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Actionable Steps for Influencing Your Conversions

APRIL 27, 2022

We’ve been talkin’ a lot about calculating conversion rates, improving copy, and paid ad channels. Here are some additional things that may be in the way of some of your lead conversions.

These are strategies you’ve definitely heard of but maybe you haven’t connected the dots on ways you can leverage them for your brand.

Leave no stone unturned!

Improve Your Site Navigation – A big reason for bounces and reasons people haven’t filled out your form may be because they can’t find it. Make sure your nav and IA are making sense.
Improve Page Load Times – Another reason people bounce? Slooooow pages. Large media files are the usual culprits for a longer load time.
Ensure Your Value Proposition is Clear – Copy is a matter of trial and error that needs testing continually until you land on things that positively impact your key metrics.
Videos are More Engaging – So use ’em! Especially if you can use them as a way to directly speak to your customers like demos.
Your Forms – Experiment with required and optional fields, the number of fields you have, and your headlines for them. If your form abandonment rate is high, you can be sure that your form needs attention!
New + Repeat Visitor Conversion Rate – New visitors can show you how changes are making an impact as fresh eyes, and repeat visitors are already more likely to convert so find ways to keep them engaged.
Traffic Sources – So you know where your conversions are coming from and you can target that channel’s journey in a more effective way.

Tools to consider if you don’t use them already:

Surveys because it never hurts to ask
Heatmaps so you can see a user’s behavior on your site
Ticket Systems for direct support and suggestions
Form Analytics for tracking incomplete and usability

Check out the full post by VWO for more tools and examples.

Social Media Benchmarks to Know in 2022

APRIL 26, 2022

If you haven’t check out Sprout’s 2022 Year in Social Report, you may wanna head on over and give it a download. It’s full of great tidbits, stats, and analysis on the state of social media marketing.

What to measure in 2022*:

Impressions – Impressions measure the number of times your content is displayed. Why do they matter? Exposure is what boosts brand awareness. The more often people see your content, the more familiar they become with your brand. A screenshot of a LinkedIn post from Drift promoting their podcast, “Operations with Sean Lane”.
Posts published – This is the number of posts published across accounts during a specific period. While this may seem simple, it’s a good foundation of a successful social media strategy to help you reverse engineer the publishing volume needed to reach certain impressions, engagements and engagement rates.
Total Engagements – This measures the number of times users engaged with your posts during a specific reporting period. It covers all engagements including likes, reactions, retweets and other network-specific interactions as well.
New followers – Maybe you’re not looking at who is new to your brand too often but according to Sprout, 9/10 consumers will buy from brands they follow on social. Let this chart show you what that means for possible actions:

*One big note here – These metrics are network-agnostic, which means you can use them to assess your full social media strategy.

Check out the full report by Sprout for specific industry highlights!

Measuring + Improving Your Email Click-Through Rate

APRIL 25, 2022

Opens are great. Clicks are better.

One of the most helpful metrics is your email click-through rate (CTR) as a way to track engagement. So we wanna recap on how to measure it and how to encourage more of it!

What is an Email CTR?

An Email CTR is the percentage of clicks on links within your email based on the successfully delivered emails. The formula looks like this:

(Number of Recipients Who Clicked ÷ Number of Delivered Emails) x 100 = CTR

So what’s a good one? A strong CTR all depends on your industry and content, but you wanna shoot for 2-3%.

How Can You Improve an Email’s CTR?

There are a lot of factors that can influence clicks, so you will have to switch up your approach every now and again. CTAs, design, and language, are just to name some of the influences on your CTR. Here are a few tactics to encourage more clicks:

Always start with the content – It’s what people are opening your email for in the first place. Tailor email content to the audience. And keep the “above the fold” content as interesting as possible.
It better be responsive – That’s a given in this day and age. But remember that not only should your emails be mobile-friendly, but the content it clicks to should be, too.
CTA’s all-day – Here are some CTA best practices: 1) “click here” is boring, be super specific and straightforward instead. 2) Those links better pop visually. 3) A/B test your placement and it’s okay to repeat them elsewhere for skimmers.
Get your timing and frequency right – Some emails are being read more than clicked because of the time of day or timing for a user journey where someone just isn’t ready to click. Think like a user and test out times.

For more CTR refreshers and real brand examples, check out Twilio Send Grid’s post.

How to Calculate Your Conversion Rate (and then some)

APRIL 24, 2022

Conversion rates are one of the many metrics marketers look at to show how something is (or isn’t) working. At its core, it shows you the percentage of visitors to your website or landing page who do what you want them to do (i.e. convert to a customer).

The Basic Formula for Calculating Conversion Rates:

The number of conversions divided by total visitors then multiplied by 100 to get your conversion rate.

Different Types of Conversion Rates:

There are two main types of conversions out there – macro and micro conversions. Macro Conversions are typically used to assess a website’s success via goals and tracking traffic. Anything related to selling or customers can be considered a Micro Conversion.

We gave ya the formula for an overall conversion rate, but you can calculate rates on any specific marketing area. Some other common conversion rates include:

Marketing channel conversion rate – Is Google Ads traffic or Facebook Ads traffic more likely to convert?
Page-level conversion rate – Which of these pages is better at converting traffic?
Campaign conversion rate – Did my targeting changes improve anything?
Individual ad conversion rate – Do I need to change my ad copy? Does this ad drive more qualified traffic?
Keyword conversion rate – Which keywords deserve more budget?

What is a Good Conversion Rate?

This is the big Q, right? You tracked your data, but what does it mean to you? Benchmarks all depend on your industry, business model, and marketing goals.

An industry-wide rate is around 3.75%. But a “good” rate for lead generation is around 12%.

Want more conversion calculations and making sense of data, check out WatchThemLive’s full post.

56 Email Content + Copywriting Tips For 2022

APRIL 20, 2022

Tips, tricks, tactics, and tools. That’s what we love in The Daily Carnage. You know the phrase “more than one way to skin a cat” (we’re not saying we like it)? Well, same goes for emails. There are a lot of different approaches you can take for copy and your email content.

It’s all about finding balance. Here is what happens if you don’t have friendliness, personalization, and facts working together:

Snov.io is a CRM-focused tool that also has a pretty cool blog for leads, conversions, and email. They put together 56 tips on writing email copy! That’s a big list, so we wanted to give you our top 5:

Write how you talk: Always read your copy out loud, use colloquial language, and imagine that you are talking to the person face-to-face to make it read more genuine.
Use questions: This is a proven method to catch attention, increase engagement, and push the recipient to read more.
Play with punctuation: See if your message can be broken up so your eyes and brain can easily get through the text by reading with visual interest throughout.
Always think positive: Replace potentially negative words with alternatives like “other” instead of “wrong” or “pocket-sized/compact” instead of “small.”
Use others’ words: Stats, case studies, testimonials, and reviews are powerful things. Use them where you can!

Check out the full list on Snov.io’s blog!

7 Effective Retargeting Ad Ideas

APRIL 19, 2022

On average, retargeting ads are 76% more likely to be clicked on than a regular display ad.

But there’s more finesse to retargeting than recycling ads. Here are some ideas to get more out of your retargeting campaigns:

Use Copy to Combat Sales Objections: While imagery is great for brand awareness and attention, you need to hook them with copy. Address common objections or pain points your audience might make to reduce doubt ahead of time.
Showcase The Goods (Dynamically): People love the window shop. Use Dynamic Remarketing to feature the products that someone has viewed during their last site visit. Then sweeten the deal for them to keep them from walking away again.
Always Use Some Urgency: The whole point of online shopping is the instant gratification. But with every yin comes a yang. If you have visitors leaving carts for later or browsing certain pages, sprinkle in the FOMO with timed deals.
Offer Discounts and Coupons: Speaking of deals, they’re a tip all on their own. Even for someone less familiar with your particular brand, seeing a special offer can reignite their interest.
Encourage Check-Out Process Completion: Sometimes all someone needs is a little reminder to convert after abandoning products they liked.
Cross-Sell to Existing Customers: This is especially key for service-based brands that may want a deeper partnership with clients that are unaware of other services. For products, advertise complementary items to promote more sales.
Remind Your Fans Why They’re Fans: Happy customers already know and trust your brand, so they usually require less convincing than a new lead. Keep your brand in their thoughts with any new offerings.

These tips were heavily geared towards eCommerce brands, but the retargeting journey can appeal to service-based brands, too. Check out Word Stream’s full post for more examples.

How to Track Conversions from TikTok

APRIL 18, 2022

TikTok has become one of the top platforms for advertisers. Like every other paid channel, marketers need to be able to track ROI.

Before we dive into tracking, let’s start with the two big marketing categories for TikTok advertising:

TikTok Ads platform
Influencer campaigns through TikTok creators

How to track TikTok Ad performance:

TikTok allows marketers to use TikTok pixel tracking or a custom tracking solution. If you’re familiar with Facebook Ads, TikTok uses a similar pixel process. For custom options, there is no universal solution for TikTok, but that may be a better option for your tracking needs.

Benefits of using a TikTok pixel:

Conversion tracking of sales from TikTok after you place the pixel on your website.
Customization for events, audiences, and retargeting
Ongoing optimization all within TikTok’s platform.

How to set up a TikTok tracking solution:

So since pixel tracking is becoming obsolete on many platforms, you may want to use an alternative for more first-party data preparation. Here’s the gist of setting one up:

Create a TikTok pixel as a data source.
Connect your software via API with TikTok and connect that data source.
Create a campaign within your tracking software.
Launch a new campaign on TikTok with the advertising objective “Conversions.”

How to track a TikTok Influencer campaign:

For these, you have a choice between tracking links or promo codes associated with the creators you are working with. The big takeaway for any influencer campaign is to make things easy to read with memorable promo codes and UTMs using link shorteners.

Check out the full article by the Hero Blog for more TikTok tracking tips!

Hook, Story, Offer: The 3-Step Method For Selling Online

APRIL 17, 2022

Copywriting is essential to your marketing materials. If you are struggling to catch people’s attention in a way that converts, use this simple formula for your copy: Hook + Story + Offer.

The Hook:

Everything starts with a hook. This is a headline and subheading that grabs your target market’s attention. It’s something that should make them want to keep reading. Sometimes it’s a headline, sometimes it’s a relatable GIF.

Good places to start for a hook: Something that sparks curiosity, something that relays empathy, or something that makes a promise.

The Story:

Next, tell an interesting and compelling story! Everyone loves a story so here is your chance to expand on how the product you’re selling changed a life (be it your own or someone else’s).

Tips for a good story: Tell a story that looks to the future, keep things concise, and remember to keep using “hooks” throughout your copy, not just at the beginning.

The Offer:

You’ve brought your reader this far, so it’s time to give them an offer. If you’ve done your storytelling correctly, they’ll want to know how it can happen to them, too. Your price/value ratio should be so compelling that your target market can’t say “no.”

Tips for creating your offer: Create a sense of urgency so your readers can’t procrastinate, make sure your perceived value is high before you reveal the deal, or add a “risk-reversal” as well with a free trial or guarantee.

Some of this applies to longer-form copy or multiple message approaches, but the Hook, Story, Offer formula can still apply to your ads, social media posts, and CTAs. Check out the full Click Funnels post for real-world examples!

How to Choose the Right Colors for Effective Email Marketing

APRIL 13, 2022

We’re on a color kick! We talked about what color can mean to your landing pages, but what about your emails?

Your Color Psychology Recap:

White: Typically positive meaning, like purity.
Black: Often used for elegance and luxury.
Red: It’s pretty bold and can evoke a sense of urgency (or negativity).
Yellow/Orange: These are energetic and typically happy colors.
Blue: Often used for trust and calmness but is overall a very popular brand color.
Green: Can signify growth.

Best Practices for Using Color in Email:

Develop a consistent palette: After considering color psychology, choose colors that work with your existing brand. Tie them in consistently as part of your own brand recognition. (Ideally, you would have picked brand colors based on what feelings colors evoke beforehand).
Don’t use too many colors: 3-4 colors are usually enough. You don’t want to make it too busy.
Use contrasting colors: Remember to use contrasting colors to improve email accessibility. Ideally you want one main color for your CTA and links to stand out.
Hyperlinks need more attention: Even if your colors are contrasting enough, if something is blind to a specific color, they may still need formatting to differentiate hyperlinks.
Test on every level: Accessibility and dark mode conversion are really important in your design and testing phases. Then you’d ideally want to A/B test your CTAs with different colors as well.

Check out the full post by Email on Acid for accesibility tips and email examples.