Tag Archive for: Email

It’s Time to Get Savvy: An Introduction to Email Marketing

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Email marketing is a massively underrated segment of digital marketing that, when used in combination with other marketing channels, is a goldmine of opportunity. Think of email marketing as the Robin or Dr. Watson of digital marketing; it needs to work in tandem with something else to have relevance but when it does, it is highly effective, useful and fills a vital role.

Email marketing can be used to deliver specific content directly to the interested user’s email inbox. This content can include offers, advertisements and education. To break these down further and understand the different kinds of emails there are, businesses can specifically deliver things like:

  • Brand announcements: announcing your next webinar, event, or sale
  • Product updates: the latest features of your product or offered services
  • Newsletters: a summary of your latest blog posts, business updates or your latest content offers
  • Event invitations: informing users of an event you’re attending, or an event of interest to them (e.g. an event of a business partner)
  • Social media updates: letting subscribers know of your new posts and asking them to share or like your posts (there’s no harm in asking for a little help from your followers/fans)

Keep in mind that you should switch up the kinds of emails you are sending to your subscribers. If you are tracking the response of your emails, discovering which are generating website visits or higher engagement, this can give you greater insight in to which types of emails work best for your specific subscribers. Knowing your subscribers, to know what they need and why they need it, is the key.

Before you can send an email, you of course need to know who you are emailing and how you will reach them. You can form a subscriber list by placing offers to ‘join our email subscription” on your website landing pages, social media’s or other platforms. Enticing people to join your email subscription can be achieved in many different ways, but ultimately you have to sell the benefits of joining this subscription. For example, subscribe “to receive exclusive offers”, “be the first to know when our sales begin” or “subscribe to receive 10% off your first purchase”. Once they have subscribed with their contact information, you can begin sending out your marketing emails.

Manuel vs Automated Emails:

Both manual and automated emails are important for email marketing. Manually sent emails are those that you create for specific and unique circumstances (e.g. an upcoming sale, announcements, newsletters etc.). Automated emails are those which are sent when a user performs a certain action on your website which automatically triggers an email response. Some automated email examples include:

  • Welcome: sent when a user first registers for your email subscription
  • Onboarding: can be singular or several emails providing information about your services or products and gives a rundown of what they can expect from your business.
  • Confirmation: sent in response to a user signing up for an event/webinar or completing a transaction.
  • Form response: sent when someone has completed a form to obtain access to an offer you have promoted, it will usually thank them for their engagement and will include the details of the offer.
  • Abandoned cart: if the customer has added products to their basket but has not followed through with the transaction, you can send triggered emails to remind them that they still have items in their basket and can encourage them to complete their purchase.

There is so much more to learn about email marketing, but this is a good introduction to understanding how, why and when to use email marketing to boost your business.

Final Three Tips:

  1. Your emails should be mobile friendly as 53% of all emails are being opened on mobile devices. If your formatting and content is not appropriate and appealing on a mobile device, then you are potentially wasting some of your efforts and failing to fully target half of your email subscribers.
  2. Make sure your email arrives at the time that best suits the user (consider time zones and how an email notification for someone at midnight may hurt the way they view your brand).
  3. Personalise your emails, tailor them to each user by including their name and providing information or recommendations that are constructed for them based on past behaviors.

It’s Time to Get Savvy: 6 Essential Strategies for Small Businesses on LinkedIn

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LinkedIn stands apart from other social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook as it isn’t about showing off your personal life, it’s all about your professional life. LinkedIn allows users to network with other users, creating a gigantic web of connections across the entire platform for individuals and companies alike.

For individuals, this platform provides professional networking, connecting, and job searching. Alternatively, businesses can use the site for recruiting and more importantly, developing and strengthening their brand. That is, if they know how.

Often for small business, knowing how to navigate and stand out on social media platforms like LinkedIn can seem daunting, especially when they are unfamiliar to you. To steer you and your business in the right direction, we’ve come up with some of the best tips and tricks to help you wield the power of LinkedIn.

  1. Turn up the Professionalism

LinkedIn varies from most other social media platforms as it demands an air of sophistication and professionalism. This often means that small businesses must alter their usual brand content in some way to cater to the platform. This doesn’t mean you to have to turn away from your brand identity, it simply requires adopting a heightened formality in terms of language and sometimes imagery. Unfortunately, due to this fact, the convenience of auto-posting between social media platforms is strongly discouraged as the expectation and standard of content is entirely different on LinkedIn.

  1. Email Marketing

A strategy for small businesses looking to expand their clientele is to write a message to be sent to individuals that you connect with on the platform. This message should thank them for the networking opportunity and invite them to join you email marketing list through a direct link to the email signup. A feature of LinkedIn is that it lets users’ message 50 people at a time in this way which welcomes a huge amount potential business opportunity. Keep the message light, and professional.

  1. Posting Blogs or Articles

Many businesses have a website that features blog material. The benefit of this is that it enables a business to showcase their expertise and personality to possible customers. Posting some or all of this blog content to LinkedIn as well allows potential for greater exposure and display of your experience and knowledge as a business that will set you apart from competitors. This is particularly helpful if any of your content begins to gain some traction as LinkedIn will then highlight and boost the visibility of this content across the platform to relevant individuals. Obviously, this is a great tool in garnering awareness and interest in your brand.

 

  1. Employee Profiles

For small businesses, it is beneficial to have employees create profiles on LinkedIn. The reason for this is that it allows for greater exposure to your brand by creating more avenues to your company page (as long as your employees include their current occupation and company in their profile). Additionally, Forbesconducted a study that found out ‘“Employees are 70% more likely to engage with your company updates.” When your employees “like” and “share” status updates, they make them visible to their contacts.’ This domino effect can happen in various ways and shows how employees on LinkedIn can act as promotors. Another role of your employees is as brand ambassadors so ensure they have appropriate photos and a complete profile.

  1. LinkedIn Groups

Small business owners should join LinkedIn groups that are relevant to their target demographic. This is a great strategy to gain insights into audience pain points, needs and topics of interest that help in shaping and improving your marketing strategies. A perk of LinkedIn groups is that you can message members of the group that you may have built a relationship with even if you aren’t connected. The space itself may also provide the opportunity for general interaction in the form of your business giving advice in the group which builds your reputation and expands brand awareness. Overall, this feature is a great way of building relationships with potential future clients and getting your business name out there.

  1. Profile Summary

The ‘summary’ that features on your profile is vital in making an amazing impression on visitors to your page. You have 2000 characters to convey in an enticing way what exactly you do. Don’t worry about addressing the entire planet, you have a specific audience and they are the only ones who matter. Be succinct, be exciting, be personable and be unafraid to boast a little bit… be confident, not arrogant. It’s hard to know if you have got your summary right but just try to think of it as a first date, the reader is wanting to connect with you and this is your opportunity to put your best foot forward, show off your assets and try to get a second date.

Here are some examples to get you started.