Tag Archives: lead generation tactics

Do You Know How to Create an Email Marketing Offer?

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Don’t worry. If you don’t, we’ll get you on your way.  

Let’s start by leaving puffery aside. In all likelihood, your prospect’s inbox is filled with marketing emails. Don’t deny it; it’s a simple fact. This begs the question, how can you hope to stand out?

Well, begin with a killer design that incorporates acquisition email marketing best practices. Follow through with clever copy. And lace her up with a tantalizing offer.

We’ve discussed design and copy before, so let’s dive into email marketing offer creation. Here’s how we break it down.

Determine the Audience You’re Looking to Target

You should have a general idea of who your customer is already. What they look like, where they live, and how often they buy, etc. Understanding your audience is step one in the email marketing offer creation process. This information will help you decide the content of your actual offer, as well as who receives your offer.

If you only know bits and pieces about your audience, check out our Customer Insights feature. It allows you to upload an encrypted file of your customers’ email addresses in exchange for a free report detailing their demographic attributes. You can use these attributes to enhance the targeting of your email marketing offer.

Study what has worked in the past

If you’re in the email marketing game, you’ve sent out an offer before. Take a look at what worked in the past. Historical data is an excellent resource for guiding offer creation. Examine the areas that need improvement. Was it the subject-line? Maybe your CTA was poorly placed. Did you include a time-sensitive element to the copy? These areas can all affect the performance of your email marketing offer.

Personalize the email

We’ve written a lot about personalization in the past. We think it’s a great way to add a human element to your marketing. Acting like you know and remember a past customer is critical to making that customer feel valued. Personalization can take place in the subject-line, the body or CTA copy, and even in the design/images you choose. Just be sure to avoid overtly creepy personalization. That is a definite turnoff to potential new and repeat customers.

CTA Placement

The location, design, and clarity of your CTA are all critical to the success of your offer. Again, we’ve written about this in the past. But it merits a recap. Don’t place the CTA below the fold. Make sure the button or text you use is clearly visible. The copy should directly state what happens when that button or link is clicked.

Include a Bribe

This isn’t the same bribe that you read about in the news. It means the product, service, or information that the potential customer receives if they act on your email marketing offer. It could be a reduced price on a product, a whitepaper explaining the latest IT strategies, or some kind of industry report. Whatever you choose, ensure that it’s unique and something that the recipient will find valuable.

Landing Pages

Your CTA should always link to a landing page. It should never go to your homepage or to some other page on your site. Landing page design best practices are many and varied. But some general tips include keeping your form fields to the bare minimum to prevent form abandonment, and using images and copy that reinforce the original offer message.

Use Analytics

Analytics are one of the primary benefits of a digital channel like email. Use tracking cookies to gain real-time insight into your email marketing offer performance. Take a look at when conversions happen, and the type of customers that are doing the converting.

How many make it to your landing page and then abandon your offer. What were your open and click-through rates? How many of your emails actually made it to the recipients’ inboxes? Tracking and analyzing this data will give you valuable insight into the areas of your email marketing offer that you can improve with your next campaign.

The Finale

Ideally, you’re running several offers at once, testing and analyzing performance as you cruise along. This testing and measuring process is one of the better strategies for determining the offer that performs best for your product and target audience. It’s an overarching digital marketing principle that you should use every chance you get.

How do you create your email marketing offers? Are there any strategies or best practices that you use regularly? If so, please share them in the comments.

 

P.S. If you found this post helpful, please share it amongst your colleagues.

Context, Analytics, and Tactics Defined

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If you read enough marketing publications, you’d think it was all about tactics and analytics. Deploy a campaign through your channel(s) of choice, track performance, and refine based on the results. Sounds simple, right? The trouble, my fellow marketers, is the lack of context.

Context refers to the demographic and psychographic state of your potential customer. Physically, where are your potential customers when they receive and view your content and offer? What are they doing? What’s on their mind?

Answering these questions might seem like it requires enlisting the aid of Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce, but that’s not necessarily true.

RFM and AIDA are both lauded tools for determining a potential customer’s place in the buying cycle. Position in the buying cycle can shed some light into the context of the buyer. Other information like geolocation, marital status, income level, etc. can also help you create content that is contextually relevant to your potential customer.

Think about a newsletter that discusses the concerns of new parents. By understanding the context of their daily lives, it becomes easier to create content and offers that are relevant to those new parents. Hubspot has a great post about this topic. Check it out here.

The point is that tactics and analytics can only take you so far. If you remove, or neglect, the human element of marketing, you won’t see the performance you need. Context is that human element.

By understand the context in which your marketing is received and consumed, you’ll be better equipped to create engaging marketing that generates new customers and drives customer loyalty. Which is, at the end of the day, marketing’s ultimate objective.

I’ll leave you with a simple breakdown:

  • Tactics – the tools that get you where you want to go.
  • Analytics – the tools that tell you how far you’ve gone, and how long till you get there.
  • Context – the frame of reference that guides offer and content creation.

Do you factor customer context into your marketing strategy? If so, have you seen success?

P.S. If you found this post helpful, please leave a comment; we love hearing from our readers.

5 Ways You Can Use Business Blogging for Lead Generation

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With the latest update to Google’s search algorithm, business blogging takes on new importance. Frequently publishing quality content is now vital to a successful SEO strategy. But blogs are more than just a tool for getting found. Consider using business blogging for lead generation. Thinking like a marketer AND a publisher will help you get it right.

Great content. This is the foundation of your blog. Without remarkable content, no one is going to read a single word your write. And they’ll never come back to visit your blog either, which is no fun at all. So think like a publisher with an eye on a Pulitzer, and produce the best posts possible to cultivate a loyal readership.

Publish regularly. Nothing kills a blog readership faster than jumping in with a rigorous publishing schedule, and then folding under the demand. If you want people to continue to read your blog, you need to publish content regularly. Creating an editorial calendar is a relatively simple way to ensure that you always have a schedule and topics to fall back on.

Subscription link. If you’ve been regularly publishing great content, chances are you’ve got some readers that want to subscribe to your blog. Always include a way to subscribe to your RSS feed, or provide a simple email signup on your blog’s sidebar. You can also include links to subscribe to newsletters or other marketing communications right in the blog sidebar.

Repurpose blog posts. Don’t let the posts you so thoughtfully wrote go to waste. Repurpose that content to build newsletters, and/or share it through your social channels. Remind folks that they can easily stay up to date with your blog by subscribing.

Build a connection. You want to engage readers with your blog posts. Try speaking directly to your readers by writing in second person. You can also ask questions throughout your posts, or ask readers to leave comments. Always promptly address any comments your blog might generate. These tips ensure that your blog functions as the two way communication channel it’s meant to be.

How do you use business blogging for lead generation? Are there any tips or tactics you might add to this post? If so, please leave a comment.

 

P.S. If this post helped you with your approach to business blogging for lead generation, please share it with your colleagues. Thanks!