Success with email marketing: 10 Tips

Ding-dong the old school email marketing techniques are dead. Why? Because we didn’t account for the fact we were selling to smart humans. But content is king and when you pair it with a killer email funnel that follows basic human psychology you will come out ahead.

Read these key techniques, take them to heart, and we guarantee you will win hearts and minds.

 

Success with email marketing: 10 Tips

1. The email “blast” is dead. Using this technique to push content out about your brand is a sure fire way to have people view your email list as spammy and get off it fast.

2. The “newsletter” is not only dead, it paints your brand as out of touch. Send personalized tips and tricks and content from a real person and develop a relationship with your audience. Not a weekly “bulletin”.

3. Segment your email list. Send your best stuff to a “premium” list. Put people who engage with your email content or buy from you on that list. Make sure they know they are special and have been promoted.

4. Don’t sell to your list. Send high value content and assets to your list so people develop the habit of opening your emails. Industry average open rates are 7% to 10% so if you can get 20% to 30% open rates you have content in your emails that people want. Work towards that. Some of the top sellers in the industry give away massively valuable materials and develop amazing loyalty from their subscribers.

5. Qualify everyone joining your email list. Test them to see if they engage with your content. Upsell the engagers and fish the non-engagers ‘til they do.

6. Use a smart CRM and marketing automation system such as Infusionsoft.com so that you can track behavior of people on your email list.

7. Be sure to observe anti-spam legislation in your country. Get to know CAN-SPAM in the U.S. and CASL in Canada. Ignore these at your peril. You could find yourself facing a big fine for a misstep.

8. Use scarcity. People love a deal and hate to miss one. If you offer something of massive value, even if it is for free, ask for action and use a tight deadline. The threat of loss or missing out will drive people to act fast if they think they will miss out. Not everyone will, but more people will act than if you don’t squeeze them on time.

9.  Be personable. Don’t sign your emails “Best, The XYZ Company Team”, sign it from you or a personality in your company. Develop a voice. Connect on a human level and appeal to emotions and needs through human to human connections. Tell them stories they can relate to and ask them to act because you care about them.

10. ULTIMATE TIP: Give away your best stuff. People will be blown away by what they get from you and will assume your expertise is much deeper than what they got for free. Plus, some people are lazy. They want something done for them even if you tell them how, but they will appreciate being given insider information, even if they don’t use it. This will qualify you as someone to buy from. Trust is the magic that must be present before someone buys. Earn it. This works for any industry.

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Social media success: 5 quick tips

Want to use social media to grow your business and generate more sales leads? Read these 5 quick tips.  Number #5 is probably the most overlooked and most important, but you should definitely get more followers on Soundcloud if you want more publicity.

Social media success: 5 quick tips

1) Be sure to post a profile and appropriate brand images or supporting brand images on your social media accounts. Users should have the same brand experience as if they visited your website or came to your company premises. Use the page background, banner image, and feature image options to your brand advantage.

2) Do not hard sell on social media. Create opportunities for engagement with intriguing offers.  Provide more free valuable expert content than salesy content.

3) Share great content links on social media. It’s a good way to drive people to your web property. Make sure when they land on the content there is a clear way to reach you using a call to action.

4) Be sure to use Pinterest. It is image-centric and is a good way to share links. Product marketers that sell to women do very well on Pinterest.

5) Share content from other web sites. It sets you up as an expert, who understand the industry they are in. Sticking to your own content makes you look self-serving and limits your appeal to people seeking expertise. Share. Share. Share. You look generous. And smart.

 

Social media etiquette: 3 quick tips

Understanding how to use social media to grow your business isn’t as difficult it seems. It’s actually quite straightforward. Step 1 is to set up an account on the following platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Google.

Step 2, post informative content often (at least 3 times per week). And Step 3 is to learn a few basic rules regarding social media etiquette.  To help you with that, here are 3 quick tips.

Social media etiquette: 3 quick tips

  1. Don’t follow back everyone who follows you on a social platform. Choose the people who provide value to you and monitor their tweets for content you care about. When you follow someone back it sends the message that you’re interested.  So, when you do follow up back make sure you share their content and engage them. It will help you build a relationship. The goal for you is to develop a social media community of contacts you care about
  2. Do respond to everyone who reaches out to your brand through social media. They are interested in you, so, engage them. Be helpful or add value to them in your response.
  3. For people who are malicious and negative on social media either ignore them, or if they have a complaint against your brand, address it but take it out of social media as fast as possible. Don’t turn it into an online battle.

How to simplify your social media posting: Use Hootsuite

Owning a social media account is not enough; you have to keep it populated with good content. Share blog posts and other valuable content you post regularly on  your website at least three times per week.

You can do this easily if using a free online tool called Hootsuite. When you setup an account you can schedule your social media posts to go out regularly through out the week.

How to simplify your social media posting: Use Hootsuite

how to simplify your social media posting

What you need to know about Hootsuite:

Hootsuite is a hosted social media management system that helps you keep track and manage your many social network channels.

 You can use Hootsuite to:

  • Post on multiple social media platforms at the same time
  • Automate your social media posting
  • View posts from all your platforms in one place and reply to them easily
  • Receive alerts when someone interacts with your social media posts
  • If you have a team of people that manages your company’s social media they can see the activity of others
  • Improve your customer service by speeding up your response time
  • Use the Hootsuite app and manage social media from anywhere using a mobile device

To find out more about Hootsuite or to sign up for a free account visit: http://www.hootsuite.com

 

Calculators are content that drives mega traffic

Interactive calculators and tools can go a long way
to attract people that are looking for help with a particular problem. Cooking sites, for example, can offer metric conversion calculators. Banks can offer financial calculators and industrial companies can offer calculators related to their niche operations.

We built these materials handling calculators  for a client and the pages are top traffic generating pages receiving visitors for related sites and search engines.

Why do calculators drive traffic?

Why does anyone visit a web page? Because its useful.  Calculators solve problems instantly for people and so they return to them often and that repeat traffic is extremely valuable. IF you have the ability to build a web calculator on your content oriented site, then invest in it. It will require the help of a web developer, but its content that will return dividends again and again.

Calculators are content that drives mega traffic

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