Search Results for: marketing strategy

The Do’s and Don’ts of Email Marketing

Posted on By Abhijit Wadpalliwar

The first marketing email was sent in 1978, resulted in $13 million in sales, and kicked off what has become one of the most highly used marketing channels even to this day.  Email today is revolutionizing business!  Gone are the days when it was simply a medium of formal and informal correspondence. With the advancement of technology and opportunities businesses today are also embracing email marketing as  a powerful tool to build an owned audience that gets results. Must Read: Best Practices and Examples for Call to Action in Cold Emails Email Marketing Effectiveness An article published by Hubspot compiles, There are 3.8 billion email users worldwide, so if you’re looking for a way to reach your customers, email is the perfect place to find them. On average, email generates $38 for every dollar spent, which is a 3,800% return on investment. Two-thirds of customers have made a purchase as a direct result of an email marketing message. When it comes to customer acquisition, email is 40X more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined. These are a few handpicked statistics out of many to indicate the effectiveness of email marketing and why it should be your best marketing friend.  If your company or business isn’t employing email marketing, should they? The answer is yes, as email is consistently quoted as one of, if not the marketing medium that supplies the highest ROI. Those who are unfamiliar with this channel of marketing may not instantly understand why it is so beloved amongst companies in a variety of industries – but here are 10 reasons why email marketing is regarded by countless marketers as the most effective marketing medium. It allows you to add a personal touch to your marketing with targeted and personalized content  Optimizes your time and budget Email is versatile and offers variety Builds credibility Better brand recognition Boosts sales Metrics to learn what works Strengthens the relationship with your customers Increases traffic to your website Now that you are convinced how emails can work as magic for your business, let’s explore how you can out-do your email marketing goals before hitting send.  Drafting The Perfect Mail The dos and don’t of email marketing.  Do: Create a great subject line First impressions are everything! The body of your email may be charming, well-written, and highly informative, but it is of no value if people aren’t opening it, to begin with. Designing a succinct, eye-catching subject line — one that gives users sufficient information to understand why opening the email will be valuable to them — is vital for drawing in readers and site visitors. It’s equally important to keep your copy concise and fascinating. Double-check every element of your email body.  Don’t: Draft lengthy mails Emails are not for leisure reading. Be mindful of your users time. A statistics published by Hubspot, states ‘Data suggests the ideal length of an email is between 50 and 125 words. Emails this length had a response rate above 50%. A similar study found emails with approximately 20 lines of text, or about 200 words, had the highest clickthrough rates. When in doubt, keep emails short and under 200 words.” Do: Grow your email list the apt way Use a sign-up form that requires subscribers to opt-in to receive your emails. Well, it certainly takes longer but it also warrants you’re creating a high-quality list that’s willing to participate and engage. Quality leads are better than quantity leads!  Don’t: Buy an email list Buying an email list may seem like a quick and easy-win but it only hurts your business and reputation in the long run. How? There’s no guarantee the names in your list are actually going to be interested in your product/services. Qualified leads (Sales qualified or marketing qualified) from a purchased list are unlikely to convert into a potential customer considering they have no prior connection to your brand/business and god forbid if they mark your mail as SPAM. No good business relationship has ever begun with “How did you get my information?” Checkout How to Boost Engagement with Email Personalization in Your ABM Strategy Do: Keep your business on their mind Shoot a  welcome email instantly after your user(s) subscribes. Since your latest prospect has just discovered you and revealed their desire to accept your emails, stoke their excitement by sending an appreciative welcome email. They love it, you value them for their decisions! Don’t: Make new subscribers wait to hear from you Waiting too long to reach out to your users could result in subscribers forgetting about you. Worst case scenario—they’ll find one of your competitors and sign-up to their list. Do: Segment your list Segmenting your list is an excellent way of ensuring that you only send relevant information to each of your subscribers. This way they’ll always look forward to receiving and opening your emails. Don’t: Send the same email to everyone Never shoot the same email to all subscribers on your email list. Sending irrelevant information makes you look like you don’t care about your customers’ needs. Do: Create Targeted and Personalized Content Research shows that personalization and customization increase your emails’ chances of being opened by 26%. Users now no longer acknowledge emails that don’t deliver content that is personalized for them. Research on your target audience and curate content accordingly.  Don’t: Send a generic email that doesn’t speak to anyone Generic emails do nothing but cripple your conversion rates. Your readers don’t want to be treated like just another email address by your business.  Do: Give your emails the best chance at being opened When it comes to email marketing, timing is everything. Especially if you have subscribers globally, ensure to send your emails based on your subscribers’ time zones.   You may think 10 AM is the best time to send an email, but if a good deal of your subscribers live in New York, they would prefer to receive emails at 7 AM. Doing so gives your emails a better chance of

Hack: Unlimited Demand Generation With Content Marketing

Posted on By Ameet Bhinganiya

According to Demand Generation Benchmark Survey 2018, 70% of marketers say their demand gen budgets will increase and 34% say their spending will grow by more than 20%. That surely points towards the importance of demand generation. And, we believe you can drive unlimited demand generation with content marketing if you do it the right way. But, how? Before we set out to discuss anything that you should be doing to drive unlimited demand generation with content marketing, we need to understand one fundamental concept about demand generation and content marketing.   Demand generation is a full funnel approach of many tactics and methods. Contrastingly, content marketing is a demand generation tool. Demand generation marketers use content marketing tactics to attract leads, nurture prospects, close deals and upsell existing customers. If you are driving (or want to drive) demand generation with content marketing, here are the top few tips for you   1. Story-Based Content: Create Content that Drives your Audience to Come Back for More Warning: This is not easy. This is not once written, its done for life strategy. If driving traffic to your website is a challenge for you, you are not alone. According to a Hubspot research, 61% of marketers say generating traffic and leads is their top challenge. Must Read: What Is Demand Generation Marketing and Why Is It Important? If you are looking to drive unlimited demand generation with content marketing, you have to start thinking about content in a different manner. If I were to give you an example, I would say – plan it like TV shows (for example, GOT) do – leaving people wanting to know what happened next and creating the required suspense. For starters, you have to think about the bigger picture and plan a story that has a strong hook. Then, you have to break into several small pieces of consumable content – which can be blog posts, downloadable, podcasts, videos etc.   Usually, you would have a content calendar which points out what to write on, what format each of those content will be in etc. For creating and maintaining the “want to read the next post”, you need to work on the complete story beforehand. Meaning, you need to know how the story goes, how many parts will it be, what type of format, how will you promote each of them, how will you close each of the content to generate curiosity and give a hint of the upcoming part etc. If you manage to pull off binge-worthy content, you will surely drive unlimited demand generation with content marketing. This naturally gets us to the next point Must Read: 7 B2B Content Marketing Tips You Should Start Using Today 2. Personalize all of this Content If you want to drive unlimited demand generation with content marketing, it is important that you know your audience in and out. How else can personalize content in a manner that resonates with your audience? And, for personalization, it is important to segment your audience based on various factors (for example, end use or pain point addressed). You can understand your audience from the data collected through the buyers’ cycle. Remember, the more personal the content, the more demand it would generate. Let’s take a simple example. Let’s say, your target audiences are small businesses and startups. So, you want to write a blog post on 3 basic rules for content marketing. Instead of this, you can write basic rules every small business should follow for effective content marketing. In this article, go deep into the problems usually faced by your audience in the process of content marketing and answer them.   Personalizing does not stop at blog posts. It also means – personalized and segmented email campaigns, social media campaigns etc. If you want to nurture leads, drive sales opportunities and ultimately increase revenue, you’re going to need highly engaging content.   Must Read: 7 Steps to Developing a Content Marketing Strategy The ability to segment email lists and individualize email campaign messaging is the most effective personalization tactics for 51% and 50% of marketing influencers respectively. (Ascend2, 2016) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)   3. How Else do you Want to Promote this Content? You have personalized content and worked on creating binge-worthy content. Now, what? Demand generation is all about putting forth your business in front of as many eyeballs as possible. That basically means – you cannot only publish content on your website and expect to drive demand generation with content marketing.   You need to have a strategy to push your content in front of as many people as possible. These can include sharing content on social media (Facebook groups, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest etc), utilizing SEO strategy, email newsletters, guest posting etc.   If you are confused, we highly recommend going with content syndication in the beginning. It’s hands down, the best way to put your content in front of your potential buyers. Content is here to stay. Customers self-educate themselves before they decide to buy anything and for them to decide, it is important that your demand generation and content marketing efforts are directed in the right path. After all, 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. (Demand Gen Report, 2016) The better you get at using content for revenue generation efforts, the more successful your organization will be at hitting the goals. What has been your experience in driving demand generation with content marketing? Share your thoughts below.

What Is Demand Generation Marketing and Why Is It Important?

Posted on By Ameet Bhinganiya

Trust me, this is not just another word that marketers can use to become a relevant marketer or a buzzword that is catchy and been tacked into inbound marketing. Then what is demand generation marketing exactly? Demand generation marketing has real meaning and as a marketer, it should be a part of not only your vocabulary but also your strategies. What is Demand Generation Marketing? To be explained in a nutshell, demand generation marketing includes all your marketing efforts for the sake of engaging and exciting your customers about your products and services. The demand generation strategies are meant to nurture important prospects for their entire lifetime from both sales and marketing sides by engaging them at different points on several channels. Demand generation is all about creating a buzz about your brand, product or service, re-engaging existing or previous customers, creating PR, reaching new markets and promoting new features. For example, when Apple launches a new product, they use demand generation in a very crisp way. They tell their existing customers on how the new product has upgraded features than the ones present in their current ones or how a new accessory perfectly fits their existing product. What is demand generation marketing in this example? It is all about creating a long term commitment made to the customer relationships all the while having a strategic mindset. Must Read: Demand Generation Etiquettes: 5 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Follow You must be thinking, now, that the demand generation marketing strategy seems a lot like inbound marketing, but let me tell you, they aren’t similar. They are more like cousins, related, but not directly, that work together to achieve your business goal. Inbound marketing is only a single part of demand generation. Why is it Important? Now that we are clear on what is demand generation marketing, let’s move on and see why it is important for your business. Let us take a real-life example here. Do you ever feel like all the efforts that you put at work always fall short on your expectations? Do you feel that the work just doesn’t align with a specific co-worker or a client? Demand generation is used to remove such misalignment that exists in your sales and marketing activities. Demand generation marketing is a fully integrated approach that helps align the efforts of your company with what your customers and prospects need or desire from you. It is not about spending your money but spending it most effectively. When you have a fully integrated and holistic approach that can be measurable, it will help your business to tune into what your prospects are doing at each stage of their buying journey. Analyzing that information – each marketing and sales action, each lead action, and such – gives a huge degree comprehension of the adequacy of your strategy efforts, certainty based improvement, and projection. It’s not really about focusing on or personas, yet rather what moves are being made by the prospect. The difference may appear to be unobtrusive, yet don’t belittle its capacity. Little shifts in context lead to immense changes in lead and generation income. The purchaser’s journey isn’t being cared for like it used to be. The client is presently responsible for the purchasing procedure, and demand generation guarantees that marketing efforts are solvent, important, and powerful. It’s a continuous procedure that interweaves with each phase of the purchaser’s journey. Making a perfect work of art, just to have it miss the mark regarding your desires, doesn’t help accomplish any of your objectives. Thus, it’s significant that you make sure to utilize demand generation strategies over each stage, in different ways, to make something that includes genuine worth. For a complete definition of what is demand generation marketing, it should be understood that it is “the umbrella of marketing programs that get customers amped up for your organization’s item and administrations.” It further separates the idea: demand generation programs “can enable your association to arrive at new markets, the advance new item includes, assemble purchaser buzz, produce PR, and reconnect existing customers.” Here are a few proposals to remember for your very own demand generation efforts. Must Read: B2B content ideas to boost demand generation Focus on Delivering Value Need to start commitment for your items and administrations? Give your audience the motivation to adore your organization. With regards to catching your crowd’s consideration, the advanced world is focused. It’s difficult to stand out from the jam-packed substance marketing space and construct a crowd of people of your own. Must Read: 9 Demand Generation Books Every Marketing Expert Should Read The most ideal approach to handle this test is to offer an incentive to your crowds directly off the bat. Give them instructive substance, free information, and free preliminaries: anything to help simplify their choice cycles and manufacture trust in your organization. Drawn in audience will make it simpler for you to assemble demand. Make information and trust your stage. Give Your Customers Space Need your audience to purchase all the more rapidly and abbreviate your sales cycle? Make a stride once again from your sales message. Ways to a B2B sale are frequently perplexing, with prospects making different strides and counseling various players until they’re prepared to purchase. In the B2B world, every one of these means and players inside them will have their arrangement of inquiries and demands. Your demand generation strategy ought to strengthen these associations for the whole deal: regardless of whether your crowds aren’t prepared to make a buy now, they may be in a year. Effective demand generation projects are light, benevolent, and engaging—not demanding and pushing people into a sale. Focus on 1:1 Relationship Your messaging efforts should construct relationships by setting up validity in the commercial center and speak legitimately to a persona’s specific pain point and the worth you offer to illuminate it. If anything else, for what reason should your audiences care? Demand generation is the way toward building relationships

6 Proven Marketing Strategies to Increase Sales

Posted on By Ameet Bhinganiya

Every business works on its marketing strategies to increase sales. The cycle of marketing and sales is always a never-ending loop. An effective marketing strategy effectively intercepts the channels that help conversion, ultimately making a positive impact on the bottom line.   The marketing process starts with the marketing team analyzing the market and the gaps as they exist in the current market, the pain points that need to be addressed, a clear definition of the target audience, new markets that have the potential, to be explored, additional revenue generation avenues, etc. Some of the strategies are age-old practices that are still carried on due to its successful conversion rate. It is therefore not surprising that some of the marketing strategies to increase sales are uniformly adopted by the marketing. The reason these strategies continue to hold the sway for the marketers is since these marketing strategies to increase sales still work. Must Read: Why is Email Marketing Automation Important? Here are the proven marketing strategies to increase sales. Know your Customers Though this is not a strategy as such, the efforts and research that goes into understanding your customers, before a strategy is formulated is the base on which any efficient strategy is built on. Here are some of the vital questions that must be asked to understand your customers. Is the service or the product offered needed? What is the market gap that this particular product or service aims to fill up? Who is the target audience? Who else exists in the market as your competitor? What USP positioning will help the business to stand out in the market? What should be the pricing of the service or product? Know your Market Generic targeting for services and products is the death knell for any business. Not every product or service can be targeted for everyone. Hence marketing strategies to increase sales must have this fundamental information in hand to chart an effective plan. Here is what needs to be asked and research: Give shape to your customer base i.e personify your customer base. Detail out what appeals to your customer base?   Make notes of what the competitors are all about? Be clear about the demography of the market that needs to be targeted. Let the psychographics of a market be defined in detail. Relationship Building If your marketing strategy in its aim to increase sales does not focus on relationship building, then you should revisit your strategy for a review. The saying that “A customer once gained should stay a customer forever” should be the guiding light in building relationships with your current customer base as well as in fostering prospects.   Does this mean that you have to personally call them sometimes? Not really. Neither would this be a feasible option or even executable. The best way out is to employ AI to send a greeting with an announcement of special discounts or offers for customers on their special day. Here you might doubt the reliability and applicability of connecting to businesses when it comes to the business to business segment. However, it is not difficult. The point of contact, any milestones, highly appreciated initiatives, and even business anniversaries and recognitions can be occasions when you can choose to connect with the businesses in a more personalized way. Must Read: The Importance of Business to Business Services Let your Content Talk With the world of online businesses flourishing, online selling and buying is a huge part of the transactions. A website is anyway a requisite for any business that wants to flourish in today’s market. So it would be beneficial for your business to let the content on your website convey what your business is all about. So how should the content be? While planning out the marketing strategies to increase the sale of your business, keep this point in mind. Give content its due. It could be audio, visual, written words, graphics or could be creative. Understand that content pushes for sales and engagement indirectly.           Point out the Need we have all witnessed how innovative services and products drive the market. But does one come up with these ideas? The answer lies in researching for gaps. Gaps here would mean a need that exists and which needs to be addressed yet no one has till now. For instance, consider a B2B lead generation service. The first lead generation was mobilized during the Roman times and it was all about word of mouth. This somewhat of crude lead generation activity and later on polished and given a more definite shape. Today it has become an industry worth millions. Hence while brainstorming on your marketing strategies to increase sales, keep innovation in mind. History of marketing bears witness to the fact too that many time needs have been created in the market by diverting slightly from an existing service or a product.   Must Read: How the lead generation for USA market differ from the rest of the world SEO Optimization Websites need to be SEO optimized for rankings. SEO refers to search engine optimization, which in turn ensures that your website pulls up on the first page of Google when any relevant search is made on Google search. Marketers sketching out marketing strategies to increase sales has to make room for search engine optimization of web pages. This is a crucial need as higher rankings mean more visibility, which translates into more website visits and therefore a higher chance of a conversion. Conclusion Marketing strategies to increase sales are the principal guidelines that the veins that makes a business draw its inspiration from. These strategies are also the driving force behind a sales team. The onus of a successful year in terms of the top and bottom line of business is often levied on the marketing strategies that were charted out initially. A good marketing strategy is, therefore, one that addresses the pain points, that the business needs to plug along with a progressive and

7 B2B Content Marketing Tips You Should Start Using Today

Posted on By Ameet Bhinganiya

In the past few years the role of B2B content marketing in brand as well as product promotions has grown tenfold. This marketing strategy has helped a lot of businesses to increase their visibility in front of their prospective audience and generate more quality leads in return. Moreover, it has been noticed that a B2B content marketing strategy is three times more effective than the traditional methods of outbound marketing when it comes to generating B2B leads. Also, the cost of content marketing is lesser by 62% as compared to other outbound marketing methods. However, you will not achieve success if you go on publishing blog posts or releasing videos on YouTube randomly. In order to grow your business you need to have a content marketing which is methodically planned and properly strategized. This is important especially in the B2B domain since it is highly competitive and more than 90% of marketers have found this method helpful. Grow your business with the help of some of the best B2B content marketing methods that are discussed below. Must Read: 7 Steps to Developing a Content Marketing Strategy Determine Your Target Audience Even before you get started with content marketing you need to understand who your ideal audience is and whom you should target. You need to identify the content expectations and needs of your target audience for coming up with the right strategy. You can start by create a customer persona or a profile for your ideal audience. You will be able to develop a better and a more detailed client persona by collecting the data about them and their buying preferences. In case of B2B marketing you can create these personas for the companies or businesses that you want to target. These personas should be created for the people who are in charge of making the purchase decisions and not just MDs and CEOs. The key lies in the information. Set Clear B2B Content Marketing Campaign Goals A B2B content marketing strategy should serve a particular purpose like growing a website traffic, increasing the search engine rankings or improving customer engagement. You should set clear and precise goals for your content marketing campaigns as well as for your individual content pieces. You should usually set goals that are quantifiable, if possible. For example, your goal is to get 2000 new subscribers for your email newsletter in the next 6 months. Also, when you are setting a goal, make sure that they are realistic as well as effective for your marketing strategy. Explore Content Ideas With a target audience as well as goals in your mind, you can focus on researching effective content ideas for your B2B content marketing campaign. The research can be a simple method like looking up to your competitors and determining what they are doing or finding keywords for using them in your blogs. Blogging Isn’t Enough You should never place all your eggs in a single basket if you want to run a successful B2B content marketing campaign. You should be able to divide your efforts and go beyond blogging for your content marketing requirements. Although the B2B blogging is very effective, it is not the only solution. If you want to get the most out of your strategy you need to leverage B2B content marketing in ways that your competitors are not doing it instead of just publishing regular blogs. You need to continuously update your approach to B2B content marketing because it is an ever-evolving landscape. Even if blogging is a necessity, you need to build and add more value by providing your customers with other forms of content simultaneously. Personalize the Content Your customers will always appreciate your efforts of delivering a personalized experience, regardless of your business niche. No one wants to be kept in a general category, especially not your audience. They need to feel appreciated and special and personalizing your content is a way of delivering this feeling. This is why you need to focus your efforts in developing and sharing your personalized content with the customers and prospects. This will help you stand out from your competitors and develop a stronger relationship with your audience. Must Read: 6 Best Strategies for Targeted Lead Generation When you personalize the content properly you can come up with a content which is not only interesting but also addresses the problems of your customers, touches the pain points and solves them. You can move your B2B content marketing game ahead with the help of audience data for figuring out how to deliver personalized content. Cross Pollination When you are creating content, it is easy for you to lose focus on the ways to promote the content that you are working on. But there are a lot of tools ready at your disposal that you can use for leveraging to that end. There are also some options which we can use. The most crucial of which is guest post. Guest post articles are one of the most beneficial means for establishing your thought leadership and promoting your business brand. Cross pollination is required for your content to be placed in front of more prospects and establish your business authority. It also helps your business to create an online presence. One more option that you can use is the expert roundup posts. This is an amplified type of guest posting where a lot of industry experts give their opinions in a single post. You can ask them to talk about what your product offers or answer other industry questions. Track and Optimize the Metrics You cannot simply start or end your B2B content marketing efforts because it is a continuous procedure that requires high level of regular experimentation. This is why you should be alert about how your marketing efforts are paying off. You can understand your audience in a better way by defining the metrics and tracking them. This can help you to learn more about how your content pieces are performing. Once

9 Demand Generation Books Every Marketing Expert Should Read

Posted on By Ameet Bhinganiya

Demand generation is essential to any marketing campaign. According to Business2Community, 70% of marketers say their demand generation budgets will increase, and 34% say their spending will grow by more than 20% – which makes it important to understand the strategies. For this purpose, we have curated a list of books that are a must-read for demand generation marketers. They give you insights into many varied aspects of demand generation. So, let’s get started. Before writing this demand generation book, Carlos Hidalgo was the founder and CEO of VisumCx, marketing director and account manager at B2B firms. This book offers insights into: Mark Roberge is a senior lecturer at Harvard and former Chief Revenue Officer at Hubspot. This book is a goldmine because he shares lessons he learned guiding Hubspot from a small startup to a $100 million in revenue in seven years. Must Read: 5 Common Demand Generation Plan Problems to Avoid You will learn about Gary Vaynerchuk is a Belarusian American entrepreneur, author, speaker and internet personality who took his family business worth $3 million to more than $60 million. His book, #askgaryvee, is a New York Times bestseller. He is an internet marketing expert who had the foresight to beyond using the traditional methods of marketing and use social media tools (Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook) to reach an untapped audience that continues to grow. Robert Greene is an American author known for his book on power, strategy, and seduction. Must Read: B2B Demand Generation Strategies in 2024 While The Art of Seduction is not about marketing at all, it definitely is a demand generation book. The book examines social power through the lens of seduction and was an international bestseller. Mark Jeffery is the author of this demand generation book and founder and CEO at Aquimo. In this book, he tells you exactly why only 20% of the marketers actually succeed in their marketing efforts. Not only is this demand generation book described as ground breaking but it also named as the best book of 2011 by the American Marketing Association. If you are a marketer who is working with a tight budget and understand the relationship between marketing activities and revenue, it is a must-read for you. It helps you master various analytics techniques and maximize ROI without breaking your head over random data. Must Read: Quick Guide: Retain Customers with Demand Generation Strategies Ryan Holiday is the author of the book and a renowned growth hacker. Out of all the demand generation books listed here, this one is the shortest at 141 pages. A few topics that it covers are This demand generation book will tell you how marketing has evolved over the years, interactive tools you can use for measurement and real-world case studies. Jonah Beger, the author of this book, is a profession of marketing at the popular Wharton School of Business since 2007. Unlike the other demand generation books, Contagious isn’t a hardcore demand generation book. It deals with what compels a consumer and is being written with an academic perspective. According to him, it is not quality, price, and advertising which makes popular brands contagious it is the social influence and the word of mouth. It gives detailed insights to demand generation marketers into understanding social influence. Besides this, you will also understand the psychology of purchase triggers, how to use customer emotion and how to deliver brand stories that compel and provide practical value to your audience. Guy Kawasaki, the author of this book, is an extremely well-known marketing leader. He was formerly a Chief Evangelist at Apple, Kawasaki currently serves as Chief Evangelist at Canva and as a well-known keynote speaker. In this demand generation books, you will learn to create a multichannel strategy for long-term success (not platform specific strategies). Must Read: Demand Generation Using ABM You will learn ready to apply tips, how to catalog digital assets, grow a following and integrate social into their content marketing and messaging strategies. There you go. If you read these demand generation books, you will be surprised at the number of lightbulb moments you can have. So, why wait? Jump off, order a few and start reading. Is there any other book that can be added to the list? Do comment below and let us know. Must Read: Top 6 Demand Generation Strategies Which Work!

Why is Email Marketing Automation Important?

Posted on By Vikas Bhatt

Email marketing might be an old marketing method but it still continues to be one of the most effective channels for promoting your business today. Email marketing automation is simply an evolution of email marketing that has proven to make email campaigns a huge success in the past. While stand-alone campaigns and newsletters will continue to have their place in your email marketing strategies, the smarter companies are beginning to set up automated email campaigns that trigger off based on a user’s actions. The reason? Well, it’s simple. Automatic emails are personalized, relevant as well as hyper-relevant to your target readers. As a result, these emails are being clicked and opened more frequently thereby driving visits and revenue to your business. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well then keep reading. We are going to dive in deeper and explaining to you, in this article, the importance of email marketing automation and why you should use this in your own business for growing your revenue. Email Marketing Automation An automatic email campaign is set up just once, as opposed to one-off campaigns and newsletters that you create and send out to a list of people at once. This automatically sends emails to an individual when that particular person meets specific criteria. Must Read: 5 Common Demand Generation Plan Problems to Avoid For example, imagine that you work for Facebook and you need to send an email to someone who signs up for an account. This will be a welcome email from Facebook that will show them how to start adding friends, uploading pictures, updating status, etc. in order to get them to become a regular user. If you decide to manually create and send each and every email campaign to every person signing up on Facebook, it will be a huge waste of time. To get rid of this, you can set up an automated welcome email that will be sent to the person who signs up for Facebook. This is the beauty of email automation, you can set up an email just once and the email will be sent to the people who continue to meet the trigger that you have defined. You don’t even have to lift a finger to send these emails. It automates your marketing essentially for you. Grows Your Business Since automated emails are sent out on a basic action and trigger system, it limits the number of actions that you can do by your business and creativity needs. But if you plan out the campaign well, it can benefit you and can result in the growth of your business. You need to make slight alterations as and when required. Welcome New Subscribers As per a study, around 96% of the visitors on your website aren’t ready to buy, yet. But, these people have shown some interest in what you have to offer. They become perfect candidates for you to continuing conversing with them to try to get them to buy from you in the future. One of the best ways to do this is to urge them to subscribe to your email list. Since subscription to your email list requires a small conversion action than handing out the actual money to purchase from you. Therefore, such people are much likely to subscribe. Once they subscribe, you can use these automated email campaigns to welcome them to your email list and offer a special offer for all the subscribers which can compel them to make the purchase. Such kind of automatic welcome emails are easy to set up and can be done just in a few minutes. All you need to do is add an email subscription box to your website that adds the people to a list in the email marketing tool that you have chosen and then set up an email to be sent whenever a new persons join that particular list. Must Read: Quick Guide: Retain Customers with Demand Generation Strategies Increase Usage of Product A lot of online applications use some or the other kind of free trial period for getting on-board some potential customers to try your product and then ultimately become a customer that pays. However, before people think of transiting into a paying customer they are required to know the value of your product during the free trial period else they will not be willing to pay for it. Therefore to encourage people to progress through these conversion steps and realize the true value of your product, you need to use a series of automated emails that goes out to people who create an account. Nurture Your Leads According to a study, at least 50% of the leads that are generated by the companies are qualified (Marketing qualified or Sales qualified) but aren’t ready to make the purchase. The main challenge with this is the process of helping the leads to move ahead and purchase the product without wasting a lot of time on them. The solution? Using automatic lead nurturing emails can be of great help. If you are using a CRM software to manage your sales as well as leads, you can tag particular leads that require nurturing and then use tools like Zapier for integrating such quality leads with your email marketing automation system. From here you can send across a series of email marketing automation messages over the time that will educate your audience regarding the benefits of your products and how they can benefit from them. You are likely to have more and more things that are competing for your time and resources, which are already limited, as a marketer. However, of all the opportunities that are present with you for growing your business. Email marketing automation still remains as the most impactful strategy. Setting up automated emails can help you drive results without wasting a major chunk of your valuable time and resources over and over again. We, therefore, recommend that you take some time out and implement email marketing automation in your

What is Branded Content Marketing?

Posted on By Vikas Bhatt

Shout the word branded content marketing in a room full of content marketers if you want to make the things around you interesting. Branded content marketing has lived a life of complication through the 2015s and a lot of people have been left annoyed as well as confused about the term. What Do You Mean By Branded Content Marketing? A branded content marketing technique involves creation of content that is linked to a brand which allows the customers to connect with the brand. Let us take a closer look at the major definitions of branded content. The content is focused mainly on the brand values and not the products or the services of the brand. Though the format of the video spot can be adopted it focuses more on the invisible qualities of the brand. The goal of branded content is generating notoriety and conversation surrounding the brand. These contents try to affect the audience and start a conversation rather than looking for a direct conversion or sale. The main metrics for measuring the success of a branded content focuses on the number of mentions and notoriety of the brand. A branded content generate additional value for the customers. Marketers usually think that advertisements are the price which is to be paid for user to consume the content that interests them. However, branded content seems to change this reality around and develop content that the customers actually want to consume. This additional value generally comes in the shape of entertainment. It appeals to users emotions. Using emotions to convince users was a popular resource in the past and continues to do so even today. A branded content seeks to engage with the audience on a more intimate level rather than using rational arguments surrounding around a brand and why it is better than the competition. It uses storytelling. A representative story comes into play that the brand tell the user, with a main lead, the beginning, middle and climax of the story. Branded content is a flexible content that can be presented in various channels and formats, such as podcasts, video content, videogames, interactive formats, events, etc. You can also combine several formats to narrate the story of the brand. Similarly, there are a lot of different sources to diffuse it from social networks to applications and through the website of the brand. The content can be co-created. Brands collaborating with film directors, actors and other renowned professionals for creating one of the most outstanding content has become very common these days. The collaboration, however, doesn’t end there. You can possible resort to the users to tell their stories surrounding your brand and then get involved with engaging with the brand along with providing content. Must Read: 8 Super Effective Content Syndication Tools and Strategies For MarTech Experts But, What is Branded Content Marketing? The real question – What do you mean by marketing branded content? Some people might call it the practice of developing native advertisements. Think about the content pieces that you come across on the internet often, those are the examples of branded content marketing. Branded content marketing has some additional goals as compared to your regular advertisements. This method is not only about pushing a product on the users but also hoping to entertain or educate them in some way. The intended audience of a branded content is usually at a different level of the buyers journey. The audiences of a branded content differ from the users of traditional content marketing. Suppose an individual is looking for some help with a problem and happens to come across a branded content which might be an article sponsored on a website. The person might not necessarily know that the brand is question is the one that can solve their problems. However, in the case where an individual is going straight to the brands blog or website for a solution or he is checking the brands social media channels for help, is likely to be ahead in their buyer journey. When this occurs it means that the audience is already aware about a brands existence and has an inkling that the brand might be capable of helping them out. Should You Use Branded Content Marketing? There are lot of people who treat branded content marketing like it is the worst technique ever which might force you to ask if it is a good idea for your brand. Should you add paid media to your content marketing strategy by creating sponsored articles or blogs? In all honesty, having a native advertising or branded content marketing strategy as a part of your whole content marketing strategy can prove to be helpful. By using branded content you can connect with your customers at an early stage of your funnel or buyers journey. These buyers may not be ready to purchase your brand yet, but they are likely to keep you in their mind and come back to check your solutions as they move down in the funnel. Using branded content marketing in your content marketing strategy also helps you avoid betting all your money on a horse. When you utilize sponsored content or posts in your marketing strategy, you open one more distribution and promotion stream. You can take the benefit of the traffic that comes via a sponsored publication instead of depending on the traffic derived from your social media profiles or website. The marketing strategy is an effective answer to an overwhelming saturated market. Users these days are thronged with ads and information every time, in such number that they resort to use ad blockers. In such a case you should look for new ways to engage with your customers, affect them in creative methods and spread the values that they represent. Branded content is an ideal solution to such needs. Branded content marketing can be advantageous to brands and its products by making the intended audiences aware about your brand and conveying the solutions that you provide. Must

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