Best Strategies to Generate Leads Using a Blog

Is your company already publishing a blog? Are you looking to generate more leads? Now that you already have a consistent number of blogs being published each month, take advantage of that publicity. You can use your blog to generate a large number of leads simply by providing high-quality, informational, and engaging content. You can utilize the following strategies to help increase the number of leads you are getting from your blog and cash in!

Here are some strategies that will help you capture more leads using your blog traffic:

Add an Opt-in Form in Your Blog Pages

Your blog pages are filled with areas that you can use to add advertisements, calls to action, as well as mailing list opt-in forms. Places like your sidebar, header, footer, or at the end of each blog posts are excellent places to put in opt-in forms or ads.

Companies like Rocket Responder have added mailing list opt-in forms at the foot of their posts as well as in their sidebar. Other companies have chosen to use their sidebar and end of their posts to promote subscription to their newsletter and blog, as well as free trial sign up forms. While it seems like you’re exaggerating by putting your forms in so many places around your blog, but it actually gives visitors more opportunities to actually notice the forms. For example, if a visitor comes into your blog and reads one of your blog posts he or she may not even glance over at the sidebar or header, but if they were impressed with your content they will certainly notice a call to action at the end of the post.

The key thing to increasing your inbound leads is to put your opt-in form throughout your blog so that you can capture your reader’s attention and their contact information.

Create Free Downloadable Marketing Content

In order to get the most benefit out of your blog you will have to create additional marketing content. By creating free downloadable marketing content such as whitepapers, ebooks, webinars, and templates you can increase the number of leads you capture. You can promote your free content through your blog as well as through your social media. This will allow prospects to download your content in exchange for some information about them, such as name and email address, and information about their business. Once you have their information you can slowly build a relationship with the prospect until they convert into a customers.

In order for this strategy to be effective you will have to produce content that is relevant to your target customer base. You don’t just want to attract subscribers, you want to attract individuals who are actually interested in your products and services.

Offer Incentives for Those Who Share Your Content

What is better than using free content to increase your inbound leads? Getting new leads thanks to word of mouth from those first prospects! Some companies, offers a free ebook or gift card for anyone who refers five people that fill out a form for a digital copy. This allows them to make an additional 5 leads for every single lead that comes in for the free coloring book.

Consider what would incentivize your visitors to refer more leads and test your idea.

Use a HelloBar

A HelloBar is a code that you plug into your website which will then put a bright colored bar at the top of your website. On that bar you can add a call to action that links to a product or a service, or leads to a mailing list opt-in form. You can also use it to promote free content or push your newest promo.

Select a call to action that is relevant to your target prospect.

Add a Popup to Your Website

It may sound counterproductive to most, but the truth is, popup forms and calls to action draw the most attention. While you may think that popups will increase your bounce rate, it is actually quite the opposite. A study on bounce rate responses to popups done by Dan Zarrella, showed that bounce rates on his website did not increase when he added popups. However, when he removed the popups his subscription rates decreased significantly. Even a respectable blog like Social Media Examiner uses popups. Popups can be added various ways, such as through code or a plugin. Popups that offer free content and clearly tell visitors what they should do often receive the best conversion rates.

Try these lead generating strategies in your marketing plan and monitor closely to determine if they help increase your inbound leads.

Best Strategies to Generate Leads Using a Blog

The Beginner’s Guide to Email Automation

Imagine the nicest, friendliest, and helpful person you ever met is now in charge of sending and answering emails for you. This is the kind of person that is bright and cheerful, always helpful, never crabby, does not get tired, and is available 24 hours, seven days per week, for immediate responses.

This is the goal of excellent email automation.

Here are the top five tips for those new to email automation:

1. Use Personality

Just because the emails are automated does not mean they have to be cold or robotic. Look at these two different approaches of how to respond automatically to an email request ….

Response #1

Your email was received. Do not reply to this email because this email address is not monitored.

This is boring, robotic, and not good at all.

Response that is Better

Hi,

This is Carol. So nice to hear from you! I usually respond to emails personally within 24 hours after I have enough coffee, so please give me a bit of time to answer. In the meantime, please click this link to confirm you get my responses insert link here . It also has a discount coupon for your next order just as my way of saying thank you for contacting us.

I look forward to speaking with you,

Carol

Notice the difference? Both are auto-replies, but the second one has a personality. “Carol” may not even exist and may simply be an imaginary person. However, she is nice, friendly, and immediately encourages a business transaction. Then the email request may be routed to anyone who will read the request and make a response as Carol’s assistant.

2. Make Great Subject Lines

There are two reasons to use the subject line carefully. The first is that email-filtering systems will filter out stuff that is an obvious sales pitch and the email goes to the junk folder never to be read by anyone. The second reason is a great subject line makes it almost irresistible to open and read the email.

Here is an example:

Subject Line #1

Work at home. Make tons of MONEY!!!!!!

This subject line is easy for email filters to recognize as a spam.

Subject Line that is Better

I broke my ankle

Both emails are about working from home, but the second one has the reason in the subject line why someone would work from home and sounds much friendlier.

3. DO NOT USE ALL CAPS!!!!!!!!!

All caps is SHOUTING and excessive use of exclamation marks has the reverse of making it seem important, it reeks of high-pressure sales tactics and is a major turn off.

4. Opt-Out is the Law

Under the CAN-SPAM Act emails must have the following:

1. No false or misleading information in the email header


2. Subject line must be about the email


3. If the email is an ad, say so


4. Include a physical postal address


5. How to opt-out from receiving further messages


6. Honor opt-out choices quickly


7. Monitor third-parties who send emails for you

What this means is the header that says where the email comes from should say the correct company not something else. The subject line must relate to the email content as we gave in the example above about breaking an ankle, with the email saying that because of a broken ankle the person started working from home. A subject line of “Your daughter was raped” for an email about a car wash promotion would be illegal.

If the email is an ad, just put “this is an advertisement” somewhere. Make it easy for opt-out and take this one step further. We love to include these two opt-out options. 1) Click here to opt-out to immediately stop receiving further emails from us, and; 2) Click here to opt-out and tell us how stupid we are at the same time. Negative feedback is really helpful as well.

5. Work with a great company like RocketResponder for the best results in your email automation campaigns.

The Beginner’s Guide to Email Automation

Don’t Let Poor Customer Communication Kill Sales

Nothing is more critical to the success of your small business than customer satisfaction. Typically considered a key indicator of performance, customer satisfaction is simply the percentage of your total customers who report that your service meets or exceeds their expectations. If you’re in a competitive industry, customer satisfaction is what sets you apart.

In small businesses, effective communication serves as a vital component of your customer service program and ongoing customer satisfaction. Poor communication can lead to confused customers who don’t receive the service they expect. To make matters worse, that same poor communication can mean you never get the customer feedback to enable you to fix problems.

Poor communication can eventually kill your sales. To keep that from happening, focus on three key areas for your communication: print, broadcast and online; in-person and phone; and internal.

Print, broadcast and online

Your website, print advertisements, TV and radio ads, email marketing and social media presence should effectively communicate your brand promise. That is, they should make it clear the benefits your product or service offers to customers, how you’ll deliver those benefits, and what you’ll do if customers aren’t satisfied.

Poor communication in your advertising and marketing channels can lead to customer confusion about what to expect, notes the Houston Chronicle. For example, an unclear returns policy may lead to customers stuck with products they don’t want.

You can also commit poor communication by omission. After a sale, it’s critical to reach out to customers for feedback about your products or services. With this valuable information, you can make improvements and upgrades that help you increase sales.

For online customer service, superior communication skills are a must. Staff members who respond to customers in writing must be strong typists, and their grammar and spelling must be excellent. They also need the ability to effectively handle complaints and questions while remaining pleasant and professional.

In-person and on the phone

When customers and prospective customers call your business, make sure they aren’t trapped in select-a-number prison and can reach a live person. Once they’re talking with a human, they should receive courteous, prompt service.

Your company representatives should have strong customer service skills, including active listening and the ability to speak professionally and clearly. They should be empowered to solve problems up to a certain level; beyond that level, supervisors should be accessible to step in.

In-person customer service certainly can present challenges. Customers can be irate, unfair and even verbally abusive. Your customer service staff members must have thick skins and strong problem-solving skills. Understand that poor word-of-mouth can cost you, and be prepared to issue refunds sometimes even when the customer is at fault.

Internal communications

Often, customer service personnel feel that they’re between a rock and a hard place. They may have strong communication skills and work hard to make customers happy — but poor communication from management leaves them without the information they need to achieve customer satisfaction.

Make sure your staff are up to date on all policies and procedures, particularly those that affect customers. A company intranet should include all current information, and any changes should be highlighted through emails and memos posted in visible locations. Managers also should verbally reinforce important information with staff.

Your company can have the most customer-friendly policies possible, but if the information isn’t shared with your front-line people, it won’t matter. Make sure staff members are equipped with the information they need to provide the best possible customer service.

Don’t let poor customer communication damage your sales

As customer service increasingly moves online and goes mobile, communication is more important than ever. Take steps to ensure that online, in print, via broadcast and in person, you clearly spell out your brand promise — and follow through.

Don’t Let Poor Customer Communication Kill Sales

How to Start Engaging Your Customers Using Email

For many small businesses, nothing beats email marketing for effectiveness, convenience and affordability. According to Salesforce.com, more than 90 percent of consumers use email on a daily basis. Although email is on the downswing as a personal communications method, it’s still the number-one digital way to stay in touch with friends and family, topping texting and social media.

And for receiving marketing messages, email puts other methods to shame. In fact, more than three-quarters of consumers prefer email for permission-based marketing communication, and that number has risen by 5 percent since 2008.

To make the most of your email marketing communications, it’s critical to take steps to truly engage your customers. Here’s how.

Set clear expectations

Most consumers these days are quite protective of their email addresses, and the last thing they want is more spam clogging their inboxes. Before you ever get to the point of sending email marketing messages, you must provide prospective subscribers with good reasons for opting in — such as the promise of timely, valuable content — and create clear expectations about what you’ll be sending and with what frequency.

Welcome new subscribers

This is a great way to get off on the right foot and set a positive tone for future communications. Express appreciation that new subscribers or customers have selected your company, and include helpful information like key contacts and links to informative resources.

Let subscribers know you’ll be contacting them periodically, and provide an easy way to opt out if they’ve signed up in error or change their minds. This is easily accomplished with a good email marketing automation software package.

Segment your audience

One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to email marketing. As Mashable notes, indiscriminately bombarding your subscribers with irrelevant content is a big no-no — and a good way to end up with a pile of “unsubscribes.”

Your clients may span various industries, interests and other unique identifiers. Break subscribers into groups that make sense, and target email content accordingly. It’s fine to send a monthly newsletter to all subscribers, but you’ll need to personalize at least some of your communications for your various segments.

Make it about them, not you

Many small business owners are excited about their companies, and rightfully so. But filling email marketing communications with tales of your greatness won’t work. Customers care about your company or its products only to the extent that it benefits them. To engage your customers with email, you need two common threads: how your product or service benefits customers, and why they choose you instead of the competition.

Be current

Email messages that reference pop culture and current events often strike the right note in customer engagement, Mashable notes. Staying on top of what’s trending can be a lot of work, but it can pay off with engaging email messages that customers share with others. If you know key events are coming up — for example, the Super Bowl — create different versions of your email for the different possible outcomes.

Make subscribers feel like insiders

Everyone likes to feel like VIPs. Create this feeling by sharing “secret” information that your subscribers get to see first. Sharing exciting news or asking subscribers for their input makes them feel included in your company. It also sends the message that you care about their opinions and that you’re providing them with premium access that not everyone receives.

Don’t just email — engage

Whether you’re a pro at email marketing or you’re just getting your feet wet, engaging customers is key. Creating emails that include consistent, well-crafted, valuable information will strengthen your relationships with customers, retain their business and even persuade some to sing your praises publicly.

How to Start Engaging Your Customers Using Email

Top Tricks To Keep Your Customers Happy

According to Horst Schulze, President of Ritz Carlton, “unless you have 100% customer satisfaction…you must improve.” By that measuring stick, virtually every business in America can stand to improve, especially when it comes to keeping customers happy. Although 100% customer satisfaction is not realistic, aiming for that is imperative. But, how do you keep your customers happy?

Well, we are glad you asked.

Under Promise and Over Deliver:

To best illustrate this point, consider the act of setting deadlines. If you overestimate how long it will take you to complete a project and then get it done earlier, you look like a hero. Conversely, if you over promise and don’t fulfill your lofty goal, you look bad. Thus, it is wise to always overestimate the time it will take you do something. Then, surprise your customers with faster service.

Another way to look at this is to provide an extra service and/or product in addition to whatever the customer has bought. This could include throwing in a coupon for a discount on their next purchase, or could include giving a set of knives to customers who buy a kitchen appliance. The point being, give your customers something extra. Something they didn’t expect (even if it’s small), and you will keep them happy.

Offer Something Different:

Walt Disney was a pioneer and visionary in his day. In fact, it’s hard to image the world today without Disney’s influence. A world without Mickey Mouse, Goofy or Donald Duck would be a sad existence indeed. To say nothing of the beautiful, magical princesses he helped bring to life, and we can’t forget his world renowned amusement parks. In 1955, after years of planning, Walt Disney opened Disneyland Park. Walt Disney World Resort opened its doors in 1971.

The amusement parks of Walt Disney are more than simple amusement parks. They are instead a land of magic and family fun. This was Walt’s vision. He wanted a place that would delight children and adults alike. As a result, he hit on an untapped market. He created something that was unheard of at that point in history. Today, even though there are thousands of amusement parks across America, Disney World and Disneyland still stand above them all. Why? Because, they still something no other amusement parks do, a magical, inclusive, fantasy-like experience.

Walt’s success was a result of his tapping into an unmet need. You can do this too. All you have to do is think outside the box and look for ways to alter your business so you are offering something that no one else is, and you will garner loyal, happy customers.

Follow Up:

After you have performed a service or provided a product to someone, follow up. Ask them how they like the product or if their service was satisfactory. This will give you the opportunity to fix any problems that might have occurred. It also shows your customers you care about their satisfaction. They are more than a paycheck. People love feeling valued, especially in today’s society where customer service is rare.

The list of tricks for increasing customer satisfaction is vast. Other ways to keep customers happy include offering new products/services regularly, giving loyal customers rewards for being such, asking customers their opinions and putting their suggestions into practice and making sure to always go the extra mile for your customers. When you perfect all these elements and those listed above, you will be rewarded with happy customers, who will tell their friends and family about your business. Walt Disney summed up the art of customer service best when he said, “Do what you do so well that they (customers) will want to see it (or buy from you) again and bring (tell) their friends.”

Top Tricks To Keep Your Customers Happy

Turn Website Visitors into Leads and Sales

Every day, your site gets hits and attracts visitors. But how many of those turn into leads and sales? If you’re not sure — of if you know that your conversion rate could stand improvement — take advantage of these best practices to start building relationships and maximizing revenue through your site.

Attract the right customers

You’re likely using the latest search-engine marketing techniques, pay-per-click advertising and other promotional strategies to attract visitors to your site. (If you’re not, you should be.) But what happens once your promotions pay off and the traffic starts pouring in? Even with a huge influx of visitors, you need conversions to leads and then sales to be successful.

Did you know that 98 percent of visitors to B2B sites won’t ever convert — or even join your mailing list? You need visitors who really are looking for your specific product or service; make sure your off-site messaging in ads and SEO campaigns is targeted correctly.

Connect immediately with clear messaging

Don’t make visitors wonder what your site is all about. As Inc. magazine notes, fully 85 percent of prospective customers abandon sites within the first five seconds. That means they’re either at the wrong place, or they’re not finding what they’re looking for immediately. You only have a few seconds to keep your prospects’ attention, so make your words and images count.

Make sure your site is functioning properly

You don’t want your visitors encountering broken links or pages that just don’t work as intended. Make sure your web team is testing on a variety of platforms, browsers and monitors to ensure that everything looks good and works well. Make sure to build in methods for capturing leads — and make sure it’s easy for visitors to contact you without hunting around.

Track, track, track

You should have Google Analytics or another reliable tracking program installed, and your team should review the data frequently. Review information on your visitors like geographic location, browsers and operating systems used, whether they’re visiting on a mobile device, what pages they visit, how long they stay on the site, referring pages and exit pages from your site. Use the information to continually improve the browsing experience on your site.

Optimize conversions

Getting visitors to your site, engaging them and keeping them there all move you toward the ultimate goal: conversions. The number of visitors who perform a desired action on your site versus your total visitors is your conversion rate. Desired actions can include completing and submitting a contact form, requesting a proposal, signing up for a free trial, making a purchase and others.

About Money offers advice on calculating your rate. For an online store, the formula might look like:

Number of orders / Number of visitors x 100 = Conversion Rate Percentage

Improving the conversion rate is critical for boosting sales without the need to also increase site traffic.

Follow up effectively

Even more important than what happens before a conversion is what happens afterward. To turn one-time customers into loyalists for your brand, implement favorable return policies, make it easy to contact customer service, make your security and data-use policies transparent, and ask for feedback. Use email marketing automation software to keep customers engaged with compelling content and special offers.

Turning visits into leads and sales

Getting visitors to your site is just the first step. To convert them to leads and sales, you’ll need pinpoint targeting, an attractive and highly functional site, clear messaging, effective tracking and favorable conversion rates.

Turn Website Visitors into Leads and Sales

5 Reasons to Giveaway Relevant Content to Generate Leads

Your audience expects it. They want valuable relevant copy that informs and inspires. The best thing about giveaways is that it can make them reconsider their perspective and look to you as an authority within the field. If you are doing business today online, giveaways are an essential marketing tool to generate interest and keep prospects clicking.

Reasons to Giveaway Content

1. Build Interest

Content can establish a need to know motivation that drives engagement. If we are talking about better time management, a short ebook can give them some useful tools and perspective about the topic. However, clients come to realize that there is much to know about time management and how much easier it would be to turn to an expert for additional support and resources. This content is useful to the needs of your client.

2. Demonstrate Leadership

Quality content establishes authority. Those in new and emerging businesses can use content to demonstrate their expertise within an area and showcase the benefits of establishing a relationship with the company and brand. Being considered a leader within a field is one way to differentiate your business. Show them what you know.

3. Get more views

Giveaways can be shared. The audience that is interested in your material knows others within their sphere of influence that could find the material useful. Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media platforms allow people to share material with a click of a button. Old-school individuals can forward the email and attachments to others and print it out for reference. The initial audience reached is only the tip of the iceberg of the potential out there.

4. Generate a Reputation

Content establishes trust. Those without a well-known brand need to work smarter to have others see them as a reputable and reliable business. Good content giveaways show that the business cares about the interests of customers and does research to specifically address the needs of customers.

5. Prep for Purchase

Giveaways get prospects ready to buy-in. When selling services or products, it is generally known that it takes 3-7 touches for people to engage with your company prior to making a purchase. A giveaway helps to educate consumers and offers information during the decision-making process. When they finally call, they are ready to buy.

What to Giveaway

1. Video

Videos are the number one marketing tool to provide for free. Psychologically, people tune into movement and the emotions expressed on video. This is part of man’s psychological makeup. Invest in creating some quality video to post on websites, link to within emails and upload onto YouTube. Use visual channels to draw more interest.

2. Freebies

Free stuff is always appreciated. People love something that is useful and free. They may have to share an image with a special embedded code or make a purchase beginning at a minimum amount to qualify. Individuals love receiving something extra in the mail.

3. Written Content

Ebooks and pdf downloadables are useful for qualifying leads. Checklists and written content help customers get a feel for your voice and the type of materials that you can offer to help them meet their needs. Remember that your business is only there to help customers find a solution to their problems. This material helps to “touch” prospects and establish a relationship with them prior to their purchase.

Giveaways generate more awareness of your company and its associated products or services. They provide exposure to more leads and help to qualify them en route to making a purchase. Begin strategizing your giveaways today.

5 Reasons to Giveaway Relevant Content to Generate Leads

RocketResponder now Integrates with Zapier

We’re excited to say our integration with Zapier is now complete! Zapier is a service that allows you to connect over 400 apps together, to do really cool stuff you couldn’t do before. And, it’s incredibly easy!

For instance, you might already be using Google Forms to collect survey results from customers. Now with Zapier you can add those customers to your RocketResponder list automatically!

RocketResponder now Integrates with Zapier

Why Your Blog Should Line Up With Your Email Marketing Campaign

One of the best ways that you can advertise your business is through an email marketing campaign. Almost everyone today has an email and reaching them via it can be a great way to draw attention to your business sand the services you offer.

That being said, email marketing should not work alone. After all, who has ever simply used email as a way to reach their consumer base? Not many have, because it is not the “be all end all” of marketing, although it can be a great start. One way that you can boost your email marketing campaign and make it better than ever is through blog content. Here is not only why you should be doing this but some of the ways that you can.

Why Blog Content?

Internet blogs are a fantastic way to get information out to consumers in a short and easy to digest fashion. Almost everyone follows some type of online blog and many will admit to being suckered into buying products and services based off of blog posts and blogger recommendations; whether it was content created by the business itself or not. IF your blog is connected to your email marketing that takes your ability to bring in consumers to an entirely new level. By lining up your marketing to your blog content, you have successfully brought together two aspects of your business. If you can correctly and successfully bring these two part of advertising and marketing together you can create a highly successful model that top business and companies use to bring in their consumers and clients.

How Can I Do This?

Bringing together your email marketing and your blog content does not have to be difficult. In fact, all you really have to do is line up the messages and find a way to feature both of these marketing techniques within each other. Some ways you can do this are:

Link To Your Blog in Your Newsletter

Do you have a weekly or monthly newsletter you put out? Does it have a lot of relevant information? If this is something your consumers enjoy consider linking them to your blog within the email. This will take your consumers from passive to active and give you a better chance of gaining more traffic. If you do not yet have an email newsletter consider opening polls on your blog to gauge interest levels of current consumers.

Use Post Magnets

Your blog should do more than just service those who already have an email subscription; it should entice new ones! Older posts can be just as popular as newer posts and having lead magnets on your more popular posts can lead to more email subscribers. For example, a beauty bog has a review that has bene getting a lot of traffic and the owner wants to use the traffic to gain email subscribers who are often the ones who buy her new products. Even though this post was form before she had a subscription service she went back in and edited the post so that it include a paragraph about email subscription and how it is the best way to contact her and stay involved in the community. The post is still garner traffic and this has increased her chances of picking up more subscribers.

Create A Blog Signature

You don’t just need to use your blog to promote your email, you can use your email to promote your blog. Whether it is a casual email to consumers or a business email between yourself and another source, consider creating an ever changing email signature. Link to your most current bog post at the end of your signature, no matter what email it is. This will spread your new posts throughout your contacts and lead to more traffic.

Email marketing and blog content go hand in hand. Although email marketing is a great way to help your business get started, linking your blog to your strategy will just make you that much more relevant.

Why Your Blog Should Line Up With Your Email Marketing Campaign

5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs an Email Marketing Service

Email marketing is an integral part of your communication with clients. From a new, informative blog post to the debut of a new product, it’s important that you keep your customers informed about your business.

If anything, a successful email marketing campaign reminds existing and potential clients that you are there, and your services are relevant in the industry. In today’s online marketing scene, it’s regarded as highly unprofessional to send subscribers a mass message via a standard email account. In fact, there are a number of mistakes you may be making that cause a promising campaign to go south. If your email marketing is failing, ask for help. Using a reputable marketing service can help you increase your successes but also track your failures, leading to overall improvement in your advertising efforts.

1. A professional company and their provided software can vastly improve the visual design of your emails.

Regardless of how informative and catchy your email copy is, research shows the incredible impact of even the slightest change in a page’s visual design. When you seek consultation on minor advertising nuances like the color of a button, size of text, or placement of an image on the screen, you’re given information only privy to the most advanced data-miners in the industry. A quality software program provides templates proven to maximize audience response.

Still, a visually stunning email may not be enough when a business is trying to achieve a certain goal with their subscribers. If the easy-to-use interface of your service’s program comes up short, live help is always a quick call away.
2. Compelling copy and call-to-action lines are important, but personalization is key.

Customers like to feel acknowledged, and when they sign on to your mailing list, it’s important to address them by name as opposed to “subscriber.” Sophisticated marketing programs do the tedious work for you, determining the user’s first name and personalizing emails each and every time. Research shows that a customized greeting line among other appearances will drastically improve your campaign efforts.

Business owners should also seek help in producing segmented email lists. Software can help you target specific groups of people depending upon their age, gender, expressed interests, and more. Many campaigns fail because advertisers blast messages to the wrong people. Varying your approach to individual clients can enhance your campaign outcomes, and marketing services will advise you on the best practices.

3. Using a professional software service eliminates silly mistakes often made by non-technical users.

Everyone is human, but for busy professionals, mistakes are the rule–not the exception. Many people thwart their marketing efforts due to minor mistakes they never even realize they made, and by then, it’s too late. Your reputation is everything when you’re selling a product or service, and the visual, grammatical, and other aspects of your messages should always exude professionalism.

One common error is failing to update your users on a regular schedule, as email frequency is just as significant as the content of their messages. A reputable marketing service can help optimize your email schedule. They can also ensure no embarrassing mistakes slip, such as copying your entire email list in the “To” line, effectively violating subscribers’ privacy. No matter how little you know about HTML or other technical aspects of your online messaging, a complete software program can help you garner professional respect.

4. Quality autoresponders increase communication and save you time.

It’s nearly impossible to manually track the behaviors and facts about individual customers, such as how often they buy your product, when they subscribed, and the kinds of services they tend to seek. Failed marketing campaigns make poor use of autoresponders, timed email messages that trigger upon a particular event such as an initial subscription, birthday, upcoming appointment, or service renewal date. These preprogrammed notes also thank your customers and provide them with information tailored to their online activity with your company.

Technology can help improve your campaign by meeting the personal needs of each and every client. It’s smart to seek help from an email marketing service. They provide important outcome data on advertising practices, and if you’re struggling, they have valuable advice for sophisticated autoresponse.

5. A reliable marketing software company will make sure you comply with email laws.

Companies with their eye on a financial prize tend to forget there are complex laws set in place regarding advertising practices. If you want peace of mind that your campaign complies with regulation, an email marketing service does the tedious research for you. From violating SPAM laws to failing to honor people’s requests to unsubscribe, many otherwise brilliant campaigns are ruined due to ignorance.

You’ll boost customer satisfaction and trust by using a professional service that’ll keep you up-to-date on all the legal and other ramifications of your communication with clients. Advanced software can help you project experience and expertise as a seasoned company in your field, impressing clients and leading to successful conversions.

5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs an Email Marketing Service

Email Marketing For Website Owners

If you have a website then there is one thing you need more than anything else…repeat visits from highly targeted and interested individuals.

With around one billion websites live on the internet right now, there is no point in just hoping people are going to come to you.

Also with increasing demands on our time, even if someone finds your site and likes it, there is no guarantee that they will come back if left to their own devices.

These days people need a nudge in the right direction. In fact they need constant nudges in the right direction and that is where email marketing comes in.

RocketResponder is designed to allow you to give your subscribers regular reminders that your website is there and that they really might like to visit it.

The great thing is that people really appreciate these reminders and many of them will take the action that you suggest in your emails.

It works because you are only selecting people who are already interested in your website or in the goods or services that you sell.

Subscribers will happily give you their email address and agree to receive marketing emails from you if they feel that they are getting something of value in return.

Generally that something of value is your knowledge and expertise. People will subscribe to your email list if you offer them something of real value.

Say, for example, that your website is all about cat care products for pedigree cats. Well the chances are that you are an expert in this area and that you know exactly how to meet the needs of people who are looking for such products.

You will already be promoting your website to drive targeted traffic to it as part of your regular marketing efforts.

The next step is to build up an email list of these targeted leads so that you can tell them about any special offers, promotions and new products that you may have.

The idea is that you want these people to buy from you rather than from a rival website owner and an email to their inbox could be just the trigger that is needed to get yourself the sale.

One of the best ways to get them is to offer a free report or guide in return for being able to send promotional and marketing emails to your subscribers.

Taking the previous example again, some possible ideas could be:

– The Top Five Things Your Top Cat Will Love You For

– Three Mistakes To Avoid When Buying Cat Care Products

– The Complete Guide To Caring For Your Pedigree Cat

Now all you have to do is write a report, put a download form on your website and you will soon be building up a list of subscribers.

When sending emails, keep up the theme of providing useful information, such as via a regular newsletter or question and answer series, where you address commonly asked questions that keep cropping up.

Mix in promotional emails with these informational emails (or do both in one email if you prefer) and you will keep your website in the minds of your potential customers as well as your existing customers.

This means that when they want to make a purchase, they are more likely to buy from you than from a competitor.

You will soon find that regular communication with your subscribers is a vital part of your online business and is one of the most effective ways of building up trust and securing vital repeat customers who are also likely to recommend you to their friends and colleagues.

As you send out more emails you are building trust between you and your subscribers, establishing yourself as an authority figure in your niche and increasing brand awareness.

RocketResponder has been designed with people like you in mind and it allows to manage all your subscriber lists from one place.

It is user-friendly, intuitive and does not take up much time.

There are also no hidden surprises with RocketResponder. We have one low flat monthly fee and this stays the same no matter how many emails you send or how many subscribers you add to your list. This makes setting budgets easy because you know ahead of time what the service will cost.

Learn more about what RocketResponder can do for your web-based business – Email Marketing For Website Owners.

Email Marketing For Website Owners

Good Communication When Something Goes Wrong is Crucial

Good communication comes from knowing the needs of the targeted audience. If a strong relationship exists with the audience the message goes to then it becomes a matter of addressing the needs and desires positive and negative.

With this scenario a marketer becomes free to indulge in customized messages with particulars for that audience. For most marketers that is a dream market. Long-term customers, well known parameters and a level of trust. Of course that is the ultimate goal of any business large or small to have a central group of mainstays. In any business endeavor portions have to become about growth and in growth a business person takes steps into the unknown. Here good communication becomes about presenting a product or service in a way that proves or catches the attention of a business person who has a need that has to become filled to serve their customers.

Content

It begins with good content that displays the product or service in a light that makes it palatable but is crucial for success. After all especially in small business spending money means making hard decisions and sacrifices. Good emails that sell product and services have a poetry to it. A flow and rhythm that says what it needs to say in an intriguing credible way. Email marketing does work. According to Convince and Convert 44% of email recipients make at least one purchase because of a promotional email. It is the content which conveys the message.

Before the Content

What gets people to read the content? Literally hundreds of emails pass through programs. Why does a consumer choose to open a particular one? Here lies some answer:

1. Subject lines of 10 characters long or slightly less had a 58% opening rate as well as a 22% more likely to open survey if the subject line is personalized says Adesta.


2. Chadwick Martin Bailey reports that 64% of the people open emails because of the subject line.


3. 82% of emails are open if a consumer sees it is from a company.

Making sure this piece portrays the gist of the business goes a long way in minimizing wrong turns.

Innovation

Email automation is having a crisis of faith. The technology works well and makes sales. Recent years it has been in a period of experimentation. It has not overcome all the issues of automation to make it seamless. It is not standardized so plenty of opportunity to for startups and innovation in established companies. Those that can make automation creation quicker and easier as far as emails will have an edge. Personalization of the message continues as a trend as well as using third party vendors to accomplish specific tasks. All of this has been a response to practices or emails that have gone wrong or given the wrong response.

Trends on the horizon suggested by experts have been the need for more speed and more adaptability. A need for data services that track contacts and frequency once the email is sent. Integration and cloud based services will continue to play into the field. Of course any change to software email or web based emails means the whole game changes. A system of announce it, do a follow up, and then send reminders will become a common practice as maintaining long term customers become a central goal.

Whether a large firm or one just starting up talking to experts in the field can help navigate past the major pitfalls of such an enterprise. Nothing replaces knowing your customers and their needs. That will always be a given in marketing.

Good Communication When Something Goes Wrong is Crucial

Five Apps All Small Business Owners Need

The industry is evolving, and it’s time to pull ahead. As mobile technology develops, small business decision makers become increasingly optimized—delivering high-quality solutions in smooth, effective ways. Getting more optimized needn’t require tech-genius-level skill, and becoming up-to-date is simple when you’ve got the hardware.

If you’re seeking visibility, mobility and scale, check out these five mobile apps. Your business has everything to gain, and nothing to lose.

App One: Google Drive

These days, Google’s entwined in everything, and for good reason: It’s highly optimized. Building your small business platform on Google Docs is a good idea, and taking advantage of Google Drive ensures seamless ports, file editing, document accessibility and around-the-clock support.

Google Drive lets you transfer and alter files between your PC, tablet and smartphone. Small business owners are becoming increasingly reliant on virtual drive aps due to their intuitive web surfaces and incredibly flexibility. Likely, Google’s success will continue expanding in the cloud storage arena—further generating great solutions on its free 5GB storage offering.

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App Two: Any.Do

Do you make lists? Do you generate employee tasks? Any.Do delivers a responsibility organizer alongside easy-search item lists. Of course, you’ll have your hands full, and that’s alright. Any.Do, titled “Cal” on the app’s iOS and Android platforms, was specifically tailored to “up and at ‘em” business owners.

Any.Do creates a task manager, empowering users with event synchronization, information output, schedulers and daily, step-by-step processing lists.

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App Three: Expensify

Managing expenses is difficult, so an expense calculator application is entirely warranted within the industry. Don’t worry: Your information is safe. In fact, Expensify’s encryption protection keeps any and all input information totally locked down.

The app, itself, calculates expenses, travel mileage and other fiscal components to scan, generate and upload receipts. Expensify is supreme in terms of file accessibility, and each expense report features a highly intuitive design to offer both employees and decision makers instant information. Founded and created by David Barrett, Expensify has become one of the world’s best apps for small business owners tracking expenses for both daily operations and long-term budgeting. Expensify currently serves approximately one million users.

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App Four: LinkedIn Pulse
Many use LinkedIn, and online social media has become ever-prevalent in modern business culture. About 22 percent of adult online users use LinkedIn currently, according to Pew Research Center, taking up a large slice of the business world’s connectivity pie.

LinkedIn Pulse personalizes reading experiences, generates content and optimizes business practices. If you’re away from the app, you can upload stories beforehand, generating future content. Article sharing, networking and professional connections are LinkedIn cornerstones—and they’re further empowered with LinkedIn Pulse.

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App Five: Asana

A project management workspace application geared towards multi-party support, Asana is the platform for small business workplace connection. Capable of collaborating email efficiency, generating group activities, collecting data and creating solutions, Asana has become a preferred organizer provider. The app is free, and it’s incredibly smooth. Of course, accessibility is a key component when multiple people engage a single app, and Asana answers with maximized capabilities and room to grow.

Five Apps All Small Business Owners Need

Controlling Your Small Business Marketing Budget: 5 Ways to Reduce Costs

Managing a small business marketing budget can be one of the biggest challenges for today’s up and coming companies. Even if you’ve been in the business 20 years, finding the balance of spending money to bring customers in and managing the bottom line is tough to do. With a few effective tips and strategies, though, you can reduce your marketing costs and potentially increase your marketing success.

#1: Invest in digital marketing over local marketing

Prints ads work, but digital marketing may take your business to the next level. This method involves using a website and blog to market your local business. By working with experienced professionals, you can attract more visitors to your website. Digital marketing uses content and search engine optimization to bring customers to your website.

#2: Utilize social media as a main component of your marketing

Social media, such as sites like Google+, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn provide today’s small business with a wealth of inexpensive access to customers. It can produce nearly twice as many leads as telemarketing or trade show marketing and competes heavily with direct mail as well. The goal is to connect with customers on these social media sites, interact with them, and build a brand through them. Doing so consistently can help you to prove to your audience you are the go-to solution for their product or service needs.

#3: Utilize existing customers more thoroughly

Small business owners often have a strong customer base of loyal customers or local patrons. Are you using these customers to your full advantage? Email marketing campaigns, for example, can help bring customers back in the door. They all businesses to sell, promotion, engage, and simply educate buyers in a non-aggressive marketing form. It’s an inexpensive solution as well. Send reminders of discounts and promotions. Email customers with a discount for a “friend” to bring in new customers. Interact on a weekly basis with tips or strategies related to the industry.

#4: Host informative chats, webinars and online events

It does not have to be expensive to create a webinar, a lecture-like event that is conducted over the Internet. It can, however, prove to your customers you are a brand leader in this industry. You’ll also find that this type of marketing can bring in clients and customers from around the world.

#5: Create and manage a marketing plan

Many times, small business owners do not put enough time or effort into marketing or they don’t have a cohesive plan that addresses all needs across the board. This can be a costly mistake. The Small Business Administration states that businesses with $5 million of revenue or less should invest 7 to 8 percent of their revenue in marketing efforts. Do this by creating a marketing plan that combines all components of your strategy (online and offline marketing, social media, websites, etc) and then come back to it determine where you are making money. Understanding your ROI on each area is essential.

With a comprehensive plan and online advertising, it is possible to boost your business’s bottom line by getting new customers in the door but also reduce and better use your marketing budget.

Controlling Your Small Business Marketing Budget: 5 Ways to Reduce Costs

Customer Contact: Striking the Right Balance

Have you ever been chased across a car lot by an over anxious salesman, or hounded by a real estate agent that got your contact information and just wouldn’t let go? We’ve all dealt with an overzealous salesperson at some point — and most of us go out of our way to avoid another encounter. Treating your social media followers to a constant barrage of promotional posts is basically taking that old “used car salesman” approach and can turn followers off for good.

While you must post content to keep your followers engaged, a steady diet of “Look at me” and “buy this” posts will backfire quickly and turn away the very people you’ve worked so hard to reach. Striking the right balance of informational, engaging and promotional posts is a must if you want your social media and email campaigns to succeed. Striving for balance ensures that you entertain and interact with your followers in addition to selling to them and makes it a lot more likely that they’ll hang around and read what you have to say.

Engagement Posts

Engagement posts should evoke a response from your customer, but shouldn’t be a call to action or marketing ploy. Seeking out information that is relevant to your brand’s industry and then actually having a conversation with your followers should be your goal when you create engagement posts. Engagement posts should generally be topical, of interest to your followers and industry and ask a question or seek an opinion.

Typical engagement style posts for a vitamin/health shake seller:

• “What’s your favorite hot weather workout?”


• “Do you have a favorite fitness hack?”


• “Slice it, dice it or scoop it into balls – how do you like your melon?”


• “64 ounces of water a day – how do you make sure you stay hydrated?”


• “We’d love to know what you think about… (Insert latest trend or industry news or interesting health fact here)”

Engagement posts should be outgoing, friendly and non-promotional in nature and should make up about 30% of your initial posts.

Informational Posts

Provide great content and interesting information to your followers and you give them a reason to read your posts and open your emails. Think about the magazines and news sources your target customers follow and create or link to similar posts. Own a locksmith service? Link to pieces on home safety, what to do if you lock your pet (or baby) in the car or how to install a safe. Have a pet grooming business? Link to pieces on puppy care, wearable technology for pets and summer pet safety. You can create your own pieces for your blog as well, but a few minutes of research will yield plenty of non-competing and informative pieces you can share with your customers.

Information pieces position you as someone who provides relevant and useful content and as an authority in your field, even if you did not write the initial piece. Provide information without strings to your followers at least 30% of the time and they’ll actually be interested in what you have to say. There’s an entire Internet worth of information available to choose from, sticking to authority sites and avoiding competitors are the only rules to follow when you post informational style updates.

The balance of your posts can highlight a specific product, sale or service. Use the remaining 40% of your posts to pitch your product of the month, present an offer or promote your latest sale. By offering relevant, useful and engaging posts most of the time, you strike the right balance with your followers and avoid looking like a constant pitchman or overeager salesperson. As an added bonus, you position yourself as an expert in your field – and someone to turn to when it is time to buy.

Customer Contact: Striking the Right Balance

Increase Open Rates With Better Email Subject Lines

Email marketing is a must for any brick and mortar business operating today. It’s still uncomfortable, though, for many business owners. While writing those riveting, attention grabbing subject lines might read more like “Mission Impossible” for you today, once you’ve finished reading this, you’ll be ready to make ground breaking subject lines of your own for your next email marketing campaign.

Anatomy of a Killer Subject Line

In order to create subject lines that grab reader’s attention, you have to first think like a reader. Go through your email inbox and think about the headlines filtering through it on any given day. What does it take to make you click?

Chances are the subject lines did one of these things in order to make you want to click.

• Promised a solution to a problem.


• Conveyed a sense of urgency.


• Created a little controversy.


• Asked a question that piqued your interests.


• Was witty.

All of these things make great subject line ideas and can help you get your emails opened and read faster and by more members of your target audience. But why do they work?

• Obviously, people who have specific problems on your email lists are likely to open up if you’re promising a solution to their problems. That’s why it’s important to keep the email subject lines relevant to your audience.


• A sense of urgency often works because no one wants to feel as though they are missing out on the next big thing. This means they’ll open and click and just to make sure they’re not going to miss out on something that matters to them.


• Controversy sells! It’s as simple as that. While you don’t want to go so controversial that your turn your audience off, it never hurts to start a good conversation or debate as long as you are, once again, keeping it relevant. The goal of email marketing, after all, is to get people to buy what you have to sell.


• Piquing interests gets a little more difficult unless you know your audience very well. Chances are what one person finds interesting may not appeal to others on the same level. However, if you present it as a bit of a mystery, you might have them hooked.


• Witty is great. It gets attention and garners interest on its own. It also offers readers the hope this this will not be some dry boring sales pitch on your behalf.

At the end of the day, you’re left with a handful of possibilities and your own talents to attract readers and clicks. These ideas will help get your brain going, but the perfect subject line needs a little more to make it work. Try these tips for size.

• Be unique. Don’t follow the same trends others in your inbox have tried.


• Be specific. Don’t be so vague that your readers aren’t sure what you’re actually talking about.


• Be useful. Reward your audience with useful information that matters to them.

Finally, creating those riveting subject lines is only half the battle. You must follow through with the subject line promises or you risk breaking faith with your audience and losing subscribers.

Increase Open Rates With Better Email Subject Lines

RocketResponder For Business - Focus on Jewelry Designer Carla Garro

RocketResponder For Business: When you meet Carla Garro from Lita Sea Glass Jewelry, two things become immediately clear.

Firstly she is a very talented jewelry designer and secondly there is absolutely no doubt that customer satisfaction is a huge priority for Carla.

Carla makes unique, hand-crafted designs featuring beautiful sea glass and has a growing customer-base of fans who are delighted with the quality and beauty of the jewelry she produces.

 

As Carla’s business grew she realized that she needed to spend more time on communicating with her customers, but finding the time to do so was always a problem.

When she heard about RocketResponder she knew that she had found a solution to keeping her customers fully informed while not taking away from the time she needed to spend working on her business…designing and producing jewelry.

Neither did it eat into the precious time that she devotes to looking after her young daughter – those precious moments for a mother and daughter that can never be replaced.

We loved meeting Carla, spending time with her and seeing how she had effortlessly integrated RocketResponder’s automated email marketing into her business.

Her passion shines through in everything she does and her jewelry provides joy and pleasure for her customers who instantly fall in love with her elegant designs.

This short video explains Carla’s passion for her business and sets out how she benefits from using RocketResponder to handle her email marketing and keep her customers updated and informed.

 

 

RocketResponder For Business - Focus on Jewelry Designer Carla Garro

5 Content Marketing Trends for SMB"s

2015 is shaping up to to be one of the best years yet for content marketing. According to the Content Marketing Institute’s annual state-of-the-industry survey, 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends, 69% of SMB’s are producing more content than they were a year ago, and 59% of those surveyed are planning to increase their content marketing budget in the next year.

71% say they still spend most of their marketing budget on traditional print and other offline marketing promotions, yet only 46% of those think it’s effective, with 57% saying SEO content marketing shows better results. The survey also shows that content marketing is still in it’s infancy, with companies struggling to decide which content works best for them, the best ways to produce that content, and how to measure its effectiveness.

So it’s an exciting time for content marketing, ripe with opportunities for those willing to employ innovation, new technologies, and new marketing strategies. The gurus have weighed in with their forecasts, and here are five content marketing trends to keep an eye on over the coming year and beyond.

#1 Social media will become even more important for content distribution. Most SMB’s already realize the importance of having a strong social media presence, but the way content is used is changing, and there’s a lot of competition out there. Look for more emphasis on paid advertising and promoted posts, and believe it or not new social media platforms. Yes, they’re cooking up even more ways to waste time, but that’s good news for content marketers.

#2 Personalized and targeted content will increase. Content designed using data on an individual’s online preferences, physical location, time spent online, and viewing devices used is proving to be a powerful tool for increasing customer engagement, and those embracing this still underused marketing strategy will have an advantage. It can be complicated and use a lot of resources to produce personalized content, but several automated solutions will make their debut in the coming months that promise to make the job much easier. (hint: RocketResponder helps make this one easy)

#3 The use of hyperlocal content will grow considerably. Hyperlocal content is targeted towards consumers in a relatively small geographic area, such as a city or town. It’s often produced by people familiar with the area. Service providers like plumbers and mechanics, car dealerships, local restaurants, and retail outlets benefit from hyperlocal content, especially if it’s friendly to mobile devices. Google looks favorably on hyperlocal content too.

#4 Multimedia will continue its upward trend. With the ever increasing ease of creating high quality videos, infographics, podcasts, and photographic content, SMB’s will increasingly take advantage of the effectiveness of delivering content utilizing a variety of media.

#5 New marketing measurement software will make a big impact. Just 21% of respondents to the aforementioned survey reported having success tracking the results of their content marketing strategy, and another 15% said they don’t even try. Software developers have taken note of this and will be stepping in to address the need with new marketing measurement solutions.

5 Content Marketing Trends for SMB"s

Mind Your Email Manners: Etiquette Essentials

Human beings are born to communicate. Imparting and interchanging information with others is how some of us spend most of our waking hours. Email is a wondrous, magical, super-efficient tool for participating in such exchanges that requires a few core, best practices you can count on one typing hand.

Choose a descriptive subject line title

You know how frustrating it is to search through your email files trying to find one specific message that referred to something very significant? But you can’t because it was titled: “Just thought of this!” or “Ringing in…”

In both professional and personal settings, a clear and to-the-point title let’s the recipient know how important the communication is, emotionally prepares them for the contents, and helps them file and retrieve it later if it contains important information.

For God’s sake, open with a greeting

Always, always, always begin your email with some form of opening greeting, and ideally you should use the recipient’s first name if you are on friendly terms. If you have ever received an email from a friend or a stranger that begins with a statement or question without any opening salutation foreplay, you know how jarring and off-putting this kind of communication can be.

The degree of formality in your opening is dependent upon context, of course. It’s far better to err on the side of formality if in doubt with, “Dear Insert Person’s First and/or Last Name Here” in business communications.

“Hi there” and “Hey!” are OK for pals, but the key is to acknowledge that there is a busy human on the other end of your fingertips who is probably doing at least four other things with their attention and time as they open your email. Extend them the courtesy and respect they deserve. You always appreciate it when it’s offered to you, right?

Choose a classy closing salutation

Strive to use something other than the uber annoying and fairly lazy “Best.” “Warm regards” is lovely. “Very sincerely” is not quite as intimate, but still lends a thoughtful touch. “Sincerely” is most adequate for business use, and “Best regards” is absolutely fine. An expression of gratitude for the reader’s time and attention is always appreciated and rarely inappropriate in a business setting.

Proof your work

Take a few minutes to use spellcheck and clean up your grammar. Edit out material that is extraneous or too informal for the context. Short, concise, and fact-based is appreciated in professional environments. Even if your BFFs love you to pieces, it can be really taxing to read an email that is as word-dense as a doctoral dissertation.

Acknowledge all email communications, requested or not

Something about the faceless and voiceless anonymity of electronic dialogue lends itself to non-responsiveness. In a professional setting, this is inexcusable. If the message you receive does not require a response from you, a simple “Got it. Thanks!” lets the sender know the info was received and subliminally indicates that you value their time and efforts.

If a response is required of you but you’re jammed at the moment, drop a fast note back indicating that you have received the email and will reply within a specified period of time. This one personal courtesy goes a long way in this technologically narcissistic culture of ours.

Mind Your Email Manners: Etiquette Essentials

Four Easy Hacks to Make Your Email Marketing Initiative A Rock Star

Marketing must create new ideas and evolve campaigns to keep their branding message relevant and their initiatives fresh. A big marketing challenge is finding the time to consistently create relevant, valuable information clients and prospects need.

When it comes to creating successful email campaigns, it doesn’t have to be difficult! Here are four easy hacks to make your email marketing initiative a rock star.

First, organize a game plan. An easy way campaigns careen off course and end up failing is lack of direction. What is the campaign trying to achieve? Promoting your blog, a product, a webinar? The marketing team must decide on one cohesive goal before the first email is designed, and keep it in mind throughout the process.

Then, put some brain work into the subject line. 90% of marketers say they don’t spend enough time on subject lines. Don’t be one of them! The subject line is the key reason an email gets read or trashed. Think about the title just as much as you contemplate the email content. What is catchy without being spammy? Give them a delicious offer they can’t refuse, or a snippet of a topic so interesting they must read more about it.

A big DON’T on subject lines: making them too long. Some email systems cut off long email subject lines, and they show up weirdly truncated. Keep the subject as close to fifty characters as possible.

Speaking of short and sweet…..

…..remember to be brief. If your team has set a goal, as recommended above, brevity is easy. Greet the person by name, as Experian Marketing Services recently found that personalized emails have 29% higher open rates. Then, lay out the reason for the email, three short benefits to them, and an offer. It may seem like a good idea to write several paragraphs about the product’s or service’s benefits, however, when a prospect opens an email and sees a bunch of text, he or she will most likely click away.

Finally, add the finishing touch. They opened and read your email, now what? Don’t leave them hanging! Potential buyers need an easy next step. Again, think about the goal of the email, and add a relevant and awesome Call to Action. A button that clearly explains the next step is a powerful way to drive prospects through the sales funnel and into your client base. When designing calls-to-action, think about what you want the prospect to do after he reads the email. Free demo? Free trial? Download eBook? Two to four words leading the reader to the next step will increase the email’s effectiveness.

Emails are a common way of modern life, and inboxes get pummeled daily with offers and ads. Use these four easy hacks to make sure your message doesn’t get lost in the fray. By setting a clear goal, creating a compelling subject line, keeping it brief, and adding a powerful call-to-action, your company will fast become an email superstar.

Now rock on!

Four Easy Hacks to Make Your Email Marketing Initiative A Rock Star

8 Ways to Increase Sales by Nurturing Leads

Maintaining strong sales productivity requires continuity, timeliness, and customized communications. Information exchanges with prospective customers must be thorough. All issues must be addressed, and all leads fully developed for closing. Many essential tasks fall through the cracks in an inefficient lead management program. Use the guidelines below to increase lead quality, generate more new sales, and multiply referral leads from existing customers.

1. Qualify leads — Gather pre-qualification information to ensure sales won’t fall through on a typical deal-killing technicality. For example, know in advance that the prospect’s budget supports your price, and that you’re communicating with the true decision-maker.

2. Build relationships — At key points, reach out to strengthen rapport with your prospect. This affords the customer a higher-quality experience of the process, so that as a new customer she’s more likely to be confident that she has chosen wisely.

3. Educate customers — Thoroughly inform your prospect to help her become a fully-satisfied customer. Bring expectations in line with your company’s true capabilities. This reduces risk of cancellation, because the new customer clearly understands what you can reasonably commit to doing.

4. Strengthen retention — Retain current customers by continuing the lead nurturing process you started on your initial contact with her as a new lead. Drawing repeat sales from existing customers is a much more effective program when communications are appropriately patterned, just as in your pre-closing lead nurturing system.

5. Cultivate word-of-mouth — Keep in mind that each prospect and customer communicates with numerous others in various places every day. Each represents a whole population of potential customers who can be offered the best possible introduction to your company through her endorsement.

6. Customer Referrals — Strive to help your customer feel fully comfortable referring her valued business contacts and friends to your company. Remember, the greatest number of quality referrals naturally comes from customers with whom you build the best business relationships.

7. Cut wasted time — Identify counterproductive sales activities, and redirect energies to lead nurturing. For example, discontinue calling on leads for which there is insufficient qualification information. These too often waste time, offering no sale potential at all or poor quality contracts.

8. Track all communications — Enter details of every sales activity between your company and your prospect. Inter-departmentally linked Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software provides instantly accessible history of all contacts, as well as auto-prompts, scheduling management, and auto-messaging for juggling high lead volumes.

Lead nurturing results

An efficient lead nurturing program significantly increases sales, customer relations quality, and referral business. Alternatively, contracting with insufficiently informed or under-qualified prospects is far less likely to consistently generate solid contracts, quality referrals, or positive word-of-mouth for your company. In fact, insufficiently attended prospects and customers are more likely to spread negative word-of-mouth about your company—a common consequence of consumer expectations disproportionate to realities of a company’s production and/or service capacity. Nurturing business relationships avoids these risks and develops customer loyalty that pays ROI.

8 Ways to Increase Sales by Nurturing Leads

Email Marketing For Lawyers

The relationship between lawyer and client is one of trust and discretion.

The problem is that for many, when seeking a new lawyer, it is difficult to know who to trust with your legal problems.

Not only that, but it can be hard to work out whether the lawyer you are considering is actually good at their job or is someone you will want to trust and open up to.

As a lawyer you want people to trust you and you have only a short time to win people over before they consider moving onto the next name on their list.

When used properly, email can be a surprisingly good way of quickly building up a relationship with potential new clients and for strengthening relationships with existing clients.

Email marketing for lawyers, such as provided by RocketResponder, is a quick and efficient way of using email to communicate with both prospective and existing clients.

It lets you give people the reasons they need to feel secure enough to choose you for their legal needs.

What’s more it allows you to take a very personal approach with your clients but without the excessive time demands that such an approach would involve without the use of automated email marketing.

RocketResponder can give you an edge over the competition by allowing you to give everyone who inquires about the services you offer, a personal touch but without it eating away at your precious time.

You can use automated email marketing to highlight your expertise, skills and the services you offer by sending regular emails which are helpful, informative and highlight the qualities that make you the right choice for potential clients.

Email marketing works by people signing up to your email list – typically by an opt in form on your website – where they provide their name and email address in return for some specific information or report.

The information you provide must be relevant and useful to the specific type of clients you are targeting. For example if you only handle commercial law then you don’t want to spend time fielding inquiries from people looking for a criminal lawyer.

The report could be something like:

• Seven Things You Must Know Before Signing Any Legal Document


• The Three Mistakes To Avoid When Choosing A Family Lawyer


• How To Sue Someone For Money They Owe You


• What You Should Always Ask Your Lawyer


• Seven Ways To Save Money On Legal Bills

Or you might say: “Enter your name and email address to sign up for our monthly newsletter and learn more about the range of services we offer.”

You will find that people will happily give your their email address if they receive some useful information in return.

Think about the questions you, or your staff, get asked every day and the amount of time that is spent explaining the same information over and over again.

Using email allows you to answer these questions in a series of emails which goes out to prospective clients while, at the same time, explaining exactly why they should choose you to look after their legal needs.

A prospective client will feel great that you have taken the time to anticipate the types of questions they have and that you have addressed them.

At the same time you come across as warm, friendly and welcoming which is exactly what new clients will need to feel when they are deciding whether to trust you with their legal affairs.

This approach also works to build up trust with your existing clients. Sending information and advice -type emails will not only be welcome but if your clients need help with these issues then they are likely to associate you with the help they need.

RocketResponder will also allow you to use email to do a whole host of other things which will help you grow your legal practice.

For example you can send out regular newsletters, schedule appointment reminders, ask for feedback and alert people to important changes in the law which they need to know about.

Our system has been designed with busy professionals like you in mind so that either you, or a member of your staff, can manage your email communications with ease and without taking up too much time.

There are no hidden surprises with RocketResponder. We have one low flat monthly fee and this stays the same no matter how many emails you send or how many subscribers you add to your list. This makes setting budgets easy because you know ahead of time what the service will cost.

Learn more about what RocketResponder can do for your legal practice – Email Marketing For Lawyers.

 

Email Marketing For Lawyers

Use Emails to Market to Prospects

Prospects have different needs as compared to converts. They still need to establish a sense of trust in a brand in order to buy. Small business should be segmenting their emails and providing uniquely tailored messages to each sub-group.

When small business owners specifically customize messages for segments, such as their leads, they can expect a jump in engagement. Research has been done comparing targeted and segmented emails to general email sends. According to Small Business Trends, the individualized and target message show an 8% click-through rate as compared to 3% with general emails. Jupiter Research gives more hope to small businesses looking at their bottom line. Their study demonstrated that relevant emails generated 18 times more revenue than general blasts. Capitalize on targeting emails to leads for an impact on engagement.

Consider the Stage in the Buying Process

Prospects may have just come across your site or may have simply abandoned their cart. Businesses should consider that it takes 3-7 touches, or interactions, with leads before they are finally motivated to purchase. The first step is to identify where they are along the selling cycle:

• They are aware. Prospects know of your product or service and are looking to fulfill a need. Messages need to offer videos or other forms of information to demonstrate how the product can help them. Previous testimonials from satisfied customers are particularly useful.


• They are evaluating the options. Leads have some information on the product and are attempting to decide if your company is offering the best option. Be open and transparent with easy access to additional information like FAQ’s and 24/7 customer service agents available to address specific questions.


• They are ready to buy. Time to offer free shipping, a transparent return policy and a simple transactional platform.

Create Materials that are Evergreen

It takes time to generate marketing plans and high-grade materials should be saved and reused. The effort used to generate quality content such as videos and ebooks are well worth the initial investment. The materials help to educate and screen the prospects and by the time they get to you, they are ready to purchase. 71% of Millenials, the generation with the largest purchasing power since the baby boomers, visit social networks daily for an average time that exceeds 5 hours, as stated by Tarc Business Review. They only want to deal with people if there is a problem or a technical issue. Everything else should be presented in a straightforward manner via email, website and social media outlets. Content that answers customer questions and directs them and other generations to necessary information should be in an easy to consume format within your emails.

Final Tips

• Create multiple reasons to opt-in. Opt-ins can be within a post or newsletter with a link that sends them to the relevant element on the website.


• Generate a list of keywords/phrases that will help your ranking and/or drive traffic. This will help with creating content that interests the target audience.


• Offer free checklists, videos, pdfs and more to engage leads.

Use Emails to Market to Prospects

Why Email Marketing Beats Social Media for Small Businesses

Small business owners typically hear advice on making the most of social media for marketing purposes. After all, social media helps you reach large audiences and interact easily with potential clients. However, focusing on social media might mean you end up neglecting to make use of an even more effective marketing tool that’s right at your fingertips. Email marketing provides certain advantages over social media for small businesses that really shouldn’t be overlooked.

Impressive ROI

Email marketing provides your company with a much higher chance of seeing a significant Return on Investment (ROI). According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing campaigns resulted in an ROI of 4,300 percent, earning businesses roughly $42 for each dollar spent. Compare that with the organic reach of Facebook content for marketing, which came in at a low 6 percent, representing a steady decline over the past couple of years.

Higher Number of High-Value Customers

Focusing your marketing efforts on email campaigns rather than social media is likely to bring you more business. Predictive analytics platform Custora released a report showing that customer acquisition through email marketing has quadrupled, while the value of customer acquisition via Twitter was 23 percent lower than average. In other words, email marketing helps you gain new customers at a higher rate, and those customers typically turn out to be high-value ones that are more profitable for your company than those acquired through social media.

Personalized Messages

While social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, give you a convenient way to let customers know about new products and special offers, you’re limited to how long your posts and Tweets can be. You’re also posting to the public in general, so your messages on these sites have to appeal to a broad audience. With email marketing, you’re sending messages to customers who have opted in to receive mail from you. There are no limits on how long your content is, and you have the option to narrow your focus and give your messages a personalized touch to appeal more to these customers.

Guaranteed Delivery

When you send emails to customers on your email marketing lists, these messages are guaranteed to land in their inbox. With social media, you have to hope that potential customers will visit your site, read your posts and decide to follow you. Even if you include links to social media sites on your company’s website, there are no guarantees that interested customers will click on them. Email marketing takes the guesswork out of this by directly delivering messages to potential and repeat customers.

Better Tracking Ability

Email marketing provides an easy way for you to keep track of conversions and user engagement. You can track the following:

• Number of customers who opened your email messages


• Number of customers who clicked on links in your messages


• Specific links that were clicked on


• Number of customers who have unsubscribed

With this information, you can make improvements to your email marketing campaigns to make them more effective and ensure more sales for your business.

Why Email Marketing Beats Social Media for Small Businesses