Tag: communicating with clients

Improve Your Email Open Rates – Part 1

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

5 Ways To Ensure Your Content Is Effective

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effective content

Is your content being read?

We are all familiar with that proverbial saying, “if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise?”

Well, we can apply the same question to our content.

You can spend all kinds of time, money, and effort compiling and posting content, but if no one reads it, what’s the point?

Creating relevant content that speaks to your target audience, as well as presenting it in an attractive and easy to read format is critical to gaining readership and loyalty online.

We have put together five questions to ask yourself to ensure that your copy is effective and is being noticed by your target audience.

Check out these 5 questions:
              • What does your homepage tell people about what you are offering? Always try to think like a first-time visitor to your website. Make sure that your homepage is designed in such a way that it clearly represents your brand and your offerings. This will ensure that visitors to your website will know immediately if this is a site that they wish to explore further.
              • Is your content written for consumption by the average reader, and free of jargon? Every industry and profession has its own jargon. We converse regularly with our colleagues and our peers using this jargon. But sometimes we can get so used to speaking in these terms that we forget that those folks not involved in our industry or profession don’t understand what that terminology means. If your clients and prospects understood this jargon, chances are they wouldn’t need you. Make sure you are communicating in plain language to your prospects and clients.
              • Does your choice of language within your content “speak” like your target audience speaks? Aside from simple common sense and personal experience, there is times of research out there that proves that when you communicate in the same terms and language is your intended audience, you create a better rapport. By building this relationship, you build trust and community among your audience, which translates to more readership and a loyal client base.
              • Are your calls to action effective? Content without a call to action is nothing more than an article or an advertisement. Let’s face it, 99% of us are using online methods and strategies to promote our businesses and convert visitors to customers. Make sure that you would include a clear, effective CTA within your content. Measure the effectiveness of your CTAs with the use of analytics and software tools such as heat maps and content analysis.
              • Are you effectively communicating your unique value proposition? Differentiation of your business from all others offering the same or similar products or services is the key to building your business and keeping clients. Review your website content regularly to see that your message is clearly defined. But sometimes we are too close and can’t really see how it is being perceived. Consider polling some of your clients to see if they believe that a first-time visitor to your website could define and describe your UVP in their own words

 

  • 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.

7 Ways to Test Your Customer Experience

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customer experience

How does your user experience measure up to your competitors?

None of us can afford to stand still in business. If we aren’t continuing to grow and to learn new ways to interact with our clients, we’re dead in the water!

The global marketplace has defined how we interact with our customers. There is really no such thing anymore as a captive audience. Technology and how our clients and prospects interact with our businesses continues to evolve.

The seven questions in this article can help you evaluate how your user experience compares the competition.

One of the more important metrics is to evaluate your performance over time. To help measure this, ask these three questions;

1. Has your customer experience changed since you run your last test?

2. Is your customer experience improving, especially as compared to your competitors?

3. Can you attribute the changes to something you changed on your site, something different about your products or services, or changes within the market?

By asking these three questions, you will be able to evaluate how your company continues to adapt to new realities within the marketplace.

But we must also evaluate how our clients are accessing our businesses online. Mobile now accounts for over 60% of all searches, and this continues to grow and to change the way that we are interacting with our clients and prospects. Therefore, it is equally important that we understand and evaluate the customer experience across the different channels.

The following four questions will address those issues;

1. What does the interaction between your business and your client look like on their smart phone, desktop, tablet, and in person?

2. Regardless of how your client is interacting with you, is there experience consistent?

3. Should your client need to access or complete a process across multiple devices, does it happen smoothly and efficiently?

4. Which of the various channels do your users consider their primary choice?

Understanding how your users are interacting with your company, and how seamless and simple their experience is, will give you a leg up on your competitors. Put yourself in the shoes of your clients and prospects, providing them with the same type of experience that attract you.

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.

Know Your Competition!

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know your competition

How Do You Measure Up To Your Competitors?

Who do your clients and prospects prefer?

Let’s face it… a free-enterprise based economy provides the environment for a number of businesses to exist within the same industry. Take a look at fast food hamburger joints as just one example. There are multiple choices, yet all of them have carved out their niche.

As entrepreneurs and business owners, we should not fear competition. Competition is what makes us focus our business on our specific target market, and drives us to do better for them.

As consumers of product, we are all familiar with what happens when a monopoly exists; often, we end up with higher prices and substandard service. And although we may dream of cornering the market in our given business sector, competition is healthy and keeps us always working to provide the best customer service and to keep current with trends and improvements within our industries.

Reviewing and improving our businesses is key to ensuring our long-term growth and sustainability.  Reaching out to your clients and prospects is the best way to gauge how your business is viewed.

The following seven questions should help you determine how you measure up to your competitors:

1. If your clients and prospects are familiar with other businesses providing the same products or services as yours, which do they prefer?

2. What is it that makes them prefer one company over the other?

3. What company do they believe does the better job of explaining the product or service offerings in a clear, concise way?

4. Which company does a better job of convincing the client or prospect to convert?

5. What is it that people like or dislike about your top competitor’s newest product or service?

6. What would convince them to switch to your company?

7. What is it that you are doing that might convince your current customers to switch to one of your competitors?

Keep this list handy and refer to it often. Consider polling your clients on these questions at least once a year to ensure that you are continuing to provide the types of products and services that keeps them in engaged with your company.

Competition is not the enemy; becoming complacent in your business, is!

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.

Six Questions to Measure Your Brand

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measure your brand

How is your brand perceived?

Presenting a unified brand – one that resonates with clients and prospects – is perhaps the number one element that will determine the success or the failure of your business.

As mentioned in previous articles, a brand is so much more than simply a logo. Your brand should define your company; what it represents, the guiding principles, and how you do business. It is a combination of colors, logo, and a clear representation of your core values.

When considering your brand, consider these following six questions to ensure an accurate depiction of your business.

1. How do clients and perspective clients perceive your company?

This is perhaps one of the most important factors. How your clients and prospects perceive your company will determine their interest in doing business with you.

2. What words would they use to describe you?
From time to time, ask your clients how they would describe your company. Also, you could consider an online poll to reach prospective clients and gauge their response.

3. Do those words match the way you want to be perceived?

Once you have the feedback from your clients and prospects about how they describe your company, compare their responses to what your intention is with your brand.

4. Does your brand appear trustworthy?

More and more, business is being done online. You must be sure that your brand is able to convey that you are trustworthy. But also remember that your off-line presence is just as important, so be sure to develop your brand to show authority and that your company can be trusted.

5. Would they recommend you?

One of the most important ways of marketing is that of word-of-mouth. Aside from the fact that it is the least expensive type of marketing, it is also more likely to create a better relationship with new clients due to the implied trust from the person who is recommending you. When reviewing your brand, engage your clients and ask them if they would consider recommending your business.

6. What do they like and dislike about the way you present your product or service?

Another key question that will help develop a strong, trustworthy brand is to ask your clients what they like-or don’t like-about how you are presenting your products or services in the marketplace. People like to do business with “winners”, so determining how you are seen through the eyes of your clients is critical.

Whether you are just starting your business or re-branding your business, keep these six questions in mind to help develop an identity that has strength and authority.

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.

Using Facebook Live

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facebook live

As you are probably aware, Facebook is now offering live-streaming.

This addition to Facebook is not a surprise. Tons of social platforms offer livestreaming.

We all know that video has become a very popular way of sharing information. It has become a preferred way of communicating with people online as it tends to be more engaging – and, one hopes, more entertaining as well.

However, it is important to make sure that you are not just chasing the latest shiny bauble when utilizing video for your marketing needs. You must always keep to the fundamentals of marketing; Who is your audience? What is your message? What is the best social platform to engage and reach your audience?… You get the idea.

Livestreaming provides an opportunity to engage your audience in real time.  Whatever platform you choose, be wise when planning your livestream.

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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