WEBINAR: Target Marketing: How To Hit Your Bullseye

Nobody likes feeling like they're being marketing to. That's why delivering relevant content to your audience is so essential. The best way to accomplish that is with targeting. We've teamed up with our friends at Insightpool to deliver a webinar focused on exactly that. It's calledRelated Articles

1. April 22 Webinar on List Segmentation: Listen to Your Subscribers
2. New API Methods
3. 5 Tips to Lower Your Unsubscribe Rates

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Working with Influencers: More than Just a Leap of Faith

The following is a guest blog post from Dani Finkelstein, co-founder of BlogsRelease and one of the key sponsors of the 2015 ASCEND Digital Marketing Summit in Philadelphia, October 18-20.

And any good digital innovator knows that influencer marketing is becoming more and more popular. And why wouldn’t it? After all, there are over 100 million active blogs on the web and 77% of all internet users read them.

Some marketers are reluctant to work with bloggers simply because they don’t know where to start. Of course, just finding a list of blogs, sending some emails, and choosing the first bloggers who respond is unlikely to yield the quality results you seek. This is why working with influencers isn’t about taking a leap of faith; it’s about building a business partnership.

Approach selecting influencers like selecting business partners and have a solid plan of what you want to accomplish with your blogger campaign. Here are four tips to start you off:

Determine your target market

All great campaigns start with research. Learn to listen and observe prior to engaging. What this means practically is to regularly check what your audience is saying, with whom they are talking, and how they are doing it. Is your audience very active on Twitter? Facebook? Pinterest?

What about the bloggers you’re considering? Let’s say you’re a brand that is interested in marketing a new line of affordable women’s shoes and you come across a couture fashion blogger with many followers on Twitter.

Even if the blogger agrees to review your shoes, don’t let the numbers blind you – people in your target market may be more interested in reading a review by, for example, a popular thriftshop blogger. Their following may be smaller, but it is likely to translate into more sales.

Perfect your pitch


Let’s say you check Twitter and see that people often tweet about how uncomfortable heels are. Surely then your pitch to bloggers should be all about how comfortable your shoes are, right?

Well, hold on. What if you determined that your target audience overwhelmingly prefers to hang out on Instagram and people there are more interested in how trendy the shoes are?

Your target audience is more likely to be interested in your product so, although you shouldn’t be too specific, you need to write your pitch first and foremost with them in mind.

Find the right tools


Don’t waste time trying to find bloggers manually when there are countless tools and platforms available for that very purpose. BlogsRelease is one example, as it’s a great PR marketplace for brands to connect with influencers by posting blogger review campaigns for products, events and news.

Promote, promote, promote


Don’t expect bloggers to do all your work for you. First, you must be very clear about what you expect from them. Tell them which hashtags you want them to use, how many photographs they need to feature, and what you want them to include in the post.

It’s up to the blogger to deliver the quality post and promote it on their own social media channels as per your agreement. However, don’t hesitate to use your own social channels as well.

Analyze

Now it’s time to measure your ROI, SEO and all that fun stuff to see if you reached your goals. Keep in mind that influencer marketing isn’t always an exact science. People may discover a particular blog post weeks after your campaign has ended and cause a huge surge in visits to your site.

Don’t expect instant results. That said, once you’re ready to measure the impact, take a detail-oriented approach. What can you learn for future campaigns? It could be that having more photos increases the likelihood of clicks. Maybe a share on Tumblr unexpectedly received many likes. Note which posts worked better and which didn’t see any traffic increase.

The more you analyze, the more factors you’ll be able to control and predict for future campaigns. If you follow these steps you’ll be on your way to success with influencer marketing in no time.


How have you engaged influencers to help your business grow? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Working with Influencers: More than Just a Leap of Faith appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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New Feature: Email List Segmentation [Phase 1]

Segmented lists get more engagement. The open and click results are likely to be higher since the email message can be more directly targeted to a certain group of people. To make this best practice easier, we are excited to introduce our new Advanced Search tool located on the Contacts page. 

This update allows for campaign activity-based segmentation, which means, you can segment your contact list based on a set of predetermined parameters related to opens or clicks. You can access this email feature on the Contacts page.

Watch a 2-minute demo.

There are three selections you can make:

Search

• People who opened
• People who did not open
• People who clicked
• People who did not click

Logic

• Any email
• All emails
• Specific emails

Time frame

• In the last 7 days
• In the last month
•  In the last 6 months

For quicker list generation, ‘Recommended Searches’ is available at the top right-hand rail. You can generate the list by clicking on the name of the search.

Once the results from your search appear, you can:

• Sort by First Name, Last Name, Company, City, or State/Region
• Remove any fields
• Save the search as a new segment
• Add the contacts to an existing list

This level of segmentation can be of great use, especially if you manage a large number of contacts.

Ways You Can Use Segmentation

Here are just a few ways you can take advantage of this new feature:

• Reward customers who have opened all emails by sending a special offer.
• Find all customers who haven’t opened an email in the last 6 months and send them a re-engagement email.
• See who has never opened any emails and consider scrubbing them from your list.
• Identify subscribers who have never clicked after opening an email. Send them a follow-up asking if they are looking for different content.

Advanced Search is our first phase of segmentation and available to both freemium and paid accounts. Take advantage of this deeper level of segmentation and watch how your engagement improves.

© 2015, VerticalResponse Blog. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

The post New Feature: Email List Segmentation [Phase 1] appeared first on VerticalResponse Blog.

When Good Shoppers Stray

Bronto's study of more than 100 major retailers analyzes their B2C email strategies. Here's how these companies encourage shoppers to return to abandoned carts and complete their transactions.

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Lessons Learned from Top Brands on How to Rock on Instagram

Here is a list of some top brands that will serve to help marketers gain inspiration for How to Rock on Instagram.Related Articles

1. How Brands are Marketing Themselves with Instagram
2. The Weekly Wrap: Benchmark FTW!
3. 5 Ways I Use Instagram & Pixlr-o-matic to Boost My Art Business

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Understanding Your LinkedIn Company Page Analytics [VIDEO]

Most people know LinkedIn as the premier social network dedicated to business. Unless you have closely followed its evolution since launching in 2003, you may have missed some updates.

One of its key evolution points was the launch of Company Profile Pages in March of 2008. Since then, there have been many enhancements. Most notable was “Insights.” Insights were the 1.0 version of Analytics about your Company Page, which helps you understand how your page works and which areas you need to enhance to improve traction.

Following recent changes aimed at simplifying the platform’s usability, Company Profile Pages are now just called ‘Company Pages‘ and “Insights” are known as Analytics.

In this episode of Tips in 2, we take you on a quick tour of LinkedIn Company Page Analytics. This overview allows you to see how much information you can gather from the data behind your page.

Click on the video below and let us show you around. 

For more info on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, click here.

© 2015, VerticalResponse Blog. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

The post Understanding Your LinkedIn Company Page Analytics [VIDEO] appeared first on VerticalResponse Blog.

The 6 Most Useful Articles About Email Marketing

To really get an edge on your editorial calendar, it’ll help you immensely if you’re well read on the best email marketing articles.Related Articles

1. Email Marketing Content: Trawling the Customer Service Files
2. Email marketing delivery: reviving an old email list
3. Email frequency: offer a “light” version of your email newsletter

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[Twitter Chat] The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

With nearly one month ‘til ASCEND Digital Marketing Summit takes place October 18-20 in Philadelphia, we want to introduce you to our lineup firsthand.

We’re hosting three special #AWeberHour Twitter Chats, featuring a sampling of our amazing speaker lineup. And since it’s our last chat of the season, we’re going big.

Join us Wednesday, September 2 from 2-3pm EDT as we explore the do’s and don’ts of social media marketing. If you’re using social in your business strategy, you won’t want to miss this.

Our Guest Panelists

Andy Crestodina, @crestodina

Andy Crestodina is Co-founder and Strategic Director of Orbit Media, an award-winning web design company in Chicago. A top-rated speaker and writer, he has provided web strategy and advice to more than a thousand businesses over the past 15 years. He has written hundreds of articles on content marketing for dozens of blogs and media websites, including content strategy, search engine optimization, social media and analytics. He authored Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing.

Jason Falls, @jasonfalls

Jason Falls is one of the most widely read and respected voices in the digital marketing and social media industries. He leads digital strategy for Elasticity and shares his no-nonsense ideas regularly at JasonFalls.com. He loves Louisville, sports and bourbon.

Jason Miller, @jasonmillerca

Jason Miller is author of the Amazon #1 best seller “Welcome to the Funnel,” and leads global content marketing for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Previously, he was the Sr. Manager of Social Media Strategy at Marketo and spent ten years at Sony developing and executing marketing campaigns around the biggest names in music. Jason contributes to Content Marketing Institute, Social Media Examiner, MarketingProfs and Copyblogger and has presented at numerous industry conferences.

Nathan Latka, @nathanlatka

After selling $70,000 worth of Facebook campaigns from his dorm room, Nathan dropped out and has since raised more than $2.5 million from a Forbes billionaire while supporting more than 250,000 small business owners as they look to capture emails and drive sales from Facebook. He has been featured in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and numerous other publications.

How to Participate

1. Create a Twitter account.
2. Follow @AWeber and our guest experts.
3. Follow the hashtag #AWeberHour using our tweetchat room or your favorite Twitter application (e.g., Twitter.com, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, etc.), and be sure to include the hashtag in your tweet.

The post [Twitter Chat] The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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The Best Quotes on Email Marketing

There are times when you’re sitting at the computer trying to drum up the next idea for your weekly newsletter campaign. That’s about the time when it would be really great to have a couple of colleagues to use as a sounding board to bounce ideas off of. Chances are, there’s no one like that in your marketing team – but there is this post, which curates some of the best and more inspired conversations on email marketing.Related Articles

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2. Who Can Fatten Your Inbox? The Spammer Man Can (Part 1)
3. Setting Your Brand’s Policies for Social Media Interaction

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Bulk Up Your Marketing Efforts with SumoMe

Wrestling with growing your audience? Grappling with landing page conversion rates? Then we’ve got the thing for you! We’re happy to announce our newest integration with SumoMe, an innovative platform built to help marketers create high-converting landing pages, grow their email lists, and make sense of their website traffic and visitor behavior.
 
Get on the Mat!
 
One of the biggest challenges marketers face is conversion. How can I get my site visitors to subscribe, opt-in, and not abandon the page altogether? SumoMe’s Welcome Mat tool helps you do just that.

Welcome Mat displays a full-screen call-to-action when visitors land on your site. You can use this page to encourage visitors to join your email list, check out your blog post, or whatever action you want them to take.

With its completely customizable design and mobile optimization, you can increase your email conversion rate through better visitor engagement. Best of all, Welcome Mat is integrated with VerticalResponse, so any email addresses you collect with the tool will automatically be added as new contacts to a VR list of your choice. This is a great way to immediately engage and convert a site visitor, while increasing productivity since you won’t have to enter each new contact into VR manually. Check out Welcome Mat here!

 
Tip the Scales with List Builder
 
If utilizing a full-page call-to-action isn’t a great fit for your site, SumoMe has another solution. List Builder is a fully-customizable lightbox pop-up used to prompt conversion at just the right time. List Builder’s Smart Mode technology detects the exact moment when a visitor is about to leave, and then entices them with a call-to-action or signup form so you’re less likely to lose that visitor. And, again, thanks to List Builder’s sync capability with VerticalResponse, any email addresses given will automatically be added as a new contact in your VR list.

Timely and strategic visitor engagement is key to conversion. List Builder will help you with this targeted interaction, and also decrease your workload since you won’t have to add these new contacts manually to your VR Lists!

 
How Can I Sync SumoMe and VR?
 
It’s quick and easy!

1.  Select any of the SumoMe apps for collecting emails: List Builder, Welcome Mat, Scroll Box, or Smart Bar.

2.  In your campaign, select the Services tab and click on VerticalResponse.

3.  On the next page, click “Connect.”

4.  Sign in with your VeritcalResponse credentials.

5. Select the VR list to which you’d like each collected email pushed.

6. All set!

Let us know how this integration works for you.

© 2015, VerticalResponse Blog. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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Mafioso Masterpieces with Mike Bell

Most portrait artists only have to fear an unhappy client or maybe a bad review on Yelp. Michael Bell is just glad he doesn't sleep with the fishes when his job is done.Related Articles

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9 Social Media Hacks Every Small Business Can Benefit From

Are you currently using social media sites to enhance your business’s online strategy? Posting to these platforms on a regular basis is a great place to start. If you want to increase sales, brand awareness, and website traffic, you’ll have to up your social marketing game by going a bit further.

These nine social media marketing hacks will help you:

• Sell products on your social sites
• Find enticing images to grow your brand awareness
• Drive more traffic to your brand’s website and blog

Hacks to help sell products on social sites

Your website shouldn’t be the only place for customers to browse and buy your products. Remember that your social sites can also serve as mini, digital storefronts too.

Why not entice your social audiences to make a purchase in 140 characters or less for example.  When it comes to selling items on your social sites, you have a few options.

1. Turn to Facebook ads

Facebook has an easy-to-use advertising platform, which allows you to showcase your product to an audience of your choosing. To maximize your views, be sure to target your ad by location, age or interests.

In terms of cost, the ads are affordable. You can start an ad campaign for as little as five bucks, with the idea of progressive spending as you focus on reaching more customers over time.

• See it in action: Here’s an example of a Facebook ad.

2. Use a ‘shoppable’ app like Shoppost

This handy resource creates ads for your Facebook page. The ads can display an image and also provide pricing, colors, and sizes. When a customer clicks on the ad, he or she is taken directly to your site to check out.

Keep in mind, your website must use Shopify, Etsy, Amazon or Bigcommerce as its e-commerce platform for this tool to work, but it makes buying simple for your customers.

You can check out the site to see the ads.

3. Try a ‘Like2Buy’ button to increase sales

Ready to turn the great images you share on Instagram into transactional posts? Use Curalate’s Like2Buy option. Customers can see your products and, like the Shoppost app, are directed to your website to make a purchase. Users can even save products in their own gallery to purchase later.

• See it in action: Target uses the Like2Buy tool. Take a look at TargetStyle on Instagram. By clicking on any one of the products, you’re taken to the Target site to make a purchase.

Hacks to help you find and post eye-catching images

Social media is propelled by images. With so many images in social streams, you can’t post any old picture and expect viewers to pay attention. To beat the competition, you have to upload creative and clear images. So how do you get your hands on images that attract attention and spark engagement? Here are a few hacks to help:

4. Consider using paid stock sites

You can buy images on stock photo sites like iStock or Shutterstock. Set up a folder on your laptop and keep the images in an accessible folder so you can build a photo library.

Using stock photos is probably the most common way to obtain creative images, but it can be costly.

5. Browse free stock sites

If you don’t have a budget for pictures, turn to Flickr. Through their Creative Commons section, you can search images that are free. However, you’ll want to narrow your search depending on how you plan to use the image.

For example, if you plan to use the image for a commercial purpose, search under “commercial use allowed.” Just go to the creative commons section and use the drop menu on the upper left side to narrow your search. Here’s what you’ll see:

While the images are free, when you post it on your site you need to provide attribution.

6. Standout by creating a cinemagraph

Everyone is vying for visual attention, so how can you stand out? Try creating and posting a cinemagraph. What’s a cinemagraph? It’s a still image with a small section of animation. It’s like a GIF, but with better quality and control.

Since Facebook has an autoplay video feature and Instagram can play videos on a loop, these mini-moving images are powerful and attention grabbing. You can create cinemagraphs by using apps like Cinemagr.am or Flixel.

• See it in action: Coca-Cola posted this cinemagraph to its Tumblr page.

Hacks to use social media marketing to increase website traffic

Your website and social media networks should work well together. To accomplish this, you’ll want to shuttle traffic between the two sites. In other words, links on your social sites should direct people to your website, and links on your website should bring customers to your social sites.

What’s the best way to keep this digital highway flowing?

7. Install ‘ClickToTweet’

This free tool puts a small ‘Click to Tweet’ link next to any piece of text, which allows your customers to then share that selected text on their Twitter feed.

How can you incorporate it? You could put together a list of frequently asked questions on your website, or a short list of statistics that customers can share. The ‘Click to Tweet’ link can sit next to any valuable tidbit of information. When clicked, the sentence automatically loads to Twitter. All the customer has to do is click ‘share’, and it hits the Twittersphere.

Check out the ClickToTweet website to set it up. If you’re using WordPress, you can use a specific plugin to seamlessly add the ClickToTweet feature.

• See it in action: A healthcare website wrapped up a blog post with these statistics and used the ‘Click to Tweet’ link after each one.

8. Increase social traffic with a ‘Hello Bar’

Create a call to action button on the top of your website that drives traffic to your social sites. A Hello Bar is a thin bar that appears at the top of your website that contains a short message and a call to action.

The best part about a Hello Bar is its versatility. You can change the call to action and the message to achieve a variety of goals. You can encourage people to visit your social sites, sign up for your email list, download an e-book or visit a specific page on your website.

Visit the Hello Bar website to learn more.

• See it in action: Here’s what a Hello Bar looks like:

9. Use Colibri.io to ‘listen’ on social media

What are people saying about your business? It’s impossible to monitor every comment made, but Colibri.io makes it easier. This platform collects data across social media sites and shows you exactly what people are saying about your business, industry as well as your competitors.

With this information, you can insert yourself into the conversation. You’ll be able to offer help to customers that are unhappy with a competitor’s service, drive traffic to your website, and maintain your overall online reputation. 

Final thoughts

These nine hacks will help improve your sales and customer engagement; however, you don’t have to implement all of these changes at once. Try to set up a new tool every month so you can learn how each one fits best with your digital brand.

© 2015, VerticalResponse Blog. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

The post 9 Social Media Hacks Every Small Business Can Benefit From appeared first on VerticalResponse Blog.