Monday, March 21, 2016

Top 10 Lessons Learned at SXSWi

I discovered things about myself, my job and a whole lot about marketing in general … taught directly by individuals who have reached career heights of which I can still only dream.Related Articles
  1. Day Three At SXSWi
  2. Day Four At SXSWi
  3. Day Five At SXSWi


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Friday, March 18, 2016

[#EmailChat Recap] Incentives 101

List growth hit a plateau? Consider adding incentives into the mix.

Incentives are a surefire way to get new subscribers in the door. Not only are they enticing, but they offer subscribers a sneak peek into the kinds of content they can expect from your emails. The best part? They don’t need to be costly or time-consuming.

Here’s 7 reasons how and why you should add incentives to your email marketing strategy:

1. People love ’em.

Key Takeaways:

  • Incentives are a great way to show potential subscribers what you have to offer.
  • Relationships are a two-way street. Give subscribers something of value in exchange for their email address.
  • Incentives are enticing – people love free stuff!

2. They’re a great list-building tactic.

Key Takeaways:

  • Let subscribers know about your incentive offer before they sign up.
  • A great way to offer value right away? Discounts and free shipping.
  • Don’t have a physical product? An ebook or course are other great options.

3. They’re measurable.

Key Takeaways:

  • Split test your sign up forms to see which converts more subscribers.
  • You can even test different types of incentives against each other to see which performs better.
  • Offered a special promo code to new subscribers? Use this as a baseline measurement.

5. Keep in mind these best practices.

Key Takeaways:

  • Be clear about the incentive you’re offering. (And make sure you include it in your welcome email!)
  • This is one of the first touch points you’ll have with new subscribers. Your incentive should make a good impression!
  • Keep it relevant. Your incentive should make sense.

6. Be wary of one-time subscribers.

Key Takeaways:

  • There’s a difference between subscribers and one-time customers. A customer may sign up only to receive your welcome offer, but have no intention of returning.
  • Your incentive can get outdated. Make sure you do a refresh every few months.
  • You don’t want to take away from the quality of your content. Your incentive should add value to your emails, not detract from them.

7. Need ideas for incentives? Check these out.

Key Takeaways:

  • Try including your incentive offer in the subject line of your welcome email.
  • Want more ideas for incentives? Check out this post.

Next Week:

We’re talking landing pages next Thursday, March 24 at noon ET. Be sure to join us and learn how you can optimize yours for more conversions.

Follow us on Twitter and sign up for our blog email list to stay updated on all of the latest news, events and announcements.

The post [#EmailChat Recap] Incentives 101 appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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7 New Updates in Your AWeber Account

While we’ve been hard at work building and improving a little email automation platform called Campaigns, we’ve also been working to continually improve your AWeber experience.

We love delivering those monumental product announcements. But we also make a lot of small updates that have a big impact on your business – updates that you asked for.

Here’s what you can expect to see in your AWeber account the next time you log in.

Draggable rows in Message Editor

Easily copy and move groups of content so you can build messages based on content you already have.

Edit a scheduled broadcast

Picture this: You’ve scheduled a broadcast and now you need to make some changes. No sweat! You can now easily edit any scheduled broadcast.

Smart guides for column sizing

Align columns in your messages automatically to create great-looking emails.

Style updates to subscriber-facing pages

Subscriber-facing pages (where your subscribers can control their subscriptions) received a modern, updated facelift.

Host photos on our image gallery

We’ll host your photos on our image gallery so you can easily create customized email and webforms.

Improved CAPTCHA usability

The new CAPTCHA update lets your subscribers confirm that they aren’t robots with just one click.

Encrypted outbound email

AWeber now supports encrypted outbound emails to comply with Gmail’s latest efforts to increase user privacy.  Woohoo!

What do you want to see next?

All of our updates are based on feedback from customers like you. Now tell us: what would you like to see next in your AWeber account? Tell us in the comments below!

Oh, and one more thing: we have another announcement coming next week. Stay tuned to your inbox to find out what it is!

Not an AWeber customer yet? Start your 30-day free trial today!

The post 7 New Updates in Your AWeber Account appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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7 Questions to Ask Before Engaging Customers with Push Notifications

How to connect and engage with customers is on the minds of most every business owner. Companies know they need to reach customers in real-time with personalized messages to remain competitive. Though we’re just beginning to tap the potential of the mobile market, businesses are seeing mobile apps as an effective way to build customer loyalty and improve engagement. How so?

One tactic proving to be successful when done well is the use of push notifications. We define this term here along with all the other mobile marketing words to know. Like texts, push notifications are sent directly to a user’s mobile home screen once they’ve downloaded an app. Unlike texts, they have permission settings and a wide range of customization options that can increase user engagement.  

What’s the big deal about push notifications? Push notifications have an average open rate of over 90%. A study done by Localytics shows that users launched an app an average of 14.7 times per month when they accepted push notifications versus those who declined and therefore only opened at an average rate of 5.4 times per month. The study goes on to say that 65% of the users who allowed the notifications also returned to the app after 30 days compared to just 19% of those who opted out. This is a huge incentive to encourage users to accept these messages.  Once you have permission, keep working to maintain it.

At their best, push notifications give users instant access to relevant and valuable information. For businesses, push notifications are a direct line of communication. They offer the ability to share deals and special promotions that encourage action.

Now for a word of caution: Given the direct and personal nature of this communication, push notifications must be used wisely as no one wants to be inundated with alerts. Poorly designed messages, or alerts sent too frequently, result in users turning off notifications or deleting the app altogether.

How do you get around being silenced, or even worse, deleted? When requesting this type of attention, make sure you have something of significant value to share. Here’s a good gut check:

7 Questions to Ask Before Sending

  1. Is this customer expecting this type of communication from you? A good onboarding experience and setting expectations are everything.
  2. When was the last time the user received a push notification from you? Determine how often is not often enough, and how often is too often.
  3. Is this the right time and place for the customer to receive a notification from you? Take into account time zones and location.
  4. Has this message been successful with customers in the past? Answering this question requires you to track and analyze the performance of your efforts — a sign of any good marketer.
  5. Is this message part of a broader marketing strategy? Push notifications should be complementary to your website, email marketing, search marketing, social media, print, and other forms of advertising.
  6. What’s in it for them? If you’re just thinking about promoting your business, you’ve already lost.
  7. Are you following the Golden Rule? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Ready to get started on mobile apps to complement your email marketing? We’ve launched a brand new service that makes building mobile apps scalable and affordable. To learn more or get early access to our new mobile apps program, click through below, and we’ll be in touch shortly.

 

Learn More

© 2016, Linzi Breckenridge. All rights reserved.

The post 7 Questions to Ask Before Engaging Customers with Push Notifications appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

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Thursday, March 17, 2016

St. Patrick's Day Infographic

Everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. As you down that green beer, we’ve got some stats and facts behind the holiday.Related Articles
  1. St. Patrick's Day Email Templates for March 17th!
  2. Customize These St. Patrick’s Day Email Templates for March 17!
  3. St. Patrick’s Day Booze News


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Evergreen Content: How to Boost Your SEO and Website Traffic with Timeless Content

Imagine the perfect blog post.

Your perfect blog post brings thousands of people to your site. Your audience reads it from top to bottom, gives their love in the comments and shares it on their social media profiles. An industry expert links to it in one of their blog posts. And ultimately, you see a huge spike in revenue as it brings your website and business into the spotlight.

But wait, there’s more! Months after you initially published your perfect blog post, it continues to draw website visits, shares and increased revenue.

Why does your perfect blog post have such continued success months after publication?

Because it’s evergreen.

What is evergreen content?

Evergreen content is content that is always relevant. It continues to be useful and informative no matter when your audience reads it.

For example, if you’re a nutrition blogger, evergreen content for you might be a blog post called “5 Nutritious Fruits You Should Eat Every Week to Lose Weight.” A blog reader could find value in that blog post now, or they could read it three months or a year from now, and it would still be relevant and useful.

On the other hand, content that is not evergreen will one day cease to be relevant to your audience. A blog post titled “E. Coli Recall: Don’t Eat Broccoli in March if You Live in These Areas” will only be useful during the E. Coli recall. Once the recall is over, this post won’t get much traffic.

But evergreen content is more than just blog posts! It’s any kind of content whose relevancy stands the test of time. Almost anything can be evergreen, but here are some common evergreen content formats you could use:

  • eBooks
  • Guides
  • Emails
  • Videos
  • Landing Pages

Besides maintaining relevancy, evergreen content is also very valuable. It can continue to grab page visits, comments and social shares months and even years after its initial publication date (and you only need to do the hard work of writing it once!).

All of this engagement demonstrates that the content is valuable and relevant to a large audience, which matters to search engines like Google who treat high engagement as a sign of quality. When Google’s algorithm notices that your content is gaining a lot of engagement, it ranks that content higher.

Translation for all the Google newbies: When your audience types a question into Google’s search engine that includes your content’s keywords, your content has a higher chance of appearing on the first page of organic Google search results.

Because the top four organic results in the first page of Google search engine results get 84 percent of clicks, you need to be on the first page of Google to get any significant organic traffic to your site.

Since evergreen content 1) ranks well in Google (and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo), 2) gets high engagement and 3) gives you long-time value, most of your content should be evergreen. Because honestly, you’re busy, and you need content that packs a big punch and lasts a long time.

How to write evergreen content

1. Answer a common problem or question

First and foremost, evergreen content should solve a problem or answer a question that your target audience struggles with. The bigger and more common the question or problem, the more attention and engagement your blog post will acquire.

Here are some tools and ideas that can help you find out what questions your audience is asking:

Google Keyword Planner: Google Keyword Planner is a free tool included with every Google AdWords account. You can use it to find out how many people are searching for information about a specific keyword or phrase in Google each month. If you find a keyword related to your industry with a high number of searches, you know a lot of people are interested.

Quora: Quora is a site where people can ask and answer questions. Anyone can ask a question and anyone can answer it.

But you can use it to write amazing evergreen content by searching for questions that relate to your industry or business. When you find that quite a few people are asking the same question, write a blog post or guide that answers that question.

For example, if you write a financial investment blog, you might search Quora and find that a lot of people are asking questions about a specific stock investment. As a result, you could write an informative blog post about this stock.

Ask Your Customers/Prospects: While there are tons of tools out there that can help you figure out what questions your audience is asking, it might just be easier to ask your customers or prospects yourself.

Send your subscribers a broadcast email with a survey that asks them what they’d like to learn more about. Or, include your survey email in an automated welcome email series.

2. Link to relevant content

By linking to relevant and useful content within your own content, you show that you’ve done your research and get good vibes from Google when they rank your content more highly in search engine results.

For instance, I know you’re interested in getting more traffic to your site because you read up to this point in my post. And if you’re interested in content marketing, there’s a good chance you have a blog. So you’d probably be interested in these 5 Tips to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog (See what I did there?).

3. Write well and make it readable

One thing holds true for your audience no matter what industry or business you’re in: they’re busy. To increase your engagement, you need to write with your busy audience in mind.

Write in a way that is very easy to read and very easy to scan. Be clear, concise and descriptive. Use brief sentences, include headers to break up sections and write short paragraphs.

4. Maintain your evergreen content

While evergreen content is always relevant, it still needs updates and edits on occasion.

When industry standards change or new research is released, update your evergreen content to reflect that new information. And when you think of valuable insights and info you can add to your content, do it. Evergreen content is a masterpiece that you can keep fine-tuning.

How to promote your evergreen content

Once you’ve written epic evergreen content, it’s time to promote that content. Here are some great ways to promote your evergreen content:

1. Blog it

Share your evergreen blog content by linking to it in relevant locations in blog posts. Or, build a slide in or pop up form on your website that promotes evergreen content (just make sure it’s relevant to your reader if it appears on specific blog posts).

Emma Johnson of Wealthy Single Mommy convinces website visitors to sign up for her email list by promoting her evergreen guide “15 Secrets to Thriving as a Single Mom” as a free incentive for signing up.

Not only is she promoting her evergreen content, but she’s also acquiring more email subscribers. And the best part? Since her guide is evergreen, it keeps providing her value without any additional work on her part.

Screen Shot 2016-03-15 at 9.57.02 PM

2. Email it

Email itself can be evergreen content. For example, your autoresponder email series should be evergreen so that it remains relevant over time.

But email is also a great channel for promoting your evergreen content (like blog posts, case studies and ebooks).

Create an autoresponder email series and link to your evergreen content in your emails. You’ll drive traffic to your content and  build relationships with subscribers that transcend the inbox.

In an email from an autoresponder email series, Running Shoes Guru links to a series of evergreen blog articles on how to run better. This is a great topic for an evergreen blog post, because it’s relevant to the audience, it will continue to be relevant (unless everyone in the world stops running) and it’s helpful.

Screen Shot 2016-03-15 at 11.17.43 AM

3. Social media it (I just invented this phrase 😅)

Promote your evergreen content on social media, both when you first publish it and later on.

On that awful day where we lost an hour for Daylight Saving Time (who invented that anyway?), we shared our blog post Time-Saving Email Marketing Tips to Take Back Your Day on the AWeber Twitter account, because we knew our audience was probably trying to figure out how to get that hour back.

Even though we’d originally published and shared this post in January, we could share it again (and at the opportune moment!) because it’s evergreen. That’s one of the amazing things about evergreen content. You can share it for years (just don’t overshare!), and it will continue to be valuable, both to you and your audience.

Screen Shot 2016-03-15 at 11.48.28 AM

Go evergreen!

Evergreen content is the superman of the content world. Your evergreen content will attract more engagement, gain higher search engine rankings and keep your readers coming back over and over, all while having lasting value.

What kind of evergreen content are you writing? Share your content ideas and tips in the comments below.

The post Evergreen Content: How to Boost Your SEO and Website Traffic with Timeless Content appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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Turning Your Office St. Patrick’s Day Festivities into Email Gold

On this St. Patrick’s Day, we hope you have an office party that you can turn into a fun email (and social media) campaign for your followers, customers, and clients.Related Articles
  1. St. Patrick's Day Email Templates for March 17th!
  2. Customize These St. Patrick’s Day Email Templates for March 17!
  3. St. Patrick’s Day Booze News


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