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Personalizing Automated Emails Posted: 02 Jul 2014 06:30 AM PDT Marketers do not have the time to individually write emails for each recipient, though we would like to. Personalization of emails is a powerful thing and it is possible to convey even through automated emails. In this Marketo post, blogger, Rachel Kavanagh, gave four ways to do so. “There's no doubt about it: automating your marketing can bring incredible efficiencies to your business, allowing you to scale your efforts without losing precision. But you don't want your automated messages to feel automated – you want your marketing to feel personal, to build connections, and you also want it to amplify your brand. After all, it's widely accepted that it takes at least seven positive marketing messages to make a brand stick in a potential customer's mind. That means that every single message counts – especially until you've "stuck." If your communications are not consistent with your products and company values, or are insensitive to information you've already collected, you may lose some of your highest quality leads. Unfortunately, many companies are not effective enough during this delicate phase. Their brand messages aren't building their credibility, or resonating with the audience receiving them. Consumer brands like Coca Cola, on the other hand, are excellent at this – they have comprehensive, enforced brand guidelines to control every marketing message across all channels. They can justify huge spend on media like TV, radio, and print, and they enlist the help of high-profile celebrity endorsers, to simultaneously resonate with consumers and their personal values. They're conscious of how brand voice, narrative, and imagery should all tell a consistent story. B2B marketers generally have less money to spend and fewer channels to leverage than consumer marketers, but they also control a large proportion of brand transmissions in your emails. Luckily, automation can actually make your marketing more personal, and can also help you remain consistent in your messaging across every channel. Here are four easy ways to create more on-brand emails which resonate with your prospects, using marketing automation, your data, and a little creativity: 1. Sender Personalisation and Brand Ambassadors As people, we are hard-wired to crave connection with others, which is why, as marketers, we want to introduce our brand as authentic and personal. Despite this, many B2B marketers are still sending emails from "marketing@mycompany.com", or signing emails with "Sincerely, Your Marketing Team." In other words, they're simply begging for unsubscribes – who wants to be reminded that they're on a marketing list. Instead, make sure you're sending your emails from a real person – one who represents the values of your product or organization, and who fits with the message you are trying to convey. Choose brand ambassadors wisely. To give a widely publicized example, Coca-Cola chose Taylor Swift as the face of Diet Coke last year, which, due to her controversial, polarising persona, many blamed for a drop in Diet Coke's sales. If possible, send emails from a person who is highly relevant to the message – ideally, an expert in the subject matter discussed. Include an e-signature, links to Twitter, LinkedIn… whatever you decide will demonstrate authenticity. You might also include a photo of the sender in the email's signature – try a little A/B testing to find out what drives the best results. If you're using marketing automation, you can tailor your "from" names to appeal specifically to each email send's audience – you might use your own name, include contact information, or use the name of someone in your company (with their permission, of course!). This is where knowing your brand comes in – do you have a charismatic CMO whose name you'd like to highlight? Or do you position yourself as friendly practitioners? You can dive a little deeper into these options with our ebook, Creating Your Email Marketing Subject Lines and From Names. 2. Segmentation and Geographic Relevance Nothing encourages an express opt-out like a message in the wrong language, or an event invitation from the wrong continent! These messages are highly irritating, and are guaranteed to result in unsubscribes. If you're marketing globally, an incorrect geographic filter can even have legal implications. That's why we recommend segmenting the audience you send emails to. Beyond geography, you might also consider segmenting your audience by gender, age, job title, company size, industry, interests, and more. Marketing automation makes segmentation easy to implement, helping you avoid this major (and surprisingly common) faux-pas. 3. Use Your Data to Find Other Data Data has a way of hiding right under your nose. Often, marketers will waste time gathering info, only to discover only that they've had what they needed all along. For instance, some industries and countries require you to address potential customers formally – typically with both a salutation and last name. If you don't have this information for every prospect in your database, you might be daunted by the idea. But if you're looking for a last name, these are often included in email addresses…can you pull from there? If you're looking for a prospect's gender, can you discern it based off of first names? Both country and state can often be derived from contact fields. You can also derive a prospect's interest in a product based on behavior, which marketing automation can help you track. In short, don't re-invent the wheel – take advantage of automation to cleverly embellish your data with information you already have. With a little creativity and the help of automated campaigns, your database will rapidly fill up with the personal details needed to make emails feel individually tailored. 4. Create Resonance with Scoring And finally, use lead scoring – an essential, but often overlooked marketing tool that is used to qualify and pass along leads to sales. If you're using marketing automation, lead scoring presents a ready-made yardstick to measure how responsive new leads are to your content. First, marketers define levels of buyer interest (i.e. early, mid, and late stage), and then set parameters to determine a lead's qualification for each level. As each lead progresses from one stage to the next, the messages they receive can be adjusted in turn. You know how interested a lead is in your product or services, so you can be sure you're communicating in a personally relevant (but still automated!) way, sending the right content at the right time. Remember those first, most crucial seven touch points? Carefully plan your content streams for the most resonant results. This is often the difference between a marketing message that results in qualified leads, and a marketing message that results in an unsubscribe. So how can you measure success? Your response rate! You know you are making personal connection with the right brand messages when someone responds to an automated email. Honour this with a response whenever you can. And congratulations! It's not easy to achieve.” Trying to increase your Google rank that is like no other?

Help me and win a grand for yourself Posted: 02 Jul 2014 06:13 AM PDT Not about 2 years ago we launched a marketing platform called the Par Program. Functioning at an agency level, which included state of the art email, social integration and high level ROI tracking, we also did all the work for the clients. Just some of the extra work we did for clients included graphics, copywriting and programing. Needless to say, clients loved it and their results were staggering. But……the price point of that service just isn’t something that most can afford! Which brings us to this moment right now and why YOU are here! In the next couple of months, we’re launching a new company that will bring the SAME industry leading features and functionality the PAR Program provided, but at a price EVERYONE can afford! We’re literally going to shake the entire market to the core and leave a few well known services scratching their heads as to where all their customers went. Now, this is where you come in. We want you to be a part of this process in two different ways. First, we want to give a very select few the opportunity to beta test this and give us feedback. Tear it apart, make suggestions and requests. We know what people want already, but there’s no better way to give you what you want than to ask! Now, we also haven’t named this beast yet and we want your help with that as well! The person who comes up with the name we go with not only wins a cool $1000.00, but also a one of kind t-shirt with the phrase “I Named (system name)”. Sign up below right now to become a beta tester or just to throw your name in the ring for the cash and shirt prize for naming the system. We can’t wait to bring this to the public, it’s going to change the game forever. Go here to suggest a name and/or sign up to be a beta tester: http://greatestemailplatformever.com/     Looking for an SEO service that won’t get you banned?

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9 Steps to Create a Great Newsletter Signup Page - DailyBlogTips

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9 Steps to Create a Great Newsletter Signup Page Posted: 01 Jul 2014 01:32 PM PDT This is a guest post from Karol K. Is your newsletter list growing slowly … or not at all? You might worry that you're sending out the wrong sort of content, or that your incentive isn't good enough. The real reason, though, is probably because you're not giving your readers the best possible opportunity to actually join your newsletter. Basically, there are three main ways to showcase a newsletter signup form on your blog: In the sidebar. Through a popup. On a dedicated landing page – your newsletter signup page. Undoubtedly, sidebars are the most popular solution. But as it turns out, they are not all that effective and the conversion rates are rather poor. Popups, on the other hand, are much better in the conversion department, but the main downside here is that most people hate them! So out of the three, newsletter signup pages seem like an interesting solution. They have way better conversions than a sidebar form, and at the same time they don’t make the majority of your visitors angry. Instead, they make them feel welcome. Having such a page presents a lot of other possibilities too. For instance, you can link to it from your other posts, or share it with people via email or social media. And with some luck, you can also rank it on Google. But how do you actually create it? What are the main principles of building a newsletter signup page that gets results? My plan when compiling this guide was simple: 1. Spy on the A listers. 2. Examine what they have on their pages and why. 3. Steal their ideas! Here’s what I discovered: #1. Understand the Goal of the Page The goal of a newsletter signup page is simple: to get people to click the big “subscribe” button. That's the only thing that matters, and other than that, you shouldn’t care about anything else. I can’t remember who said it first, but a good way to think about your newsletter signup page is to make people either subscribe or leave your site altogether. There really shouldn’t be any other possibilities. The reason I’m mentioning this is because all the other steps on this list really reinforce this goal, so keeping it in mind will give you an instant answer as to why we’re doing something the way we’re doing it. #2. Use Simple Layouts Let’s start with the visual aspects of your page because these are what your visitors see first ? even before they read your headline. The best newsletter signup pages are simple. They have one- or two-column structures with no separate headers or footers. This is effective because it creates a distraction-free environment. People don’t get confused by all the stuff around your newsletter offer, so they can focus just on making the decision (subscribe or not). Now, whether you should use one column or two depends on the length of the copy you’re planning to write. Slightly longer copy works well with a one-column layouts. Ultra-short copy is optimized for two-column layouts. For example, this is how Ramit Sethi does it. Here are two of his signup pages (he has a handful of those), side by side: You don’t want to use a two-column layout with longer copy because by the time someone finishes reading it, they can’t see the form anymore. With short copy, the form remains visible at all times. Also, having longer copy on a two-column layout reduces the readability flow, as the eye starts jumping from one column to the other back and forth. #3. Make your headline large Large headlines are one of the most common things on almost all newsletter signup pages I’ve ever come across. And by large I mean the font size, as well as the number of words and the overall space that the headline block takes. In the examples above, you can see that Ramit is very serious about his headline game. In fact, his headline block takes roughly half of the visible screen area. However, the whole trick is to make the headline fit your design. It can’t be huge just for the sake of it and look like a sore thumb. Note. Don’t forget about tuning your copy to get the most out of your headline as a whole. I’m not going to discuss this here. You’re way better off learning those things from Daniel or Jon. #4. Erase Your Navigation Or at least reduce it. The whole problem with site navigation is that if you have a menu somewhere on your signup page, some people will click it. And you don’t want them to click anything else other than the subscribe button. Now, if you want to get extreme here, you can erase all navigation altogether. Just like Derek Halpern does here: Derek has a simple menu on most pages on his blog, but on this newsletter page, you can literally only subscribe to his newsletter or leave the site altogether. #5. Use disclosure and privacy policy links Yes, I did mention that menus are bad for newsletter signup pages in general, but there are still some things you’re required to do by law. The specifics depend on where you’re from and where you’re doing most of your business, but in most cases, some disclaimer links are required. That being said, the rules are that they need to be there, but at the same time, they don’t necessarily need to be very prominent. If you look again at Derek’s page, you’ll see two small links in the footer line: This is all you need. #6. Include trust elements So why would anyone trust you? Well, because you’re awesome and your content is great, obviously! But there’s no way for people to know this right away, so they need just one final nudge to get them through your subscription process without having second thoughts. This is when trust elements come into play. Here are the two most popular types. “As seen on” logos: Testimonials and quotes: #7. Consider Using a Video Videos can work well on a signup page, but only if they are professionally produced and preferably personal in tone. Try talking to your visitors directly just like Chris Brogan does here: The main power of videos is that they really help build a connection. Seeing a video of someone where they’re talking to you seems almost as if they were standing next to you. It’s a lot more personal than reading copy on a page. Now, about the technical side of videos. You can embed your video from YouTube, but you’re better off using a tool like Wistia. It gives you more control over your videos and works flawlessly on every device. #8. Hook Up Your Newsletter Service I'm sure you know that sending emails by bcc-ing lots of people through your email client is a no-no these days. If you want to run a newsletter, you need to do so with a specialized email delivery service. This service will take care of your list, keep people’s email addresses safe, give you access to a cool newsletter design environment and then finally handle the process of sending your newsletters out. There are a lot of email services available out there, but two of them stand out the most, in my opinion. The first one is MailChimp. As part of their free plan, you get to send 12,000 emails per month, which should be more than enough for starters. The other one is Sendinblue. This is a new player, similar to MailChimp, but the thing that’s interesting about it is that the free plan also allows you to send autoresponders, which is huge (not available in MailChimp for free). For instance, you can set automated emails that go out to new subscribers, say, two days after they joined. It’s a great way to re-engage them and get them back to your site. Anyway, once you register with either of these services, you’ll get an embeddable form, which you’ll be able to use on your page to get people’s emails. #9. Give it Some Personality It’s always nice to give your page one or two final touches to make it look special. And there are probably a thousand things you could do, but let’s focus on two really simple ones: Include your picture at the beginning. Seeing your face makes it way easier for readers to identify with what you’re saying (especially if you don’t have a video on the page). Use one cool-looking graphic that draws people’s attention to your form. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but it should be in-tune with your main message and headline. You can get those made onFiverr for $5 a piece, by the way. Here’s how Ramit Sethi does both of these things on one of his pages: What Are You Up To Right Now? I hope this guide will help you build a better newsletter page for your blog. But in the meantime, what’s your main way of getting subscribers right now? Is it through a block in the sidebar, a popup, or maybe you already have a newsletter signup page and you’re just looking for ways to make it better? Drop a comment below to tell us.   About the Author: Karol K. (@carlosinho) is a blogger and writer for hire (link). He has his work published all over the web, on sites like: NewInternetOrder.com, Six Revisions, Web Design Ledger, Lifehack.org, Quick Sprout, ProBlogger, Writers in Charge, and others.   Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

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