While analyzing the reports from our first round of email newsletters, my client instinctively knew where to focus on improving open rates and conversion results. Before I could begin to demonstrate my experience in this area, the client was already talking about the subject line and the newsletter content itself. The other part of our discussion concerned the mailing list – how it was gathered and the company’s relationship with the contacts on the list.

Noted in the previous paragraph are the three things on which you must focus for your email marketing to be successful.

• List
• Content
• Subject Line

We’ll offer a succinct overview of each email marketing success component. The technique I will mostly use here is to ask questions. The answer machine in your head will guide you toward improving your email marketing.

Who is on your list? Who should be on your list? Who should NOT be on your list? Are your contacts signing up or opting in from online and offline marketing and events? Is your sales team gathering prospect contact info with each conversation and at every networking event? Simply mentioning that you have an informative newsletter and would like to send a free copy will add willing new recipients to your list. Include as many prospects or potential referral partners on your list(s) as you and your team can gather in your prospecting work.

Your content must be excellent. Your target audience is mostly indifferent regarding how successful your email will be, so how can you reward them for opening the email and reading it? Promise them something in the subject line and deliver it the content. Ask a compelling question that exposes pain in your customer’s or prospect’s business. Deliver solid recommendations and solutions. Include research, strategy and tactics when possible – provide meat for carnivorous consumption. You may also want to veer off topic with something of general or human interest as your audience grows to know you.

The subject line must arrest and attract. A good subject line will make any inquisitive professional pause and read an email now or mark it for an edificationbreak when they have time. Examine your own behavior when it comes to scanning through your emails. Which sources do you consider authoritative? What in a subject line makes you pause from the delete button and think: “I better have a look at this one…”?

To close this article, thank you!  I’m extremely grateful that you took a few minutes with me today to read this blog post. I hope that you find value, even if just reminders, in the 3 success drivers of email marketing.

The post Email marketing success – 3 things you must do well appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Happy Thanksgiving!  Sounds a little hollow at this point doesn’t it?

I received quite a few Thanksgiving email greetings this year. I read every one of them and gave a mental kudos to the companies who took time to send me the message. I replied to a few of them and it felt good. So why didn’t I do it too?

The bad example I set for myself was one of priority and discipline. The reason you didn’t receive a Chuck Sink Link email in the last 29 days is because I was unusually busy with both business and family matters. One could say “priorities got in the way.” I won’t say that because you, my audience are among my highest priorities. You are the sole reason for the existence of my business which feeds my family and me. My obligation to meet your expectations for valuable marketing content on a regular basis is to be firm.

The good example I experienced this month was being proactively grateful. My gratitude list is long. Time after time I was reminded that “but for the grace of God, go I…” and that I have true riches in my life now. I’m not materially wealthy per se but I love my work and only by the goodwill of others do I have a dream job – one I created. Your patronage made that possible!

My positive lessons from this November were to pay attention to commitments and take seriously my highest priorities. Keep firm the foundation that will maintain the integrity of the business. And stay grateful for all I have!

So, while we still have one day left in November, the month of gratitude, please let me thank you again for reading my emails. I’m recommitted to delivering consistently valuable content to you every couple weeks. I always enjoy hearing from some of you in between so please drop a line or a note any time!

-Chuck

The post Always Maintain the Foundation appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

I have about 7 years of continuous email marketing experience – for myself and multiple clients. I believe I have enough experience having seen repeated cause-effect outcomes that I can add a bit of science to the study of email marketing.

First off, email is more effective today than ever. When I read about email becoming passé, I smile at the prognosticators who state something they think is bold and controversial (usually because they want it to be true). While no one can predict the future, I can tell you that email marketing is at an apex right now and it may keep growing. Perhaps its waning days are soon but I don’t see that. Why do you think every single “inbound marketing” call-to-action captures email addresses as tactic number one?

The first obstacle I hear businessmen – always men for some reason – put up against email marketing is “Everyone deletes it. I receive so much junk I never read through all the spam…” I say no way José!  These same businessmen always read my e-blasts and compliment me on them!  In most cases I’m talking with these guys because they responded to my e-blast and called me for an appointment!  Is there a disconnection here?  You and I read email all the time. That which grabs our attention in the subject line gets us to open it. We’ll begin our practical tips with subject lines – straight out of Email 101.

The Subject Line:  It appears in previews and notifications on devices. It pops up and you make a quick decision to delete, save for later, or open right away. Cause a delete and you’re dead in the water. Work hard on subject lines before you send.  Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and imagine a simple message that might make their day or solve a problem.  Be concise! Being “salesy” won’t work.  Being provocative can be a double edge sword.  Being relevant is the goal.

The List:  Unsolicited email is annoying like my businessmen friends will attest.  I’ll admit I’m not one of those who uses only strict opt-in & verification procedures. I have built my list organically through networking and association memberships. I add people to my list without their written verification all the time because I’m confident they will appreciate the content I send them.  I have their tacit permission with a business card or some previous correspondence – we have some kind of relationship and that is my personal standard for list building. My list is in extremely good standing having virtually no spam reports and a relatively low opt-out rate. There are numerous ways to legitimately capture email addresses. My method has worked well for me.

The Content:  You may want answers about content creation but instead you’re going to get questions. Finding the answers yourself will help you more.  Does your audience have the appetite for your content? Would you eat it up? Is there really something in it for them? Are you trying to inform, promote, sell, educate, enrich, educate or bloviate? Are you building a brand or offering daily-weekly discount specials?  Email can serve all of these different functions well.  Determine the purpose of your email program, then learn what your audience wants and deliver those messages to them.

The Frequency:  Here are a few easy to remember rules of thumb:  Don’t do daily (unless you do daily deals). Monthly is minimum. Weekly works!  Out of sight, out of mind. (If you are out of sight, you’re out of your mind!)

The Time of Day:  While an important consideration, there’s more flexibility in time of day with email than social media posting. Email has a longer shelf life. The recipient chooses when to open instead of a message getting lost in the news feed or timeline. Generally speaking for most B2B businesses, I recommend early morning Tuesday – Thursday.  Retail and consumer businesses need to consider the times their customers are most likely to be thinking about the product category. If your audience expects your eblasts on a regular time schedule, stay consistent.

The Tools:  Almost anyone with a computer can easily create attractive, professionally branded email campaigns. If your list size is under 2,000 you can do email marketing FREE! Yes, absolutely free of dollar cost. Your time is the only investment. If your list is over 2,000, the starting costs range from $30 to $50 per month for most services.  A few companies offer free accounts up to a volume limit. Constant Contact starts at $15/month and goes up.  Mailchimp, Emma, iContact and VerticalResponse are a few other options you can check out. Costs are based on list size, monthly volume of emails sent or a combination of those factors. Mailchimp allows up to 12,000 sent emails per month free as long as the total list size doesn’t exceed 2,000. That’s an amazing value!

The post Email Marketing is a Privilege appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Marketing Automation is for Small and Medium Businesses!

By Casey Cheshire

My first experience with Marketing Automation came when I assumed responsibility for the Marketing program at a small consulting and training company. There were several major problems to address.

To start, there were no inbound marketing initiatives to drive people to the website. Once there, a Newsletter Signup and Contact Us page were the only ways in which prospect information was captured. Those two types of gateways are extremes – people were either vaguely interested in keeping in the loop or being contacted right away. The majority of the visitors, who fell in between those two types, weren’t being converted.

Further into the Sales & Marketing process, four Account Executives had almost entirely shifted to prospecting work instead of making sales as the quality of daily incoming leads was always in question. No wonder they were frustrated! The bulk of these “leads” were simply people subscribing to a newsletter and not yet ready to buy.

Does this sound bleak (and familiar)? The good news is that we solved all these issues in about three months with Marketing Automation. Several new product solutions in this space had recently appeared on the scene and made the automation tools, once reserved for stock ticker brands, available for SMBs (small to medium sized businesses).

There are several areas where Marketing Automation can provide 10 times the value of its cost to implement (roughly $1,000/month in my case).

Capture – After taking the time to target search phrases on Google, demographics on LinkedIn, and a multitude of other channels, it’s very important to have optimized landing pages to capture those leads. In many cases, you pay for the visitor’s click regardless of them actually completing a form.

Marketing Automation had me hooked at “forms creation.” Some key features include ease of creation with & without HTML, customized fields, and lots of different automatic options after completion. But the most fantastic of all is progressive profiling; the ability to have smart forms that can pre-populate or remove a field if the answer is already known. Taking it a step further, you can ask additional questions that will help your lead make an informed decision.

Conversion (and reconversion) rates skyrocket with smart forms and the ability to progressively profile your leads moves them through the marketing funnel at a much faster rate.

Nurture – Gone are the days of monthly newsletters for prospects. In addition to taking gobs of time to produce frequently, they leave you in a news reporter challenge: “What should we write about now?” Chances are you’ve probably already addressed key questions your future customers were asking in articles from last year’s October issue. Repurpose your content!

With Marketing Automation, I transformed my news desk back into a marketing desk with a series of nurture email campaigns. Often called “drip nurtures,” these campaigns were specific to the industry of my customers and delivered critical content to prospects on a biweekly basis. From engaging demo videos to helpful case studies, prospects were offered a strategic series of our best content designed to aid them and also aid our sales process! Even better, the emails were all personalized in name, email, and signature from the individually assigned Account Executive.

Score – Lead scoring is a hot topic because there are now low cost options available to B2B businesses from large to small. The concept is relatively straightforward: Give your Sales Team the most qualified and active leads possible! Lead scoring is the mechanism to reward demographics & behavior with points or letter grades which can then be classified and prioritized.

Contrary to popular belief, lead scoring models don’t need to be complex. If you build in too many options at the start, you may find that too many or too few prospects make it through. It’s best to start with a few key engagement areas- like form completions and adjust over time. It’s also not a bad idea to separate a lead’s demographic grade (Decision Maker in the Right Industry) from their individual activity score (Visited the entire site over a period of 3 days.). Doing this allows you to focus on the best leads and avoid spending your sales calls on students doing research.

In conclusion, Marketing Automation is no longer the future, it’s “the now.” Simple emailing platforms will be replaced over the next several years by more the complete Marketing Automation packages. Businesses that adopt this new technology will see faster growth from a multitude of automated, personalized, customer touches. These automations will enable Marketing to get back to marketing and Sales to close more deals.

There are several major players in the space and a few to avoid. Which solution is right for you? It’s a question I answer often and would be happy to assist readers of the Chuck Sink Link in answering at no charge.

Casey Cheshire is an online marketing consultant and marketing manager for a global software form. Feel free to contact Casey at: caseychesh@gmail.com  On the web: www.caseycheshire.com

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