You need to be relevant. And, if you are sharing material that you have found in other places, you need to give attribution.

Ask the following six questions to improve the content that you are providing:

1. Do your visitors find your posts, white papers, infographics, webinars, etc. relevant and helpful?  Most people, when searching the Internet, are looking for answers to questions or problems. If you are providing something of value they are more likely to learn to trust you, to become regular visitors to your site, and eventually your client.

2. When someone lands on the blog portion of your site, what do they read first? There are lots of software solutions out there that can help you to track and identify this information. Some will give basic stats, such as the number of visitors to the site and others will provide you with live tracking of exactly where they scrolled to on the page.

3. What was it about the article noted above that first caught the visitor’s eye? Was it the title? Was it the associated image? Was it the actual material within the article? All of these are important factors that can lead to more readership and a better response to the article. Just like in print media, a headline is important to capture your audience, and images must be relevant to the material you are presenting.

4. Do you know if your visitors enjoy reading similar content from your competitors, and if so, which ones? Let’s face it, much of what is out there has been said by others in different ways. Searching cyberspace for answers is kind of like watching TV; 500 channels all showing the same or similar programming. So make sure that your content is presented in a way that attracts and retains more readers than your competitor.

5. What topics would your visitors like to see next? Delivering what you are client or prospect wants is key to keeping them loyal to you. There are many ways that you can find out what your website visitors are looking for. Consider dropping in an online poll, or use some of that tracking software I mentioned earlier to ascertain what types of articles are attracting the most readers.

6. Where do your visitors typically go to find content that is related to their interests, job, or industry? By discovering the answer to these questions, you can reach out to specific sites and associations that they are engaged with and offer to provide guest content from time to time. This serves not only to help your SEO with back links, but also helps you gain authority as an expert within the chosen industry.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

How To Get Discovered With Organic Search

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organic search

How is your company getting found online?

There are tons of articles out there about paid search. SEO, Adwords, display ads, paid ads on social media… We’ve heard and read about them all. And, done properly, any and all of these methods can be effective and done with in a pre-set budget.

But prior to the development of these methods and the incarnation of the tens of thousands of companies and individuals who provide these services, there was something called organic search.

Organic search is simply being found online without paying for positioning on search engines. In other words, as defined by Wikipedia, “Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being advertisements.”

Of course, even organic search requires a strategy in order to show up on the listings. However, these tactics can be undertaken without the need to hire outside help.

Search engines obviously require input data that allows your company to be found. Things like keywords and backlinks are still important, but can be created through website design and data, clever content, and having your site backlinked to other sources, which helps determine the popularity of your site.

Review the following four questions to find out how users discover your company through organic search:

1. When searching for your keywords, what do users notice first: your website, your ads, or your competitors? If they are finding your ads, it proves that your paid advertising is working, but says little about your organic search. If they’re finding your competitors first, it’s definitely time to review your site and your content to make sure that you are targeting the appropriate keywords for your business. If they’re finding your website first, you are getting good organic search results.

2. What words are standing out to users on the Google search page results? Regardless of whether your site is being found on the first two pages of search engine results, review the words that are showing up on the results and make sure that you are using the words and terms that are being found.

3. If, and when, users are clicking on your link what do they expect to find? Make sure that you are using keywords that are appropriate to your business. Falsifying your content to gain organic search results is not the way to go. Users will be upset at what is a thinly veiled attempt to gain traffic and will boycott your site.

4. Does your landing page (or homepage) meet the users’ expectations? As mentioned above, make sure that you are being found by users who are entering a search query that is true to your business. You have only a matter of seconds to capture the attention of a visitor to your site. If they are not drawn to keywords and content that matches their interest, they’ll move on to the next search result.

Organic search results are an important part of online business success. Make sure that you don’t neglect this function. Keep your content fresh and current; both search engines and users are looking for this!

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

5 Ways To Optimize Your Forms

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optimize forms

Are your forms working?

Following up on our last article, where we discussed the creation of better converting landing pages, we thought it timely to address the issue of optimizing the forms that appear on your site.

There has been a lot of trial and error, and a lot of research about how to create the best form to obtain opt-ins on your landing pages or website. It stands to reason that the form that works best for your needs is the one that is tailored specifically to your product or service offering. For instance, if your form is intended to invite a prospect to receive a quote or an evaluation of some sort, the form would obviously require more fields than if you are simply looking to gain email addresses for your mailing list through an offering of a free white paper or e-book.

Every day, we are invited to download free reports, e-books, white papers, etc. And, every day, we make decisions about whether we think that the value we will receive is worth the cost of our email address. Just like you, I have either declined the offer or have submitted my email address in order to receive the offering, only to unsubscribe later when I find that I’m receiving too many emails. But retaining prospects and clients on your email list is a subject that is separate from today’s focus.

So, back to making sure that your forms are actually working for you.

Review the following five points to optimize your forms:

1. Make sure that you have the right number of fields on your form.  As mentioned above, make sure that the number of fields on your form is appropriate to what you are offering. If you ask for too much information, your opt-in numbers will suffer.

2. Ensure that your forms are fully accessible to users who use a keyboard instead of a mouse.  Drop-down options are great, but you have to make sure that if somebody is using a keyboard that their arrow keys are fully functional for the form.

3. Test your forms.  Make sure that your forms work correctly and smoothly across all devices, screen sizes, and browsers. If your form does not display properly to some users, they will become frustrated and will give up.

4. How intuitive are your forms?  If the user makes a mistake when filling out your form, does it display error messages allowing them to correct the mistake immediately?

5. Is there anything about your form that would discourage the user from completing the process?  Let’s face it, we all are looking for forms that are simple and self-explanatory. We don’t want to have to work simply to provide someone with access to our email.

Using online techniques to market and promote our businesses is essential in this day and age. Encouraging people to become repeat visitors to our sites and to sign up for our offerings is an important component of online success. Make sure when you are developing your forms that you review these five elements to make sure that you are making the users experience as simple and as seamless as possible.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

How To Build Higher Converting Landing Pages

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landing pages

It’s one thing to create a landing page; it’s another thing to build a landing page that converts!

We are all familiar with the landing page. You know, that page that is intended to entice us to sign up for something or to purchase a product or service. Well, we also know that there are as many designs of landing pages as there are products and services to sell.

There has been a lot of research and trial and error done in the name of developing landing pages. And, weirdly enough, some of those landing pages that seem to go on endlessly actually have a good conversion rate. Now, I say weirdly enough because, quite frankly, I don’t enjoy scrolling down the page forever to try to find the features and benefits of a product or service that I’m interested in. Yet, it has been shown that many of these types of pages are actually very successful.

Design and content are critical when developing your landing page. It must be attractive enough to draw in users, and phrased simply enough that prospects can easily understand what is being offered. If your landing pages cluttered or does not have clear CTAs (call to action), the likelihood of obtaining conversions is pretty slim.

From a functional perspective, it’s imperative that you ensure that the backend is properly structured as well. Test to make sure that your contact form is functioning properly, linking to the appropriate thank you pages and or leading to any upsells that you may have.

In order to build landing pages that are more likely to convert, consider the following six points:
  •  Is your offering presented in a way that your target user can easily understand? As mentioned above, ensuring that your offering is clear and that the details are simply presented will greatly improve the likelihood that the user will convert.
  • Does the landing page meet your prospects’ expectations? There is nothing worse than a landing page that does not clearly define the product or service that is being presented. Can your prospects find the information at their looking for? Are there questions appropriately anticipated and answered? Don’t frustrate your users by giving them incomplete information.
  • Can your prospects easily sign up for your offering using the forms you’ve provided? Again, as mentioned above, be sure to test your landing page forms. Make sure that they are directing your users to the appropriate pages.
  • Can your users be distracted by anything on the page? The key here is to provide information in an easy to read, yet entertaining fashion, without diverting the user’s attention from your key goal of getting them to buy in.
  • Will it your users think that your offer has enough value that they are willing to pay money and enter their contact information for it? There are literally millions of online offers these days. To ensure that you are going to get people to opt in or purchase your product, make sure that it is presented in a way that assures them that they will be getting good value for their money.
  • Have you provided enough information to your users prior to the CTA? Let’s face it; no one is going to click on your CTA if their questions or concerns have not been addressed. Be sure to review your landing page through the eyes of your prospects, anticipating any concerns or questions that they may have before they click on that call-to-action button.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Snapchat for Business?

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snapchat

What?  Snapchat can be used for business?

Yep, believe it or not, you can leverage this platform for your business.

This social media platform allows you to take and share videos.  But the videos disappear after a short period of time.  It was initially very popular with teens, but has now expanded its reach and proven itself to have applications that can help your business.

If it’s appropriate for your business, don’t hesitate to think outside of the box.  There’s nothing wrong with making your advertising fun.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

5 Questions For Optimizing Email Marketing

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email marketing

Hard to believe, but email as a means of communication has been around for well over 20 years now.

Since the mid-1990s, people have been communicating with each other via cyberspace. In fact, a whole generation has grown up accustomed to this method of communication, as opposed to sending letters and messages in a physical format.

Oh yeah, there were growing pains!

Internet service providers came and went, various email providers came and went, but eventually electronic communications became the norm, overtaking the “old” traditional way of interacting.

And as marketing online became more and more accepted, email became a preferred way to reach out to prospects and clients.

In the early days of email marketing, it was kind of like the old West. Anyone with an email address was open to receiving unsolicited emails from any number of businesses. But as this method of advertising services and products became more and more common, boundaries and rules had to be established. Anti-spam legislation is now in place in most countries, and a new kind of business has evolved – the email service provider.

As businesses have turned more and more to email marketing, inboxes have become repositories of unwanted and unsolicited emails, not unlike “junk mail” of past times. Most of us in business are used to receiving dozens, if not hundreds, of emails each day.  The big question is, how do you ensure that your email is not lost among these emails, and how do you improve your open rates?

So, to optimize your email marketing, ask yourself the following five questions:
  • Why are users opening some of your emails more than others?   Do you find that some of your emails are being opened more than others? Most email service providers provide the opportunity to do A/B split testing for your email campaigns. What subject lines in treat more people to open? Is there a day of the week, or a time of the day that your recipients are more likely to open emails? Reviewing these types of questions can dramatically improve your open rate.
  • Will your target market understand and engage with your next email campaign?  When planning your email campaigns, make sure that you are providing something that is relevant to your target audience. Sometimes we can get caught up in what we want to tell our prospects and clients, rather than responding to their needs and desires. Make sure that when you are planning out your next email campaign that you are delivering something of value to the recipients. If necessary, split out your email list, based on specific messages relevant to subsets of your target market. The closer you get to solving a prospect or client’s problem, the more likely your email is to be opened and engaged with by your target audience.
  • What would users change about your emails if they could?  Are your prospects and clients satisfied with the emails that you are sending? Consider asking your email recipients to respond to a quick poll. Ask them if they like the content they are receiving, the format in which it is delivered, or the frequency with which they are receiving it. The key here is to give your recipients what they want.
  • Do your users receive emails from other companies in your industry?   It is highly likely that your clients and prospects are also being targeted by your competitors. Do your research. See what your competitors are sending and make sure that your emails are more engaging.
  • What do the users like and dislike about those emails?  Just like question 3, find out what your email recipients like and dislike about the emails that they are receiving from your competitors. If your competitors are successful at sending emails that are engaging a larger percentage of your list, you need to find out what they are doing. Discover their strategies for email marketing and see what you can implement to improve your own open and engagement rate.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

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