Author Archives: Mike Gingerich

About Mike Gingerich

Author: Mike Gingerich, President of web firm Digital Hill, Co-Founder of TabSite . Digital and Social Media Marketer, Speaker, and Business Consultant. Part geek, part marketer, total digital junkie! Seeking to add value, make the complex simple, and leave a positive impact. Follow me on twitter: @mike_gingerich.

How to Improve Your Email Open Rate

How to Improve Your Email Open Rate

According to eMarketer, almost 237 million Americans will use email in 2017. This represents a significant portion of the online population.  People read email! Getting your message out isn’t hard, it’s just a matter of presenting it professionally and hitting send. The tough piece is convincing your customers to open your latest message.

The bottom line is the subject line

It all starts with the subject line. Enticing readers to open your email is your first duty. Because of that, the subject line needs to be something more than what you can dash off at the last moment. I have had emails where I’ve spent more time crafting the perfect subject line than I spent writing the email.

If the subject doesn’t grab them, they won’t read it!  Personalize your email subject lines, most ESP (email service providers) allow you to do this easily.

If your email contains an offer, tell your audience about it, so your recipients know what’s inside the email waiting for them.  Keep it concise, active, and inviting.

The perfect send time

Timing your email send perfectly can lead to greater open rates. Email marketers agree that mid-week (Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday) emails are most successful for B2B businesses. If you’re B2C, your delivery window widens by Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I like to send emails early in the morning, so they’re in the inbox when it’s first opened in the am. Or around lunch, people ease back into work by checking their emails. Because they’re full and satisfied, they’re more likely to be patient enough to read the mail rather than deleting it for lack of time to read it.

If your email is promoting an event with specific timing, send the email a couple of weeks before and again a couple of days before the event.

Valuable email content

Give your customers something of value in every email. Even if it’s just tips and tricks on how to do something. When you offer value, you’re less likely to end up in the spam folder.

It’s a good idea to segment your list right out of the gate. Group your readers by products they’ve purchased, where their IP address is located, or special interests. Your ESP will now their location from their IP address.

Add several email subscription forms to your list with free downloads and segment as to the download they choose or page they subscribe on.

Here are a few of the most common data sets you may want to segment by:

  • Time they have been on your mailing list
  • What they’ve purchased from you
  • Date of the last purchase from your company
  • Last interaction

Drilling down with that information can lead to more effective and directed email campaigns.

Where do your readers view their email?

Take your email recipients’ lifestyle into account as well. A full 64% of decision-makers read their emails via their smartphone. (Want to know what your readers are viewing on and you use MailChimp? Learn how here.) If your email isn’t formatted to be easily read on a mobile screen, you may receive fewer click-throughs and find your open rate decreasing over time.

If you make these changes and don’t see an immediate turnaround in a declining open rate, don’t get discouraged. There is an art to strategic email marketing. When you pay attention to what’s going on with your email recipients, you’ll become better tuned to what works best for your business.

Get the Maximum ROI From Your Email List

Get the Maximum ROI From Your Email List

Email marketing has the potential to, directly and indirectly, improve your revenue and growth rate. However, you may not be getting the maximum ROI out of your efforts. Use these suggestions to optimize your strategy, find new ways to grow email lists, improve conversions and increase your brand awareness.

Improve Your Sign-Up Form

Don’t skimp on your user experience. Put yourself in their shoes and go through the sign-up process. Is it clear what information the visitor needs to provide? Eliminate any ambiguity and find technical issues with your email subscription form before anyone uses it. Go short and simple!  Name and email are key and use a pop-up form to get more visibility.

Email Marketing Automation

Manually emailing your list might work when you have a few dozen people, but not when you have hundreds or thousands. Automate your workflow and scale your efforts no matter how many subscribers you have. Drip campaigns, transactional emails, and other triggered events can happen immediately upon subscription.

Give Subscribers a Signup Incentive

Want to give visitors a compelling reason to give you their email address? Put a signup incentive in place. The exact form takes depends on your industry and audience, but discounts for e-commerce shops and ebooks for B2B companies are 2 examples of ways to encourage interested parties to add their name to your list.

Keep It Simple

How much information do you ask from subscribers? For a basic B2C mailing list, stick with a name and email. In general, eliminate as many fields as possible to overcome any signup resistance.

Use Segmentation

Don’t treat your email list like a one-size-fits-all entity. Align your email subscribers with your buyer personas, specific demographics, the form they filled out or other differentiating information. When you have a segmented list, you can customize the messages going out to these users. They get more relevant emails, and you get better opportunities for conversion.

Deliver Value

Are you giving subscribers emails that they look forward to reading? If they’re ignoring your messages or rolling their eyes and sighing whenever you land in their inbox, you’re not going to get much out of your email marketing efforts. Make sure the content you include is relevant, timely, and the value is clear to the subscriber. Ask yourself if you would be happy to receive this type of email in your own inbox.

What’s your key next step from the above to improve your email marketing ROI?

The Formula for Brilliant Email Subject Lines

The Formula for Brilliant Email Subject Lines

Anyone who’s used email has found themselves in this predicament. How to grab the attention of the email recipient, yet, not be wordy or salesy? If you don’t do well with the subject line, the email will get tossed in the electronic trash bin before it’s even opened!

Sometimes you get the feeling that you’re obsessing over it too much, but you’re right to feel the pressure. Approximately 35% of those surveyed by Convince & Convert admitted they decide whether to open an email based on the subject line alone. If that isn’t bad enough, 69% in the same study indicated they report email as spam based just on the feel they get from the subject line.

So let’s dive into some tips for brilliant email subject lines:

Get Personal in your Subject Line

If recipients are going to base their decision to open your email on the subject line, then you need to make an immediate impact. You need to go beyond just the simple second-person pronouns or incorporating their name into the subject line.

Geo-location can make an email subject line feel personalized. Seeing their community mentioned adds legitimacy and is a sure sign that what’s inside the email isn’t just some generic message.

Time For Some Action

Draw in your potential customer through action-oriented verbs. Just like any term paper you ever had to write, action verbs make the text more enticing and exciting to the reader. Using action verbs in your email subject lines is a no-brainer. You’ve got limited space to make an impact.

If possible, lead your subject line with the action verb, like “Dine with local sports hero.” Subject lines like that have an immediate significance.

Don’t Get Left Out

As humans, we have an inherent fear of being left out. Whether it’s not getting picked for the kickball team in 4th grade or missing out on that big party in college, we have a need to be included. Leverage that instinct in your readers by creating a sense of urgency in your subject lines.

Include phrases like “today only” or “24 hours left” urges your recipients to open the email immediately. Thus avoiding the ability to put off reading it until it’s forgotten. Scarcity can also increase click-throughs by giving the impression that there’s only a limited number of opportunities.

Make Your Point

Some companies, in an effort to convey as much of their message as possible in the subject line, go way overboard. While it’s true, you only have the subject line to hook them into opening the email. It’s also true that a subject line that’s too long is going to bore the potential customer.

Keep it snappy and to the point. You only have a small space, and try to communicate your message in 45 characters or less.

Know Your Audience

You can read any number of guides on how to craft the best emails. The one thing that can make your digital communication most effective is to learn what motivates your readers. Craft multiple emails with different subject line strategies, and then monitor which email is most effective. Running a simple A/B test can give you insight into what drives your customers.

Once you’ve found the sweet spot, run with it. By creating an impactful subject line, you’re creating future customers that will be on the lookout for your next email.

It all needs to fit together!  Capture leads on your website, then nurture those leads. Nurturing your leads requires getting the emails opened, which means writing good subject lines!  See how it all works together?

Create an Email Series for Lead Generation

Create an Email Series for Lead Generation

In the past, one tried-and-true marketing method always included email, which was sent to the most people possible, in case some of that huge audience would buy. This strategy isn’t very effective. The overwhelming majority of recipients had no interest and either deleted the email or unsubscribed.  It was a scattershot approach. In effect, shoot broad and hopefully hit something. Today a narrow or more targeted approach is needed and is possible.

The more focused approach is to send out a series of emails.  Sent your emails based on an event or trigger. A recipient will appreciate a personalized birthday note. Or a ‘thank you’ note when someone registers for a particular event or makes a purchase. The important element of this strategy is that the emails are focused and purposeful, rather than broad, generic, and hopeful.

How to optimize your campaign

  • Establish goals and objectives – This is essential for planning your campaign, and coordinating team effort to achieve the desired outcome. Decide what the email message should be, whether it’s a new promotion, a suggestion to buyers about similar products, a friendly greeting to a new subscriber, coupons or discounts on products, or an announcement about your event or activity.
  • Categorize your email lists – Don’t use the same list for every email. Not all recipients will be interested in every type of email. Thus categorize your email lists by interest type, geographic location, birthday month, purchased products, or follow-up. Categorization should occur at the moment a new subscriber signs up, so they are placed in the most relevant group. By mailing to specific groups of individuals, you’ll get a much better ROI on your automated emails.
  • Make effective use of email software – There are lots of automated email service providers. Therefore, you should use the one best suited to the strategies you use in your marketing efforts. All of them track the open rate of your emails, gather demographic information about recipients, and monitor link clicks. Many of these email software companies have free versions.

Planning your campaigns

  • Plan for the long term – Many recipients won’t respond to the initial email. Plan follow-up messages and schedule them at regular intervals to achieve the results you want. These will serve as reminders and reinforcements of your original message.
  • Prepare emails in advance – Write your emails ahead of time. They need to have a consistent tone and language. Your subject line should grab their attention. Hence, your email content should clearly communicate that only your products can solve their problem and make their life better.
  • Be persistent – Nurturing email leads is not a one-time deal. You’ll need multiple emails, and each one should be better than the last. Now you have more specific information about your recipients so you can zoom right in on their pain points. Don’t be afraid to tinker with the subject and the message to see what works best and gets you the responses you want.

That’s a wrap on improving your online sales through a more strategic email lead generation series.  Remember first capture, then segment, based on actions they take to give them relevant emails.  Email works, make it specific and personalized.

The Value of Video in Social Media to Drive Traffic to Website Lead Capture

The Value of Video in Social Media to Drive Traffic to Website Lead Capture
If you aren’t making use of video in your efforts to get more leads, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful tools available today. Using video in social media efforts is perfect for capturing the attention of your target audience.  In turn, funneling people into your company’s purchase cycle.

A great deal of research has made it clear that video is one of the most popular forms of content for capturing and maintaining user interest. Here are several ways you can make effective use of video to enhance your lead generation.

Landing pages

The ultimate purpose of a landing page is to convert a potential customer into an actual customer. Before you can even get anyone to the ‘potential’ stage, it’s necessary to get their attention. Consider these points about your landing page video:

  • Video is 12 times more likely to be viewed than text content is to be read.  The most effective way to use video on a landing page is in conjunction with a call to action (CTA), which you can strategically place near the end of the video.
  • The whole point of your CTA should be to engage the user in some action, such as downloading a guide or an e-book – anything that increases their commitment to your brand.
  • Don’t want to place the CTA directly in the video? Redirect viewers to another portion of the landing page or to a contact form. Place your request info and that will provide you with a lead.

High-value content

High-value content videos are educational or instructive in nature, like webinars which provide significant benefit to viewers. These videos have a powerful appeal, so it’s both convenient and worthwhile to include your lead capture mechanism in the video, as part of the presentation.

  • By having users fill out a contact or subscription form before viewing the presentation, you’ll capture the lead on the front side. The only drawback to this strategy is that viewers will need to be convinced of its value before they become interested in viewing.
  • Content on your website, or social media, can be used to alert users to the video. This effectiveness makes webinars one of the best methods for acquiring leads on the Internet, and it’s a strategy you should be using.

Demo videos

Some of the most popular kinds of videos are demo videos and product description videos. If used properly, these can generate an enormous amount of information about your target audience. You can use this data later for lead generation.

  • It’s not a good idea to make any lead capture attempt in the video itself. This is likely to put off viewers.
  • Videos can be used interactively to learn all about potential customers. (e.g.: types of technology they use, vendors they work with, and pain points.)
  • You can also include survey questions. These help to flesh out potential customer profiles so that follow-up contacts can be more focused and personalized.

The Bottom Line

Video is one of the most attention-getting and persuasive forms of media you can use for lead generation. Make sure to include it in your strategic marketing initiatives.

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How Mobile Internet Use Impacts Website Lead Capture

How Mobile Internet Use Impacts Website Lead Capture

As pretty much everyone knows, mobile devices have now become the most popular form of Internet access. That dominance is expected to increase in the future.

Since it has such an extraordinary impact on all aspects of online activity, it simply makes sense to adjust your lead capture strategies for the growing tide of mobile device users. That’s why so many businesses are taking steps to include mobile marketing initiatives in their overall strategy for lead capture.

Simpler calls to action

Simplify your call to action (CTA) form. Think of how it will look on a mobile device, especially in the limited space available on a smartphone. As long as you include the essentials, your CTA will be effective and visually appealing to a smartphone user.

  • All images used must display well on the small screen
  • Clickable text must be easy to click or use an image like a button to make clicking easy.
  • All text should be very clear about prompting the user to take a specific action.

Successive profile forms

If you try to crowd too many questions on a single screen, the most likely result will be an abandoned screen. Rather than loading up the screen with all the questions you want to be answered for a user profile, design a series of profile screens which ask all the questions. Put these in an easy-to-read format for smartphone users. Use self-filling forms for subsequent visits.

Think small screens with your content

Users access online information throughout the day on their mobile devices. Your content needs to be optimized for display on small screens, and this means you need to plan your content accordingly.

  • All content must be easy to read, in short paragraphs which incorporate bullet points.
  • Headlines should be used to precede paragraphs.
  • The most important material in your content should always be placed near the beginning, where it has the best chance of being seen and read.

Promote customer loyalty

Offer customer loyalty programs with discounts or other promotions which can be redeemed via mobile devices. Statistics show that retail stores using loyalty programs:

  • Almost always have a significant increase in dollar spent per sale.
  • An increase in the frequency of visits.
  • A significant return on investment when offering a loyalty program.

Use hyperlinked phone numbers

This is very simple to set up, and it takes advantage of mobile device usage – mobile users are ready to take action when they search. By giving them hyperlinked phone numbers, you make it easy to take action. The easier it is to take action, the more likely they will take it.

Consider starting a text campaign

Text messages have a very high read rate compared to most other marketing media. It’s one way you can take advantage of the power of mobile devices. For instance, by texting a simple keyword to a number which you provide, any user can be given the opportunity to opt-in for some reward, in exchange for providing their phone number or email address.

Lead capture is vital for website effectiveness.  Give Waftio a try to boost growing leads!

How Lead Capture fits within Social Media Lead Generation

How Lead Capture fits within Social Media Lead Generation

Many business owners believe that social media marketing is only about brand awareness or updates to let followers know what’s going on with the business. What they don’t realize is that social media has some serious lead generation power.

To get started generating leads, think about your opt-in freebie or lead magnet. This is something you create and offer to potential customers for free to get them to sign up for your email list. This can be anything from an ebook or white paper or video education series to a free consultation or a discount/free shipping.

Once you’ve decided how you’re going to lure potential customers onto your email list, you can set up your lead captures on social media.

Step 1: Landing Page

Your landing page should include a brief bit of information about the lead magnet, graphic, and a signup form. Plain, and simple. On a lead capture landing page, you don’t want to distract the customer from what they’re there to do: sign up for your email list. You can include a First Name field, but you should only have your Email field required to make signing up quick and easy.

Step 2: Facebook Ads

There are 2 types of Facebook ads you can use for lead generation. The first is the basic lead generation ad that gathers emails directly in Facebook. When your ad is finished running (or every week or so if you have your ad running continuously), go into your lead ads library to download the most recent signups and upload them to your own email marketing platform.

The other option is conversion tracking. You’ll set up a conversion tracking ad that leads to your landing page. You’ll need to insert a pixel on your website’s home page, your landing page, and your thank you page to track conversions.

When setting up your Facebook ads, create a caption that makes your targeted audience want what you’re giving them (in exchange for their email address).

Step 3: Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards are interactive tweets that give more info on a link, app, or video. Twitter also has a lead generation card for ads. To get access to the Twitter Cards, you’ll need to create an ad account and run an ad.

Create your lead generation Twitter Card in the same manner, you would create your Facebook ad. Twitter Cards also allow you to collect email addresses directly through Twitter, without the customer navigating to another website. The cool thing about Twitter Cards is that you can promote them, but you can also organically tweet out a lead generation Twitter Card. Pin it to the top of your Twitter profile to increase views. This is a great way to organically collect new leads.

Step 4: Promoted Pins

Design a Pinterest graphic that leads to your landing page. Create a Promoted Pin campaign with the traffic objective, so you pay for clickthroughs. If you don’t have graphic design skills, outsource this project. Pinterest relies heavily on visual aesthetics, so your pin graphic is important.

These are the top 3 ways to capture leads on social media. Want to move potential customers through your sales funnel? Try using these 3 lead capture methods.

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How Engaging Your Fans on Social Media Helps Grow Leads

How Engaging Your Fans on Social Media Helps Grow Leads

Training your sales people to go from good to fantastic is challenging. But there’s a large amount of readily available information regarding lead generation that can be helpful in growing new leads.

What if I told you that there’s a sales tool that can accomplish all this – and more? It doesn’t require a fancy company car; no expense account and business cards are useless. The cost is free (yes, free) and it works late at night, on the weekends, and even holidays. This invaluable sales tool is social media.

Some business owners view social media as a tool to use occasionally for marketing or, as an afterthought. When you engage with current customers through social media, gathering new leads is possible and has a fairly low entry cost.

Social Media Selling

With social media, you aren’t giving a sales pitch. The rules of engagement are unique, but necessary to follow if you want to effectively acquire new leads.

Make sure you focus on what your customers say. Don’t worry so much about what you want to say. During any social interaction, remember the following:

  • Avoid pushing your products or services
  • Do not focus on yourself
  • Don’t recite a sales pitch

You aren’t trying to “sell” on social media, you are just trying to communicate. What does Selling on Social Media Look Like?

You know someone is selling if the majority of their posts focus on a service or product they offer. Or, if they list all the benefits of choosing “them” over the competition. Other signs of social selling include:

  • Sharing employee details
  • Posting information or images of awards their product or service has received
  • Featuring a testimonial about the service they provided

This is all focused inward, on the company.

When someone thinks about who to follow on social media they usually (intentionally or unintentionally) think “what’s in it for me?” If you only rehash your selling points, they’re going to turn away.

Educate, Excite, Engage

These are the three “E’s” of social engagement.

You want to provide your customers with education. Tell them something they don’t know or help them make informed decisions about purchases they make down the road.

Make your posts exciting. Think local, think big, think different. Don’t post the same thing everyone else is. Let your customers know you care about more than just getting a sale.  Be a resource and a go-to value-adding source for the best information in your industry.

Once you have a prospect’s attention, you can engage them. Listen to their questions and concerns. It’s important they know you care about what they have to say and what they need.

The Bottom Line

Engaging your customers on social media means they’re waiting for what you have to say. They are also going to share this information with their friends on their social accounts. As a result, you can get new fans that will want to hear what you have to say. Social media offers powerful lead generation benefits. Use it to its full potential to increase your business sales.

Use MailChimp to Get More Leads from Your Website

 

Use MailChimp to Get More Leads from Your Website Ask any digital marketer about the key to online success, and they’ll tell you “the secret is in the list”.  Getting traffic to your website is the first step in the process, but turning them into customers is the tricky, important part.

The key is to capture an email address from visitors and use it to keep in touch until your prospect is ready to buy. A great way to keep in touch and in front of potential customers is a weekly email campaign.

MailChimp is a 3rd party email marketing software that lets you do just that.

What Is MailChimp?

MailChimp is a cloud-based email newsletter system that helps you to collect and store emails from your website, and design, send and measure email marketing campaigns. They are free for your first 2,000 email address and 12,000 sends, which means you can get started and try it out without spending a dime. They also have a paid version which has automation processes for drip campaigns.

Gathering Email Addresses

Use MailChimp to gather email addresses by adding  a newsletter subscription form to your site.  Create a free opt-in offer like a downloadable ebook. People “pay” for the free item by entering their email address.

MailChimp is tough on spam. MailChimp has your subscribers double opt-in to your list.This means they’ll sign up on your subscription form and they’ll receive an email with a link to click that confirms their subscription.

Adding an existing email list to MailChimp? The double opt-in doesn’t apply to email address added directly to MailChimp. But, if you haven’t sent an email in a while you may want your first one to confirm their desire to continue receiving your emails.

Create a Campaign

Once you have a list in MailChimp, create an email campaign, include news, deals or interesting articles and send to your customers and prospects. Make sure you include a clear call to action in your email, so your readers know what to do with the information you send.

For convenience, you can schedule more than 1 newsletter at a time. Or to automatically send your blog post to your readers via RSS feed without any effort on your part.

If you pay for your MailChimp account you can send an automatic drip campaign. This is a set number of emails you send for a specific purpose … to move readers through the sales process and convert them to buyers.

Measure Results

One of the best features of MailChimp is their reports and statistics. The detailed reporting features built into the system lets you measure your email open rate, and link clicks to name a few. It tells you if anyone reported you for spam (not good!) and how you are doing based on industry averages.

When you’re starting out with email marketing, MailChimp is an invaluable tool that helps you refine your message and delivery. I’d recommend you spend some time reviewing and analyzing each report you get and adjusting your email marketing plan accordingly!

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5 Ways Non-profits Can Grow Their Email List

5 Ways Non-profits Can Grow Their Email List

Time and again, it’s been proven that email lists are effective marketing tools. A targeted list can get people back on your website, share news, and grow your volunteer and donor base. It’s a way to stay in touch, stay top-of-mind, and build trust. If you’re still wondering how you can start building or grow a non-profit email list, read on!

We’ve got 5 simple, actionable steps you can take to grow your email list!

1. Put a Form on Every Web Page

Make it as simple as possible for people to sign up for your email list. Place your signup forms high on your page, above the fold if possible, and put one on every page. The goal is to make them as easy as possible to find because most visitors won’t search for them.  One great way to do this is with a pop-up box or widget, using a tool like Waftio.

2. Create a Great Offer

Sometimes, just receiving your newsletter is not enough of an incentive. If your subscriptions are falling, creating a free download to entice people to sign up can make all the difference. A report, short e-book or even a free learning series can encourage people to sign up. Figure out what that incentive is and use it!

3. Encourage Sharing

If you’re like most non-profits, you already have a network of volunteers and employees. Ask them to sign up for your newsletter, and share your emails with their network. There’s a reason why networking is such a powerful marketing tool. Even if you have a small group of followers now and each of them shares your message with 10 friends, you could reach hundreds or even thousands of people!

4. Market Your Newsletter Everywhere

Don’t stop at a subscription form on your website. Mention your newsletter on your email signature and letterhead. Share it on your social channels, and advertise it at real world events. The more you talk about your newsletter, the more subscriptions you’ll get.

5. Send Great Newsletters

The final step is also the most important: make sure that once you have all those email addresses, you use them wisely. Send out regular (but not super frequent), interesting and valuable newsletters that your list will look forward too. That will increase their engagement with your cause.

Your non-profit email list can be a great asset to your organization. If you don’t already make the most of it, we hope these tips will help you. And to help your non-profit be successful with lead generation we’re offering a discount on Waftio. Use the code 50offplans and you’ll receive 50% off either plan for 3 months.