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5 Email Marketing Automation Workflows to Build Today

SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

Email can be a powerful thing. With how technical it has become, email has given brands every chance to nurture, impress, respond, or engage with a user. Automation does all that in a timely, personalized, and relevant way.

So are you automating in the best possible way? Here are some workflows that might inspire your own automated email marketing flows.

Email Marketing Basics (+ Musts):

Personalization wherever possible.
Write with readability and scannability in mind.
Segment your list in ways that you can manage it.
Split testing is your friend.

5 Email Marketing Automation Workflows:

The Sign-up Workflow. When someone subscribes to your blog, newsletter, or whatever, woo them a little more. Give them an enticing offer to subscribe to your list. The basic steps after they sign up is to thank them, point them towards content, and promote sharing.
The Usage Workflow. When someone wants a free trial, demo, account, or download, this is an opportunity for you to demonstrate the value of your brand. Also know as a lead nurturing workflow, it’s all about guiding them towards a common goal or two. It can include a wide variety of content but they should all contain CTAs and the last email is all about onboarding.
The Conversion Workflow. When someone purchases your product or service, see how you can increase that customer’s lifecycle with your brand. Demonstrate appreciation, request for feedback and/or review, and see if there is an opportunity for personalized upselling suggestions and returning discounts.
The Personal Event Workflow. When there is a special day like a birthday or anniversary, celebrate it! Send a personal note to celebrate milestones. It’s a great way to nurture trust and connections with customers outside of the usual transactional emails.
The Re-Engagement Workflow. When X number of days pass since someone’s last interaction, you have to put in some razzle dazzle. Alert returning customers new products, services they may not know about, promotions, or ask for feedback.

Check out the full post by Search Engine Journal for all the workflow deets!

50 Conversion Rate Optimization and Landing Page Statistics and Trends

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

CRO stands for conversion rate optimization and it is the to-go metric to focus on when you want an increase in leads and to create a structured approach towards your potential customers.

UserGuiding put together a big ol’ list of the latest stats and trends when it comes to CRO, so we wanted to share some that we found interesting:

Half of all companies say that CRO is one of the most crucial parts of their digital marketing strategy.
A HubSpot experiment found that end-of-post banner ads only contributed to 6% of the leads produced by blog articles.
According to Search Engine Land, the average landing page conversion rate is 2.35%.
The top 10% of landing pages have a conversion rate of around 11.45%.
Desktop conversion rates are higher at 4.14% while this rate drops to 1.53% for mobile phone conversion.
Pages that rank #1 on Google SERPs have a click-through rate close to 30%.
80% of blog readers don’t read past the first heading.
Pop-up boxes on your blog can help you enlarge your subscriber list by 1375%.
Blog posts that provide any form of templates convert 240% more than others.
Using images and other visuals of real people instead of stock images helps to increase the conversion rate by 35%.
Having ”submit” on the button can lower your conversions by 3%.
Making landing pages interactive by adding video marketing content or an interactive modal can increase the conversion rate by 86%.
Reducing the number of form fields from 11 to 4 can increase the conversions by 120%

Check out the full UserGuiding blog post for all 50 stats!

Building A Better Loyalty Program

SEPTEMBER 5, 2022

Brand loyalty from customers is an extremely competitive thing. Brands that gain that type of following have to have a great product, align with the values of their customers, and provide a high-value experience. Part of that high-value portion can live with loyalty programs.

Tips for Building Your Own Loyalty Program:

Building Personalization Into Your Loyalty Program Experience: No, really. Personalize the heck out of this. Marketers get this advice constantly but still fall short of personalized experiences for their users. The common solution involves automatic program elements based on a member’s purchases, rewards redeemed, events, and other actions.
Adding Gamification Elements: Using gamification to promote trust and recognition can help you make an experience that’s all the more impactful for your customers. Examples of gamification in loyalty programs include treasure hunts, prize wheels, and social contests.
Rewarding Soft Actions: Show your customers that you care about them by rewarding them for performing various soft actions that are fun or important to them, not just purchases.
Creative Point Redemption: Allow customers to choose the way they spend their points, or give them the option to donate points to a cause that’s near and dear.
Building A More Emotional Loyalty Program: Loyalty programs are historically a transaction-based strategy, so it can be hard to steer away from “every X purchase gets you Y.” Trust, recognition, and lasting impressions are three huge elements that help to make a loyalty program more emotional, which can stick harder.

Overall, you should use your loyalty program to actively learn more about customers. This can come from directly asking questions but can also utilize buying behavior and testing out suggestions.

Check out more examples and details on loyalty programs from the Forbes article.

The Risks of Using Multiple Email Providers

AUGUST 31, 2022

It’s hard finding tools that please all areas of your business needs. There are so many platforms out there that handle email automation, lead management, CRM, SMS messages, the list goes on. While so many of them claim to do it all, not all of them can do it well. Often times, brands are left using multiple platforms and integrating them together. Or worse … different teams use different platforms and neither of them are integrated to talk to each other.

Using multiple Email Service Providers (ESPs) and sending through multiple Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Secure (SMTPs) can have some inherent risks.

Sending Duplicate Emails: If you are using multiple providers to manage lists, you may end up with recipients receiving multiple messages from the same campaign. This can put you at risk for a spam complaint. Make sure to clean lists well and remove all hard bounces immediately and check your list segments for duplicate email addresses.
Sending Emails to Unsubscribed Users: When a customer unsubscribes from receiving emails from your company, it is your responsibility to make sure their unsubscribe request is fulfilled through all providers. Much like the risk of duplicate emails, having a single source for contacts reduces this sending.
Lower Cost-Efficiency: Every email service provider charges different rates, so some of your email sends will generate more revenue and be more profitable than others. There may be higher operational costs involved with using multiple email service providers if your lists are growing, so it’s good to review budgets and expenses regularly.
Inaccurate KPIs: Especially when sending out larger batches of emails at a time – your numbers may be all over the place among different ESPs, so even averages may not be a good indicator of success or failure.

In summary, it’s best to have a centralized hub of all email addresses as a master list and that all segments are created from the scrubbed master. Check out the full post by Ongage for more risks and solutions to multiple ESPs.

5 Ways to Prevent Creator Burnout

AUGUST 30, 2022

Burnout is no joke. It’s the result of total exhaustion either mentally, emotionally, or physically (or all three). Luckily, there are ways to prevent burnout in your life.

Work-life-balance: Boundaries are a major part of creating a healthy balance between your personal and professional life. Saying “no” is essential to setting those healthy boundaries. Recent discussions on “quiet quitting” sometimes teeters on the extreme side of saying no. You have to find a balance between your ability to take on work, while also maintaining a healthy personal life.
Take a break: Creators frequently use their free time and weekends to prepare and be ready for the week. You should avoid this and enjoy your free time with activities that feels good instead of constantly focusing on work.
Take mental breaks: Tied into taking free time breaks, be sure you take time for your own individual refreshment. Often times, we struggle to ask for help or assistance in and out of the workplace. See if there are ways that you can divide tasks with others to free up more mental time for yourself.
Celebrate accomplishments: When you have completed something or reached a goal, don’t let it go unnoticed by yourself. Be sure to mark these down to either celebrate quietly or share it. (Side Note: Celebrating others is a contageious way to create an uplifting company culture.)
Tech-power: Are you getting bogged down with planning paralysis or feeling unorganized? You might get by with a little help from tech friends. It could be as simple as setting up your calendar to block out your focus and personal time, reminder notifications, digital notes, or goal setting.

Other ways to restore creativity when creator burnout strikes

Create content calendars for more structure
Revisit your old content for things that worked
Batch your content while you’re in the mood

Check out the full article by Teachmore for more inspirational nd burnout tactics.

13 Local Marketing Strategies That Work

AUGUST 29, 2022

Brands should be shooting for brand awareness among masses and targeting larger groups. But they can’t forget about the importance of their own local markets and community. Plus, there is a growing focus from TikTok and Instagram on local-level brand discovery. So priming your brand for local marketing is essential.

Here are some of the best ways to do it:

Optimize Your GBP For Local Search: Every brand should ensure its Google Business Profile (GBP) is has the most up to date information and as detailed as possible for the best searchability. There’s a great opportunity to use it for link-building by using citation sources and you can add new posts to your GBP account regularly to drive traffic and engagement.
Create Localized Content: Content marketing is a big part of attracting a targeted audience. Good content requires you to do the research and write for humans. In turn, Google bots will love it, too! You’ll see better results for your business by integrating content marketing into your local online marketing strategy.
Integrate CRM Tool: Create localized campaigns that can be launched via your CRM. Simply identify and segment customers and prospects by region if the data has been captured accordingly in your CRM. Remember, the quality of data you capture is the quality of output you’ll get.
CRO-Optimized Landing Pages For Each Campaign: This is your reminder that your home page is NOT your landing page. For local marketing, make sure your landing pages have accurate information and, if possible, custom to the region you are serving.
Leverage Social Media: Like we said, TikTok and Instagram are building out more features to focus on nearby and local discovery of brands. On top of those upcoming features, community groups and geographically-based targeting are very much alive and well on almost all social networks.

These were our favorites from the full list of 13 local marketing strategies. Check out the full post by search engine journal for al the details and tips.

3 Tips for Creating Sustainable Business Growth

AUGUST 28, 2022

Growing too fast or in the wrong directions can end up in failure or growing pains that overstay their welcome. You’ll have to put your planning hats on to get a harness on your growth and manage it in an efficient and long-term way.

Here are some tips to get it done:

Start with stepping stones. Every business planning to stick around should have 1-year, 5-year, and maybe even 10-year goals. That can include client growth, employees, revenue, and products. But to get to bigger goals, smaller steps need to be taken upfront. Focusing on quarterly action items towards smaller, two-year goals is great for creating this sustainable growth strategy.
You better have these two departments. While not all growth is in terms of dollars, you will need a firm grasp of your finances to ensure profitability and sustainability. So it’s crucial to have a financial department that helps you understand their meaning. Another department to keep in mind is operations. This department is responsible for creating and delivering products or services. Your sales, marketing, and production teams are essential but finances ensures you can afford them and operations make their promises happen.
Align your strategy. A strategy should be continuously revisited. Doing quarterly reviews can be a great way to maintain your path. Regularly meeting with your financial advisors and employees is essential to keep a pulse. There should be short-term and long-term visions that everyone needs to be aware of and working towards.

Check out the full Forbes article for more planning tips and steps you can take towards making a vision a reality.

9 Concepts to Sharpen your Analytical Thinking

AUGUST 24, 2022

Not everyone is blessed (or cursed?) to be a “numbers person.” But when it comes to marketing, ignoring data and numbers is not a luxury brands can afford. So here are some tips to sharpen your analytical skills and find stories in data.

Patterns & pattern breaks: This can be visual. Which peaks and valleys are “normal” and what sticks out?
Absolute numbers & percentages: Look at both numbers and percentages to see the relationship between the parts and the whole.
Variance: How much did X change month over month? Year over year? Have industry standards changed, too?
Expected vs. actual: Compare expected vs. actualized numbers so you can better understand your performance.
Percent contribution to whole: Think in if-then statements like “X accounts for X% of total dollars/visitors/whatever.”
Zoom out to a broader scale: We mentioned peaks and valleys. Figure out the “why” behind those to see how you can repeat the peaks.
Check profit margins: Revenue is cool, but what about low margins and profits?
Consider incentives: If someone tells you x, how do they benefit?
Poke holes in your own logic: Look for data that proves or disproves your hypothesis.

These tips are from a LinkedIn post by Wes Kao. Check out the full post for more tips and conversations in the comments!

Should You be Investing in Streaming TV Marketing?

AUGUST 23, 2022

It’s nothing new that video advertising is thriving despite the recent dip in ad spend. Use of CTV and OTT channels has grown and they’re only getting more popular as streaming services adjust their subscription tiers and open advertising to larger audiences.

Let’s break down why your brand should start taking more advtange of the shift and some tips to do it.

Streaming Ad Growth Facts to Know:

In 2022, there has been a 35% increase in ad spending, which translated to more than $6.4 billion.
Two-thirds of the digital video dollars committed upfront were spent against streaming services.
eMarketer projects that total U.S. CTV spend (upfront and scatter) will reach nearly $19 billion this year.

The Benefits of CTV:

Audience targeting ― It goes without saying that the days of cable guesswork are gone. More accurate and strategic allocation of budgets to specific, high-value audiences.
Original programming ― You have more options for the type of content you can be feature alongside.
Better measurement ― Data allows for more accurate view of who each ad has reached.
More video eyeballs ― The pool of additional impressions helps offset linear TV viewing declines

Potential CTV Challenges:

Uniformity and measurement ― This is where too many options are a hit against CTV ads. It prevents the ease of buying across streaming vendors and the sharing of data between them.
Frequency capping – The lack of shared data and the sheer number of vendors running CTV makes it difficult to set frequency caps.

What Does It Mean for Brands?

Overall, the positives of spending on CTV advertising outweigh the challenges.

Brands should be experimenting with multiple vendors to determine what content and format fits your marketing objectives the best.

Check out the full piece by Advantage Solutions for more tips on CTV media plans and predictions for Netflix and Disney+.