How to Make Assembling Your eNewsletter a Cinch: A Lesson for K12 Communicators Posted on May 20, 2021May 20, 2021 by Jess Lunk While it might seem like creating and sending a weekly email newsletter is just one more item on an ever-lengthening to-do list, there are a lot of reasons to prioritize newsletters — and (fortunately) a lot of tricks and tools that can help you do it. If you’ve already been sending eNewsletters to students, parents, staff, and community members, then you’ve probably worked out at least some of the kinks regarding your email platform, your content, and the way that you manage your contact list. But if the labor of putting it all together each week feels like a total drag, there are a number of other ways that you can lighten your load and streamline the process. Here’s how to do it; with actionable tips you can start putting into practice today to make email newsletter creation a breeze. 1. Use Templates If you’re starting from scratch every time you send an email newsletter, then you’re wasting a lot of time. Pretty much all email platforms — including both automated and non-automated ones — come with a library of templates that allow you to insert your content each week instead of having to mess around with formatting. It’s a huge time saver, allows you to create high-quality and clean newsletters, and it’s a way to lend additional continuity to your messaging. 2. Have a Process for Gathering Content One of the most time-consuming parts of any eNewsletter creation process is sourcing the content that you’re going to use. This can be especially true for K12 school communicators, who may be aggregating information from various departments. A better option: set up a way for people to send content to you rather than having to reach out. For example, a special email address or a specific online form where teachers and faculty members can send information they think might be newsletter-worthy. This way, you won’t have to dig around, and you’ll be able to easily pull together the most relevant content. 3. Use a Tool to Check Grammar and Punctuation Take the guesswork out of editing by using Grammarly or a similar tool to easily weed out typos and grammatical mistakes. You’ll still need to do a once-over to ensure that their recommendations are a good fit, but you won’t have to give your content multiple read-throughs in order to feel confident that the copy is clean. Likewise, if you send a test of your email newsletter to a coworker prior to sending it to your subscribers (which we still recommend), they’ll be a whole lot less likely to send it back with multiple red line change requests. 4. Set up an Image Repository Setting up a simple Cloud drive where you can store images that you’ve previously used in newsletters and images that you might want to use in the future will up your eNewsletter game. Then, whenever you need to pull an image to go with your content, you’ll know exactly where to look. Important tip: make sure that you label each image instead of just relying on thumbnails. It might take a minute to get everything labeled from the outset, but it will make it much easier to search for what you need later on. 5. Sync with your SIS System to Keep Contacts Up-to-date Find yourself spending a lot of time manually updating contact lists? We feel you. As a more preferable alternative, sync your email platform with your SIS system so that contacts are updated automatically. That way, if a family leaves or joins the district, their information will be input on the backend — without the need for you to go in and do it yourself. 6. Use Tags and Automation to Keep Data Clean One of the trickiest parts of managing school email newsletter communications is dealing with all of the data. But things like contact list segmentation and monitoring open rates are key to ensuring that your emails are doing their job, so you can’t exactly skip out on them. To make it more simple, use a marketing automation platform to set up tags that allow you to easily segment contacts based on who needs to receive what information, as well as to allow you to see at a glance who’s engaging with your content. Even better, automate your data as much as possible so that you can see what’s going on with a single glance. The more of these tips that you can implement in your eNewsletter process, the more time you’ll free up for everything else that needs to get done. You might even discover that sending out a weekly email newsletter can be a stress-free and seamless experience, rather than something that you almost (or fully) dread having to do each week.
25 Articles On Everything You Need to Know About PPC and Online Ads Posted on May 19, 2021May 13, 2021 by Natalie Slyman When you run a small business, there’s a solid chance that digital marketing wasn’t initially one of your skill sets. But in today’s landscape, leading a business means you have to dip your toes in various strategies in order to be successful. So while you may be the CEO of your own company, you’re also the CMO, CTO, head of sales, HR, and customer service. PPC and online advertisements are a part of any well-rounded and high-performing marketing strategy. They’re crucial for top-of-the-funnel engagement, but that doesn’t mean they don’t come with a pretty steep learning curve. You could probably use a deep dive on digital marketing, but who has time for tons of courses? Instead, we thought you might appreciate a roundup of some resources aimed at PPC and managing online ads. See below for 25 of our best articles on the subject. Enjoy! 1. How to Tie Google Analytics into Your PPC Strategy Is your PPC strategy driving traffic to your website? Learn how to track the success of your PPC ad campaigns by tying them to your Google Analytics. 2. 6 Signs You Have a Great PPC Manager (And How to Gauge Their Results) You can’t do it all. If you’re delegating your PPC strategy to another team member, here’s how to track how well they’re doing. 3. 12 B.S. PPC Metrics That Are A Complete Waste Of Time (And What To Measure Instead) Don’t waste your time tracking BS metrics. We’ve outlined all the metrics you shouldn’t give the time of day. 4. How to Not Waste Money: An Introduction to PPC Advertising Part one of a three-part series focusing on making the most of your budget, so you don’t waste valuable ad dollars. 5. Introduction to PPC, Part 2: Converting Leads with Landing Pages Landing pages can be extremely effective, but there’s a lot to keep in mind when using them strategically. Part two of our three-part series focuses on how to use landing pages in your PPC campaigns. 6. Intro to PPC, Part 3: Measuring the ROI of PPC The final part of our three-part series is about measuring the return on your PPC ads. Buckle up; it’s a good one. 7. 7 Common Mistakes That Are Destroying Your PPC Ad Conversion Avoid the biggest ad mistakes by identifying them upfront. Here are seven we’ve seen other brands make that you’ll want to make sure you avoid. 8. The Importance of Analyzing Competitor PPC Strategies It’s always more important to focus on your own strategy, but there’s a lot you can glean from seeing what your competitors are doing. Here’s a step-by-step guide for analyzing competitor PPC strategies. 9. The Anatomy of a Perfect PPC Campaign Strategy Are you a perfectionist? Well, you don’t have to be to want to deploy a PPC strategy that’s too good to be true. In this blog post, we’ve dissected the perfect PPC campaign strategy. 10. 5 Ways To Make The Most Of PPC On A Small Business Budget A PPC strategy can be expensive, and not every small business has a large budget for ad spend. Here are some tips for making the most of your budget, no matter how small it may be. 11. 7 Questions To Ask Before Hiring Your Next PPC Firm Are you considering outsourcing your PPC strategy? If so, you’ll want to make sure you vet your options before making a selection. These seven questions will ensure you pick the right one. 12. The Pros and Cons of Search vs. Display Ad Campaigns There are different kinds of online advertising options out there, so it’s important to know what you’re dealing with. This blog post breaks down the benefits and pitfalls of using search ad campaigns against display ad campaigns. 13. Everything You Need to Know About Google’s Custom Intent Audiences It’s more beneficial for you to be advertising to people whose search intent aligns with what you’re selling, right? This blog post breaks down what Google’s customer intent audiences is all about so you can get the most out of your Google Display Network. 14. Online Advertising: When to Hedge Your Bets and When to Double Down Placing ads online is a gamble. Sometimes you see a big return while other times…nothing. Check out this blog post for some key insights into when you should take some risks and when to play it safe. 15. 4 Reasons Your Small Business Needs Paid Advertising No more putting off paid advertisements. Here’s why your small business can benefit from them now. 16. 3 Keys to Writing Killer Google AdWords Copy Even if you’re not a copywriter, that doesn’t mean you can’t write great ad copy. 17. Which Paid Ads are Best for Your Business or Agency Clients? As previously mentioned, there are a lot of different kinds of online ads out there. Here are some popular ones to consider for your business (or your clients’ businesses). 18. 8 Top-Quality Tools for Retargeting Ads Retargeting is a great way to convert a lead that was once considered “lost forever.” Here are some tools that will help you take advantage of lost leads. 19. Should You Try Google’s Responsive Search Ads? Here’s a quick dive into Google’s responsive search ads and why they’re great for advertisers. 20. 6 Easy Ways to Get Your Google Ads Rejected No one likes rejection. When you spend a lot of time and money putting an ad together, the last thing you want is for it to be denied and not posted. Make sure you avoid these six mistakes when putting together your online ads. We hope you find these articles helpful as you navigate the PPC waters. We know it can be a bit overwhelming, so feel free to peruse our blog for other resources to help you along the way. Good luck!
No Budget? No Problem. Here are Eight Marketing Tools That Are Totally Free. Posted on May 13, 2021May 7, 2021 by Jess Lunk We all know the adage, “you get what you pay for.” But when you’re a small team with a limited budget, you can’t always drop top dollar for a product that promises to live up to the price. The good news is that the quality of free offerings has improved dramatically over the past decade. The binary of “good but expensive” vs. “free but low-quality” has been replaced with a range of options for a range of budgets. A simple Google search will show you that there are tons of free trials and plans out there for you to consider. Gone are the days when your marketing budget held you back from utilizing tools that created efficiencies, provided analysis, and offered direction for a better strategy. With all these free options, it can be hard to spot the ones that are most beneficial. So, here are some of our favorites that we think you should check out. Canva Lately, it seems like every brand under the sun has clean, easy-on-the-eyes graphics to accompany their social media posts. Some of these brands utilize a designer or a team of designers to crank these visuals out. However, others are flexing their design skills by using various tools, like Canva. Canva is a user-friendly graphic design tool with an extensive free version, in addition to their more flexible pro version. With Canva, creating high-quality graphics no longer requires paying a designer or learning the ropes of complicated, expensive tools like InDesign and Photoshop. Canva is perfect for small teams looking to keep their budgets lean while still wanting to give their social campaigns, blog posts, or other marketing materials an edge. Pixabay It’s common knowledge that adding images to your content can improve audience engagement, but what if you can’t afford to build up a library of your own images or pay for a stock photo membership? That’s where Pixabay comes in. With over a million free images across various styles and subjects, you’re sure to find a great pic for your blog or newsletter. All you have to do is search for the image using certain key terms, and up pops tons of free images for you to choose from. Pixabay is a quick and easy photo resource when creating your own just isn’t an option. BenchmarkONE A CRM is essential for an effective marketing and sales strategy. It provides you with detailed information on your prospects so you can send them personalized outreach catered to their needs, easing them through the funnel and closer to a sale. Pair that with marketing automation, and you’re unstoppable. Marketing automation helps teams streamline their campaigns, target their qualified leads, track engagement with their content, and create efficiencies. Finding a solution that’s all-in-one is crucial, but finding one that’s free is almost too good to be true. Our free plan includes an intelligent CRM system that updates in real-time and humanizes contacts with profile photos, so you can put a face to every name and send them consistent nurture campaigns. Moz SEO may not be your thing, but you need to be mindful of how it affects your content and your site visibility. Luckily there are tools out there that can do the SEO heavy lifting for you, like Moz. Moz has been around for ages, but they’re keeping up with changes to the SEO scene. With their free Link Explorer, you can get up-to-the-minute metrics on any site, plus SEO and SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) analysis. Their Pro account offers further options, including advanced suggested keywords, but the free version is a great place to start. Medium Becoming a guest contributor and submitting content to websites that cater to your audience is a great marketing tactic. It gets your brand in front of a new, engaged audience and it earns you third-party credibility from high-quality sites. But, getting published on websites other than your own is no easy feat. Medium makes guest contributing easy. In recent years, it has become a favorite platform for journalists, bloggers, and publications to post compelling stories and engage with readers – but did you know it’s a great marketing tool as well? The free, user-friendly software makes it almost impossible to publish ‘ugly’ content, and Medium’s algorithm highlights the best content on the home page, getting it in front of more readers. Plus, if you can afford the $50 a year membership, they recently announced the option for custom domains. So, if it’s within your budget, you can link it directly to your website’s URL. Buffer As more and more consumers rely on social media for brand updates and insights, maintaining an active social presence has never been more important for businesses. However, with all the other items necessary to maintain a healthy brand, posting on social can often be the last thing you get to, if at all. Social media management doesn’t need to be a timesuck. In fact, most marketing teams schedule posts weeks in advance to free up their focus for other tasks. Buffer’s free account allows one person to schedule up to 10 posts across three social channels each month from their user-friendly dashboard, and if you need more users, posts, or channels, they offer that with paid upgrades. Tweetdeck If your social media strategy is heavily focused on Twitter, you might consider using Tweetdeck, which is Twitter’s free, built-in management dashboard. The vertical-column layout makes it easy to see all the conversations you’re engaging in via your Twitter handle, whether they’re replies in the feed, retweets, or direct messages. You can also follow hashtags without leaving your main view. For smaller teams that are managing a bunch of tasks and strategies, having a simple way to digest your Twitter behavior and interactions can make a huge difference. Marketing is like anything else: you get out what you put in. But that doesn’t have to mean buckets of money – time and energy count too. These free tools are a great place to start building and implementing your efficient marketing strategy without breaking the bank.
How to Make Your Agency Indispensable Posted on May 12, 2021May 7, 2021 by Katie Culp What makes a great marketing agency? The success of any agency is dependent on a lot of different factors, but there is one thing that rings true regardless of your unique objectives or best practices: in order to thrive, you need to make yourself indispensable to your clients. It’s never a good thing to lose a client. And if you lose multiple clients, you may find that your entire operation is in peril. Your best bet is to do everything in your power to ensure that your clients are satisfied, including — but not limited to — providing them with stellar results. The more indispensable you are to your clients, the more long-term success you’ll have. With that in mind, here are some tips for making it happen. 1. Hire the Best Talent Possible Marketing is a people-first type of business. While agencies may spend a lot of time wrapped up in numbers and analytics, human-to-human interactions are at the core of what you do, and it’s important that every single person who represents your agency is putting their best foot forward. When onboarding new talent, pay attention not just to their experience but to how they fit in with your agency’s culture, values, and overall mission. The stronger team you can build, the better your employees will work together — and the better work they’ll provide to your clients. 2. Put a lot of Effort into Your Branding It’s important that you don’t neglect your own branding efforts while you’re busy working on your clients’ brands. After all, your ability to push the limits in personal branding speaks a lot to your skills, and it’s one of the best ways to maintain ongoing authority in the industry. Make sure that you’re prioritizing your agency marketing and branding efforts on social media and your personal website, including ongoing content creation efforts and the pursuit of partnerships. In addition to showing your clients you’ve got your fingers on the pulse of branding best practices, this should help you pick up new clients too. 3. Perfect Your Process Indispensable marketing agencies never settle for “just okay.” From how you create and deliver work to your clients to the results that you net, it’s essential that you iron out as many kinks as possible to ensure that everything moves along seamlessly (or that it at least appears to from the outside). How you make this happen is up to you. You could survey your clients to see what they love about working with you (and what could use a little work). You can check in with your account team to see how your clients are doing and what about your process they’re responding well to. Whatever your strategy is, strive to ensure that the work you create yields the highest quality output for your clients and that you deliver it in a way that shows your work is high-quality, and your team is invaluable. 4. Incorporate Team-building and Professional Development Programs If you want to strengthen your business, you have to invest in programs that will strengthen your workforce. Encourage continued growth among your team members and bake it into your company structure to avoid stagnancy and complacency. One way to approach this: treat your agency like a school, providing plenty of professional development learning opportunities outside of on-the-job tasks. If you incentivize these types of activities and keep them light and fun, you should have no trouble getting your staff involved — and reduce employee turnover in the process. 5. Put Your Clients First, but Put Your Agency Second A lot of agencies put their clients first. There’s nothing wrong with that; however, along the way, they forget to pay attention to the inner workings of their own agency, including employee satisfaction and company culture. (And as we all know, happy employees equal happy clients.) If you want to thrive, then you need to dedicate time and effort to internal growth and success. Trust us, even though they aren’t involved in the day to day of your operations, your clients can tell the difference between an agency that’s running smoothly and an agency that’s running on fumes. 6. Have the Right Tools The world of marketing is constantly evolving, which means that your agency needs to be evolving too. Like it or not, the things that work well for your clients one year might not provide the same results the next year, and you have to constantly be adapting in order to keep meeting the mark on performance. Always be on the lookout for the latest marketing tools, features, and platforms. The tools you use, like marketing automation, social publishing, or content editing, not only benefit you, but they benefit your clients. The better the tools are that you use, the bigger the edge you’re able to offer your clients and the happier you’ll be able to keep them. Is Your Agency Indispensable? There are some common markers to indispensable agencies. These include the practices above, but they also go a step further. If you truly care about how your clients perform — not just because it keeps them around but because it speaks to your own integrity as an agency — then chances are high you have plenty of happy customers to boot. Always strive to do your best, and you can be confident that sustainable success will follow.
Five Marketing and Sales Pitfalls that Can Be Avoided with Marketing Automation Posted on May 6, 2021May 6, 2021 by Allie Wolff We’ve all been there: you notice that typo after the email to your boss has sent; you’re halfway through your data report when you realize there’s a question you wish you’d asked in the survey; you can’t figure out how to change the filter in your Zoom settings to make you not a cat when you’re in front of the panel. Well, luckily, most of us haven’t been that last guy. Still, human errors happen, and they happen more often when we’re overloaded with busy work. This is exactly why automation is a hugely important part of our daily lives – sales and marketing work is no exception. While a typo in a professional email can be embarrassing, it’s unlikely to cause a major dip in customer engagement or preclude you from achieving your revenue goals. On the other hand, missing out on important data and neglecting opportunities can wreak havoc on your bottom line. Here are five marketing and sales pitfalls you can avoid by using marketing automation: 1. Not Tracking and Using Website Data Detailed website tracking is key to understanding your customer base. By mapping their journey, you can see your organization through the consumer’s eyes – which means you can assess what’s working and what’s not based on the level of engagement. Marketing automation can pull these details for you. It’s not just about understanding for its own sake – customer empathy is a key driver of increased revenue. For example, the data an automation software provides can help you look for purchase patterns in the decisions customers are making, what triggers a purchase, and what turns them away, which allows you to adjust your marketing funnel to increase sales. In addition to purchase patterns, you can track other types of engagement to see what content is compelling to your consumers. Which pages are they gravitating towards? What value propositions are more or less likely to convince them to sign up for your newsletter? What content are they downloading, commenting on, or sharing? All of this information rounds out your vision of the consumer, which then informs the way you move forward in your marketing and sales strategies. It can help you prioritize which pages to put some ad spend behind so you can cast that wider net, get more new site visitors, and introduce them to your nurture strategy. 2. Not Knowing What Channels to Invest In One of the best features of marketing automation is that it enables your team to repurpose effective creative content across multiple channels from one consolidated dashboard. This widens your audience dramatically without the additional time and effort it would take to do so manually. A centralized automation dashboard can include newsletters and digital ads, and various other communication channels, depending on what your automation tool provides. And of course, the software can track engagement across these all channels and funnel that data into clear reporting so you can see where your messaging is most successful. 3. Sending Emails Without a Strategy Much like website data, tracking your marketing and sales outreach emails is essential to understanding what works and what doesn’t about the content you’re sending out. If you’re not gathering information about customer engagement and interaction, you’re basically sending messages out into the void and hoping something sticks. On the other hand, the more you understand about your email recipients and what piques their interest, the more able you are to replicate those kinds of messages – and, hopefully, replicate the results as well. Building an understanding is key to designing campaigns that nurture long-term relationships with your customers, which in turn is crucial to capturing repeat business. With your marketing automation tool, you’re able to access things like click-through rate, open rate, unsubscribes, and bounces. You can see how well your CTAs motivate clicks and downloads, and you can implement A/B testing to determine what kind of email copy is more successful. Tracking email and website engagement also enables you to personalize your campaigns according to the customer’s interests (this is even easier when you segment your leads, as described below). The more personalized an email is, the more likely it will be opened, read and engaged with – rather than batch-deleted like so many other marketing emails. 4. Not Segmenting Leads Gathering data isn’t the end of the tracking process – it’s the beginning of it. Once you have all the data in hand, you’ll need to use it to segment your leads into groups based on various qualifying factors. This will better enable your analysis, inform your next move, and allow you to come to better conclusions about your customers that you can use in later campaigns. Marketing automation uses tags to make segmenting easy and quick, with less chance of error than you or a team member did it manually. You can segment website data based on anything from the type of industry your customers are in to which page of your site converted them to a lead. You can use a scoring method to apply based on certain interactions and inactivity, like how long it’s been since there’s been a responsive touchpoint or since they’ve opened an email. This will help you determine which leads are closer to the decision-making process and which just aren’t ready to buy yet. This can be useful in email campaign strategy as well. Customers who show more engagement and actions on your site could be ready to set up a demo of your software or services. Or, those who aren’t opening your emails could be turned around with a re-engagement campaign. Your marketing automation tool enables you to send more personalized emails to customers based on their activity, keeping you a step ahead when it comes to creating more meaningful engagement. 5. Targeting the Wrong Audience The only thing worse than not targeting your audience well enough is wasting all your team’s time and energy targeting the wrong audience. When you try to sell cheese as chocolate, you fail twice: the chocolate lovers are furious, and the cheese lovers miss out on your product. This is where a small business CRM comes in handy. A CRM, which can be built into marketing automation, can help you track your customers and keep your data about them in one easy-to-access place. Do you see a pattern here? The better you know your customer, the easier it will be to target them as a broader audience. Your CRM can also provide you with details around who your ideal customer is. By tracking your relationships closely, you can see which customers have the best experience with your brand and which are not as ideal for your product. This can help shape your buyer personas and keep them in check when it comes time to determine if they’re still accurate. Making the Most of Marketing Automation Contrary to some persistent myths, marketing automation doesn’t replace human marketing professionals. You still need your strategists and creativity to develop and build out your campaigns. But automation takes busy work off your team members’ plates, which can help free them up to focus more of their time on the areas where they bring unique value. Without automation, you not only risk making foolish mistakes or missing out on a potential opportunity to garner more leads, but you make it harder for your team to really understand your customer base. Without a deep understanding of your consumers’ needs, it’s nearly impossible to design campaigns that will address their pain points. Consumer empathy is crucial to marketing and sales strategy, and data is crucial to informing the understanding that leads to that empathy. Luckily, marketing automation can help you gather and track data you didn’t even know you were missing out on – and then it can help you use that data to design campaigns that will boost engagement, increase sales, and nurture customer loyalty.
Which Should Your Small Business Prioritize? Blogging or Podcasting? Posted on May 4, 2021April 30, 2021 by Natalie Slyman Effectively marketing a business requires quite a bit of content. That being said, you don’t always have time to create the various kinds of content you should be creating. While diversifying your content strategy with as many different types of formats as you can handle is usually the way to go (more on that later), there are times when you might find yourself trying to decide which direction to pool your resources towards. Both blogs and podcasts are conversion-driven content methods that are worth your time and effort. On the blogging front, companies who produce blogs see an average of 67% more leads than companies who don’t. Meanwhile, the amount of monthly podcast listeners has grown 54% in just the past three years, suggesting a ton of potential for grabbing the ear of potential prospects. There are clearly big benefits to these content strategies, but how do you decide which is better to consider for your business? We’re breaking down the benefits and potential pitfalls of both, as well as why you probably want to consider tackling both for content marketing success. Blogging Blogging is a mainstay strategy. Most brands have been prioritizing blogging for years, while some have found it difficult to stick to an editorial calendar. If you find yourself wondering if blogging really is all it’s cracked up to be, it’s time to dive into the benefits as well as things to keep in mind. Benefits of Blogging 1. It can improve SEO Done right, blogging is awesome for SEO, which means higher rankings on search results pages and more traffic to your site (about 55% more, to be exact). However, there’s a method to this madness, so you have to make sure to prioritize SEO throughout the content creation process. 2. It can boost ROI In 2019, marketers who prioritized blogging saw a 13X higher ROI than those who didn’t. Why? Well, when you create blog content, you’re essentially fueling your email marketing. You’re providing leads with high-quality, informative articles that answer their questions and address their pain points. And when you do that, you’re building trust and shortening the lead cycle. 3. It can be more effective than ads Standalone ads have their place, but 70% of consumers say they’d rather learn about a company through articles than advertisements. Paid ads are great at grabbing the attention of new leads and catching them where they’re already engaged (social media platforms or other online sites that sell ad space). However, they don’t do much to educate leads on a need they have or a question they have answered. That’s where blogging comes in. Things to Keep in Mind About Blogging 1. Quality takes time Writing is hard work, and the average post takes nearly four hours to produce. You have to take into consideration all the stages of the content creation process: ideation, research, writing, editing, optimizing for SEO and adding the right backlinks, another round of edits, then distribution. 2. There’s steep competition It’s definitely possible to succeed with your blogs, but you’ll have a lot of competition in doing so. There are more than 600 million active blogs on the web, and if you’re late to the blogging game, your competitors probably already have you beat. 3. It’s not just about text The most effective blogs today contain images, statistics, and contributor quotes in addition to word copy. So while it’s great to create consistent written content, it’s crucial to also be incorporating visual content, data, and input from industry influencers into your blogging strategy. Podcasting Podcasting has exploded in the past couple of years. They’re a great way to get your brand in front of a new audience and engage in a new way. Unlike blogging, podcasting isn’t necessarily a pillar of any marketing plan, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t tons of value from having one. Benefits of Podcasting 1. It’s a growing medium Podcasting isn’t as popular as blogging with businesses, but with 37% of Americans listening to podcasts every month, there’s a big chance to make a mark. Getting involved with something while it’s still growing means you have more time to build a solid audience and tap into a less saturated market. 2. The format is optimal for education If you’re looking to share tons of insight, personal experience and become a thought leader in your space, podcasting is a great format to consider. This kind of agenda can be amplified through guest appearances or by hosting your own podcast. The former is also ideal for tapping into third-party credibility and a larger audience. 3. It’s “smart” tech-driven Tons of people now own smart speakers like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, both of which are ideal for podcast consumption. With podcasts being available on different platforms, it makes your brand more accessible to the masses. Things to Keep in Mind About Podcasting 1. It’s not quick This isn’t a quick-win type of deal. Podcasts take a lot of time to plan, produce, and edit, and it can also take time to gain a following. Like blogging, you need to have consistency, patience, and strategy to drive these efforts towards success. 2. It’s not CTA based You can certainly end your podcast with a verbal CTA or a promotion of some kind, but you’ll obviously miss out on having a clickable button. Instead of driving digital interaction, your podcast is more about engagement and brand awareness. So, if you’re hoping to use a podcast to promo a new product, that can certainly happen, but it may not be as impactful as you hope. 3. It’s not intuitive You’ll have a lot to learn before you can publish your first podcast — certainly more than you need to learn to create a blog post. It’s important to do your research and see what kind of tools you’ll need to ensure a clear, high-quality sound. This could mean renting out space and investing in expensive equipment. You’ll also want to make sure whatever network you join makes sense for your podcast focus and brand. Why Not Just Do Both? They may differ in format, but blogs and podcasts both share some of the same basic elements, including the need to hone in on your target audience and to create well-researched, original content. It may seem intimidating to get the ball rolling with just one, let alone both, but these elemental overlaps mean that a lot of the work is relatively the same — you can even turn your blog research into a podcast on the same topic and vice versa. Doing both blogging and podcasting also helps fill in the gaps that one or the other may leave behind. For example, you may have variations within your audience of who’s more likely to engage with one medium over the other (men, for instance, are slightly more tuned in to podcast listening than women). Ultimately it’s up to you to decide what you have the bandwidth for and what makes the most sense for your audience and your objectives. And thanks to the growth in digital marketing tools, it’s easier than you might be thinking to get started with either format — and no, you won’t need a degree in radio to begin publishing podcasts. Assess your marketing goals and your budget when determining where your resources should be funneled, and always keep a close eye on your data analytics to see how your various efforts are performing.
How to Make Your Brand’s Authenticity Shine Posted on April 29, 2021April 23, 2021 by Natalie Slyman Building trust is the foundation of every solid relationship between a company and its prospective customers. Today’s consumers want — and expect — authenticity out of the brands that they engage with. And if you can’t deliver, you’ll see it reflected in your sales. Brand authenticity refers to your ability to be open and honest with your audience, not just about your values and morals but also about the less attractive things like your missteps and your flaws. It’s about embracing who you are as a brand, a company, and a culture and building trust through transparency — instead of attempting to fake it through obfuscation. So how can you let your brand’s authenticity shine? Here are some ways to make true and lasting connections with your customers based on who you are and not just who you want them to think you are. Share Your Origin Story Before there was a product, a marketing strategy, and a sales quota, there was an idea. Your company’s origin story tells your customers where you started and where you’re headed. More so than just answering questions about the steps you took to get your brand off the ground, it helps explain the mission behind your product or service and what, at the end of the day, you’re striving to achieve. Circle back to your “About Us” page and look for ways to build authenticity into your story. It could mean reframing your origin story to center it around your brand’s values or including some of the mistakes and failures that you’ve overcome. It could also mean positioning yourself in the context of your industry, acknowledging the broader problems that you’re seeking to address. Your origin story isn’t the only place that you can put your brand’s authenticity front and center, but it definitely should be part of the process. Take Customers Behind the Scenes on Social One of the biggest social media tips is to think of social channels as windows into your brand’s soul. What you share and how you engage has real power to bolster your brand authenticity and endear you to your customers, and there’s a lot to be gained by using it to give your followers a peek into your company culture as well. Some of the various ways to bring brand authenticity to light on social include: Showing how you onboard clients and follow up with prospects Giving followers an inside look at your marketing process Showing what your CEO does to prepare for quarterly meetings None of this is glamorous, and it might not even incur tons of engagement. What it does successfully however, is make your followers privy to the inner workings of your company, even (and perhaps especially) the boring stuff. It shows them you have nothing to hide and that, at the end of the day, everything you do is done with your customers in mind. Build Brand Authenticity Into Your Content Your company values need to underlie every aspect of your content, from the topics and ideas you cover to your tone and your overall message. After all, if you’re not coming off as authentic in your content, you’re going to have a tough time convincing customers of that authenticity in other places. As a rule, you should be consistently creating content that highlights the expertise, morals, and methods of your team and your company. And similar to social media, you should be giving customers an insider look at how the wheels turn. There are lots of brands who do a good job at this. Here are a few examples: Dove Since their first Real Beauty campaign in 2004, Dove has managed to make their brand name synonymous with self-love and acceptance. And they’ve done such a good job of relaying this message in their marketing and ad content that their mission has become inherently intertwined with what it means to buy and use Dove products. Southwest Airlines Source Airlines aren’t in the business of putting customers first — you know this, the travel industry knows this, and Southwest knows this too (and they’re not afraid to talk about it). The company has done a great job marketing themselves as the nice guys of travel, building a message around not just what they do right (hello free checked bags) but how these policies are designed to combat the morally devoid practices of their competitors. Patagonia Patagonia has a clearly defined mission statement to cause no unnecessary harm to the environment with its products. From donating 1% of all sales to grassroots organizations to developing programs to reduce chemical use in their supply chain, Patagonia shows that they practice what they preach, in turn building a foundation of trust that gives consumers confidence in their purchase. Don’t be afraid to be you. Be authentic in your marketing and your practices, and show your customers what it really means to partner with your brand.
How to Manage Your K12 School Newsletter Contact List Posted on April 22, 2021April 21, 2021 by Jess Lunk School communicators juggle a lot of different jobs, and that often includes email marketer. Being tasked with managing emails and being an expert on email marketing are two different things. And for many school communicators, it’s difficult to get a handle on all of the ins and outs involved in the task. Expert or not, it doesn’t take very long to figure out that just writing an email and pressing “send” isn’t usually enough to guarantee high open rates. In order to get your email seen — and better yet, get the preferred action or response out of your audience — you need to make sure you’re reaching the right people with the right message through contact list management. Why Your Contact List Matters An email newsletter can only be effective if it reaches the right people. For school communicators, this may be students, parents, community members, or faculty, all of which represent distinct groups that often require specific, targeted information. List management is crucial within these groups, especially when it comes to ensuring that your emails actually end up in your subscribers’ inboxes. Bounces, dead-end addresses, and unintended recipients who mark your message as “spam” can all lead to difficulties with your outreach. That’s a big deal when so much of the information you’re sending out is time-sensitive and requires some sort of direct response from the reader. To make sure your emails reach the right people at the right time, you’ll need to regularly manage your contact list. And fortunately, we’ve got some easy tips to help you do it. How to Manage Your School’s Email Contact Lists You don’t have to be an email marketing expert in order to efficiently manage your contact list(s). Here are four things that any school communicator can (and should) do to keep their list as clean and accurate as possible. 1. Use an all-in-one marketing automation and CRM platform to keep track of your subscribers All of your contact list information should be centralized in one location. Ideally, that’s going to be your marketing automation and CRM platform, which doesn’t just store email addresses but also integrates them with other need-to-know contact information so that you can keep everything sorted in one place and easily access key contact data. If you’re managing your contact list from here, a lot of the hard work involved in the process will already be taken care of. It will also be easier to make large-scale updates and see at a glance what your lists look like. 2. Use tags and segmentation to send personalized emails Segmenting your audiences is important for ensuring that you get the right messages to the right groups at the right times. Your marketing automation platform will be integral to making this happen since it takes a lot of guesswork out of accurately organizing each contact into the right list. Also beneficial are tags, which can be used to further categorize each contact and what types of outreach they should be receiving. Both of these tactics will allow you to send more relevant, more personalized emails to designated contact groups—the result: enhanced effectiveness of your outreach efforts — and some serious time savings. 3. Sync your contacts with your SIS Out of the K12 communicators that we surveyed, 69.2 percent said they sync up with their SIS when adding new email recipients. By syncing your SIS with your marketing automation and CRM, you’re able to ensure all your contacts are updated. So, newly enrolled families, students who have withdrawn, or any other enrollment developments won’t be lost. How you do this will depend on the systems that you have in place. If you’re not sure where to start, contact your marketing automation provider for next steps for SIS integration. 4. Offer a simple sign-up process for new subscribers Make sure that everyone who wants to join your newsletter list can do so by offering ways for people to enroll in your email marketing right from your website. Landing pages and pop-up forms are two great ways to do this and will help you keep your list fresh — again without the need for manual input. Any sign-up form you include on your site can be linked to your marketing automation platform so that additions are tacked on automatically. You can even add in additional signifiers on the form so that new addresses are properly tagged and segmented from the outset. 5. Regularly clean your list It’s good practice for any email marketer to regularly go through their list to ensure there are no spammy email addresses, and the same applies to K12 communicators. If you continuously email spam accounts or accounts that are no longer active, you can hurt your deliverability, affecting your future ability to send emails. If you’re noticing a lack of engagement with your newsletters, first try various tactics to increase engagement, like A/B testing or sending your newsletter on different days. If you still don’t see an uptick in engagement after trying various tactics, examine the email accounts that aren’t engaging to determine if they should be removed from your list altogether. What all of these tips have in common is that they offer foolproof contact list management that doesn’t require a ton of oversight and action on your part. Get each tactic up and running, and you can spend less time managing your list and more time on all of the other things on your to-do list — no marketing degree required.
13 Ways to Improve Your Sales Outreach Emails Today Posted on April 21, 2021April 21, 2021 by Guest Author Do you ever get a sales outreach email so bland and generic, you can’t help but think, “there’s no way this email ever works”? Your sales process may be solid, but if you can’t capture your prospects’ attention via outreach emails, you could be leaving potential business on the table. Email is still one of the most preferred ways prospects like to be approached. In fact, 72 percent of business professionals prefer email communication for back-and-forth interactions. If your sales outreach emails keep missing the mark, consider a few of the 13 methods below for improving your email open rates and responses. 1. Target the Right Leads Great sales emails start with excellent prospecting, not purchasing mass email lists from agencies with iffy reputations. Start by creating your ideal customer profile. What does your existing customer base look like? What future customers would you like to start attracting? What are some value propositions for approaching these prospects? The sooner you figure out these customer profiles; the more authentic your sales outreach emails will come across. It’s also a good idea to cover your bases and do some extensive research on each prospect before reaching out. According to 43 percent of sales and marketing professionals, collecting enough data on leads is the biggest conversion barrier. 2. Avoid Bulk Sending Caps and Spam Filters Some email service providers (ESPs) include tracking links and pixels into your email, which can flag your email address as spam and hurt deliverability. If you’re looking to avoid spam filters, keep an eye on your sending caps. Some programs will flag emails if you send too many per hour or day. ESPs can also limit your sending amounts too. To keep your delivery rate healthy and avoid penalties, consider setting up a daily limit for new campaigns or use your ESP’s default limits. 3. Write an Intriguing Preview Message You already know subject lines affect open rates, but email recipients also look at preview text when deciding whether or not to open an email. Preview text is typically the first few lines in your email. See the image below for what preview text would look like in Gmail: The exact amount of text depends on the client, whether Apple Mail, Gmail, Outlook, or something else. But keep it between 40-75 characters for maximum readability. 4. Write Fewer Than 200 Words Great sales emails are much shorter than you probably think. Despite sales email templates that go on for multiple paragraphs, research shows the best length is 50-125 words. If you can get your idea down to even fewer words than that, go for it! To practice writing shorter emails, consider some of these tips: Use enough white space; this is the space in between paragraphs. Using white space effectively makes your writing look less cluttered and more appealing. Use visuals when necessary. Visuals like images or video are a great way to convey your message without actually using up your word count. Establish a beginning, middle, and end. When you take time to outline your emails, you’ll find that they’re more concise and to the point. 5. Personalize Your Emails The internet is full of sales email templates, and while they’re great for inspiring your copy, you shouldn’t use them word-for-word. Taking the time to write more personalized emails will do wonders for your response rate. Using custom variables is the standard way to approach personalization. You can pull these variables from your CRM database. This will allow you to insert the recipient’s name, company, role, and other pertinent data automatically. For even greater personalization, you can reference data from your marketing automation software. This data will show you what pages your prospects viewed most, which content they downloaded, and how they interact with your site. Aside from using tools to add personalization, take your own time to learn more about your prospects. For example, if the prospect you’re pitching to just had a recent promotion, reference that and congratulate them in the opening line. These small gestures will help your email stand out from the rest. 6. Add Value to Your Pitch Whether you’re sending the first cold email or your last follow-up message, lead with value. Focus on how your offering can benefit the prospect instead of talking about yourself. Can what you’re offering help the prospect: Deal with a pain point they’re facing? Improve their revenue this year? Help them cut wasted spending? Drive more traffic to their website? Make them look better to their boss? Let’s be honest, if there’s nothing in it for them, why would they care about your product or service you’re reaching them with? Determining a value proposition and personalizing it ahead of time will make outreach much more painstaking. 7. Reference Your Competitors You may think shedding light on your competitors is an odd move for a sales outreach email, but the reality is your prospects have likely already done their research, looked at ratings, and read user reviews ahead of time. In fact, 75 percent of B2B buyers said they research vendors and solutions far before buying. Software buyers today are more informed, so don’t shy away from mentioning your competitors if the moment arises. In fact, you should be prepared to mention how your product or service differentiates from your competitors. Have some client case studies and data readily available. 8. Improve Your Subject Line Your email outreach doesn’t matter if no one opens them, which is exactly why you need a strong email subject line. Below are a few quick tips for improving your email subject line: Use the person’s first name. Example: Hey John, do you have a minute? Ask a question. Example: Is this the right time to reach you? Create a curiosity gap. Example: 3 things {company} customers care about Start with a value proposition. Example: Your free report is attached here Keep it short and simple, especially for mobile-friendliness. Create a few different ideas and keep testing until you find a subject line that performs best. 9. Write a Strong Opening Line Once your prospect opens the email, they’ll decide in the first line whether or not to keep reading. And if you’re not using a separate preview message, your first line is even more important since it’ll affect your email open rate. Grab the prospect’s attention by focusing on what matters most to them. I recommend getting straight to the reason why you’re in the recipient’s inbox. Skip the formalities of “hope you and your team have been doing well!” This added text eats up your word count and detracts from your message. 10. Incorporate Engaging, Personalized Video Content Video is quickly becoming a top outreach tool in email. In fact, outreach emails that promoted YouTube or Vimeo content saw open rates of 25 percent and 39 percent, respectively, versus 19 percent for emails without video. Use the strategies you already know for great written emails, like focusing on pain points, needs, and how you can specifically help – and create video content for it. Below is a great example of how Genbook creates and incorporates personalized videos for its audience: If you don’t have the bandwidth for video, images are a great substitute. For example, if your business conducted a research report, you can attach videos of important charts and data that the recipient would find relevant to them. 11. Close With a Question A good salesperson knows that asking questions builds trust and more productive conversations. If you want better response rates for your outreach, you should ask open-ended questions that evoke a response. Some question examples include: What hesitations do you have about our product? What does {competitor’s} product do that ours can’t? Is there anything I can do today to get a “yes” from you? Asking open-ended questions is a great way to ensure you’re not letting prospects off the hook without getting more context. 12. Use Email Signatures the Right Way The email signature is an opportunity sales professionals shouldn’t miss out on. Use this space as an opportunity to include sharing recent press articles, webinar recordings, case studies, or even the company’s newest YouTube videos. In addition to adding content that’ll grab the recipient’s attention, you should have a virtual phone number in your email signature so a prospect can call you. Using a unified communications system, you’ll be able to receive calls on either your phone, mobile app, or desktop app – providing more flexibility for remote salespeople. 13. Run A/B Tests It’s hard to tell what’s working and what’s not if you don’t test and examine the data. There are various email elements you should be testing to determine what works. For the best open and response rates, test different versions of the copy to see which performs best. Try experimenting with the subject line, preview text, copy, and call to action. It’s a good idea only to test one variable at a time. As you go, you can refine and adjust based on the winning versions. Author Bio Meenakshi Nautiyal, aka Meenz, is a Growth Marketer for Nextiva. She’s passionate about everything SaaS, Startups, and SEO. She has a successful track record of 10+ years scaling organic traffic and inbound leads for startups like Freshworks, VWO, and Outreach.io. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.