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Tag: email marketing

  • How to Build an Email List for Business? | Tools for Email List building in 2020

    Email marketing helps you not only to promote the brand or launch a new product but build a relationship with your customers and convert them into loyal customers. Email marketing is the primary method for promotion. But you need to find out how to create an email list. To collect emails for your business, you have to make some strategy. People are not going to come to you and give their email addresses themselves. Here are tips on how to build an email list and free email listing tools.

    Email list building is an important element of a successful marketing strategy regardless of type of business you operate. With this list, you can share your story, promote your business, and showcase your products. There are many ways you can build an email list. This post covers some ways you can get more email subscribers and email service tips to improve their experience which will motivate them to share your content with others and ultimately, generate leads for you.

    How to Build Your Email List
    Tools for Email List Building

    How to Build Your Email List

    1. Just Ask

    You can just ask people to subscribe to your newsletter. Most of the people who loved your content will subscribe to you. For this, you can share some of your best content. If they like the content, they will subscribe to your newsletter resulting into fast email list building for free.

    2. Make it Easier

    If you ask for more than the needed information, people are going to doubt you for sure. Furthermore, the super lazy people, like me, will just hit the back button immediately when they will see an email form with many fields. So, just ask for their emails and if needed, their opinion about the content.

    3. Exhibit in Trade Shows

    how to create an email list

    Exhibit your company in trade shows. Ask people personally to subscribe to your newsletter after telling them about your website. You can use a paper and pen, or get a tablet to let them directly subscribe to your newsletter online. In fact, 81% of people who attend trade shows are influential people of a company and have buying authority. If you have a B2B business, you can generate leads targeting those people with email marketing.

    4. Discount

    Everyone loves discounts! You can give free products or a discount on your products if someone subscribes to your newsletter. In this way, you can know who is your potential customer and who’s not. You can then advertise your products to the target customers. Make sure you organize the email list you made after providing the benefits.

    5. Facebook Ads

    Facebook is the biggest advertising platform after Google for targeted email lists. You can advertise your website on Facebook and ask people to subscribe to your newsletter. Moreover, you can add a CTA button on your professional Facebook profile.

    6. Guest Blog

    You can write a blog for some other website as a guest. Put the CTA of subscribing to your newsletter, in your details. Also, don’t forget to mention your website there in the article.

    7. Host Webinars

    The best thing about the webinar is that people have to sign up before entering it. So, you can collect many emails at once with the help of just one webinar.

    Provide “Forward to a friend” link at the end of your emails. Your customers are the best marketing team you can have. If your content is good enough, there high chances that they’ll forward it to their friends and colleagues.

    9. Categorize

    Categorize your email list according to people’s needs. You can then send them all different emails so that every subscriber gets what they want.

    10. A/B Testing

    A/B Testing is to check 2 different versions of anything to see which one is the best. A/B test different signup forms to know which will be the most optimised for your website. Analyze and decide what works best for your website.

    How to do A/B Testing to Increase your Sales | A/B Testing Guide
    Do you want more Click Through Rate (CTR)? Who doesn’t? Then you must know aboutA/B testing. A/B testing is a method for figuring out the best onlinepromotional and marketing strategies suitable for your business. A/B testinghelps you to make decisions like which image to include in the website, …
    StartupTalkyVidhi Punamiya

    11. Birthday Wishes

    Birthday is the most special day for anyone. Whenever we get an unexpected birthday wish, it becomes more special. So, send special birthday emails to your subscribers if you have their data. Don’t market any of your products in that email, it will have bad impression on people.

    12. Create a contest

    how to build an email list for free

    Many people love to participate in a competition and get rewarded for it. Taking advantage of this scenario you can organize a competition and ask them to subscribe to the newsletter. Winner will, of course, get some prize and you will be getting numbers of email subscribers to add on the email list.

    13. A signup form

    Popup signup forms still works very well. Add some discount vouchers or offers to lure people to fill the form out. This way good numbers of potential customers will be added on the list.

    20 Best Practices boosting the design of your Sign Up Form | Sign up form optimisation
    StartupTalky’s Sign up formA signup form let the user input the required dataand the website to collect and save it. It is a means to subscribe the user toyour email list. Sign up form is the most important part of a website. It isbecause of the fact that those who sign up for the website, are mo…
    StartupTalkyLakshya Singh

    Tools for Email Building

    Now, we have various ways to create an email list but the tools make everything easier. Hence here are few tools to build an email list for your business-

    Tinyletter

    If you are looking for how to grow your email list, Tinyletter is a tool which is used to write a quick email newsletter. It is a completely free tool and provide 5,000 free emails to its users.

    Emailoctopus

    It allows to send 1000 free email for a month and then charges minimal fees to send more emails. It uses Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) to send the emails. Emailoctopus also lets the creator choose the design, content, and statistics of the emails. It allows 62,000 emails per month to upto 2500 people.

    Benchmark Mail

    This app allows creating newsletters in dozens of languages, for the reader to read it everywhere they want. It comes with options like easy to edit, color-driven templates and drag-and-drop sections for the mails. It allows sending up to 7 emails a month to 2,000 people.

    Mailchimp

    It is one of the most popular email newsletter apps to create a newsletter. Its free plan includes landing page builder, form tool, marketing automation and A/B testing. It allows 6 mails per month to 2,000 subscribers.

    Revue

    Revue is an editorial newsletter tool for writers and publishers. Revue allows to create emails from curated content. It allows sending unlimited emails to 50 people.

    How to Write email for Awareness Stage (SaaS)?
    With customer [https://startuptalky.com/tag/customers/]retention in general,there are a few key ingredients you need for success: * A deep understanding of your customer * The ability to provide exceptional customer support * Loyalty rewards Now, these three ingredients aren’t the only thing y…
    StartupTalkyRishabh Rathi

    Conclusion

    The email list is a crucial part for any online business. You cannot just rely on paid advertisements for marketing. You need your channel to become a brand. But collecting emails and building an email list not as easy as it seems, neither its impossible. Furthermore, you might get an already built email list in exchange of some bucks from the black markets, but it will never worth it. The email list you build will be the people who will be already aware of your product, but the list you will buy will be just some random people who will blacklist your emails. Therefore, do your best in building a good email list and create good content for your audience.

    If you know more ways to gather emails, please share with us in the comment.

  • Best Web Marketing Strategy For Your Startup

    There’s never been a better time for a startup. While many people out there are saying that the market is saturated, there are too many “fakers,” and that you can’t make money online, several individuals are out here killing it every day.
    So, why is it that some people have no trouble making a ton of money online while many never make it out of the startup phase?

    It has to do with your marketing strategy. The problem with online business is that it’s so easy and accessible. Back when you wanted to start a brick and mortar business, there was a lengthy process to go through. The steps of applying for loans, permits, licenses, getting a building, and all that weeded out the fakers.
    In the digital world, anyone can call themselves an expert in something and start a business today.
    What will give you a leg up over your competition is having the best startup marketing strategy for your startup. In this guide, I’m going to help you map out your strategy so you can achieve greatness.

    What is a Web Marketing Strategy?

    marketing strategy
    marketing strategy

    Your web marketing strategy is the series of actions that you’ll take to help grow your company. You need to have everything figured out ahead of time, so you know what to do as each problem or issue arises.

    You should have a firm understanding of all the following points before you ever spend a dime on marketing or start offering services of any kind. Let’s take a look.

    Also read : Best Sales And Marketing books To Read

    What are you trying to accomplish?

    First, what are you doing with your business? Are you trying to generate leads? Do you want to bring attention to something? Do you already have clients, but are trying to bring better results for them?

    Whatever it is that you’re trying to do, you need to give it a name and stick with it. Your ultimate goal should be to achieve a business that satisfies you spiritually, emotionally, and financially.

    Think about it this way. If you’re dating and you’re trying to find the perfect partner, you likely have a few traits in mind of your ideal person. Maybe you’re looking for someone with brown hair, blue eyes, with a career-focused mindset, who likes to spend time outdoors.

    You need to do this with your business, Take note of all the things you want your business to do for your life and how you envision getting up and going to work every day. Once you’ve done that, under each point you made, figure out how you’ll get to the desired goal.

    Understand Your Audience

    startup marketing strategy
    startup marketing strategy

    One of the most powerful things you can do is create a buyer persona. This person is your ideal customer or client, and they need to have an exhaustive description. You’ll have a solid understanding of who your audience is, what they like, and what motivates them to buy something.

    When you create a buyer persona, you want to keep some of the following things in mind:

    • What motivates them?
    • What discourages them?
    • Pain points they might have.
    • Why are they here?
    • What excites them?
    • What exhausts them?

    You can go on and on with this, but you want to be as comprehensive as possible. When you understand your buyer, you’ll have an easier time writing copy, crafting emails, and building funnels that appeal to that specific person.

    Here’s an example of a buyer person named Supermom, “My buyer persona is a stay-at-home mom between the age of 25-35. She has two kids under the age of 10, and she values her health and the health of her family. She tries to eat healthily and cook quality meals every night, but between wrestling her kids, yoga classes, her kid’s soccer practices, and volunteering at the church; she’s left with little time at the end of the day.”

    That buyer persona might work for a company that sells pre-packaged healthy meal plans that you can purchase a week ahead of time and plan into the week. It allows the mom to feed her family a healthy dinner, and she can always have one available when the day drags on longer than planned.

    Also read : Best Sales And Marketing Tools

    Understanding the steps of a funnel

    marketing strategy
    marketing strategy

    In this section, let’s break down the four steps of every sales funnel. You’ll find a lot of variations, but these are the four primary steps you should always refer back to.

    • Awareness
    • Interest
    • Desire
    • Action

    With Systeme.io, we focus on making it easy to create funnels using these four steps. Our funnel builder allows you to appeal to the psychological side of these steps.

    Let’s work our way down from the top.

    Awareness

    Here is where you are teaching people about your brand. You’re introducing them to your company but not trying to sell them something. A lot of businesses skip this step, and they wonder why they aren’t having success. Think of this as going up and introducing yourself to someone you’ve never met before.

    Interest

    At this step of the funnel, the customer has seen your brand, and they are opening their ears to listen a little. They may even show that they’re interested in the company and they want to learn more about what you can do for them. Here is where you want to start preaching the benefits of your product or service.

    Also read : A Perfect Market Selection Guide

    Desire

    At the desired stage, the customer is now interested in doing business with you. They’ve decided that your product or service is useful and they want to purchase it. Now you don’t have to sell anymore, you need to provide them with the information they need to buy. Here is where upsells will occur as well.

    Action

    Finally, the customer is taking action, and you might even be up selling them on something else. At this stage is where retargeting occurs as well. Many people, even though they seemed interested at first, will back out.

    Where are your buyers?

    marketing strategy
    marketing strategy

    Okay, so now you know who your buyer is, and you have an awesome funnel that is bound to convert traffic. Now you need to get people into that funnel.

    To do this, you need to find your buyers. Let’s go back to our buyer persona to do this. So, we have a stay-at-home mom who values her health, loves her family, does yoga, and is young enough to be on the cutting edge of technology.

    Where do you think she might hang out online?

    • She might be on Pinterest, checking out design ideas for her home.
    • Maybe she’s on Facebook during her short period of free time when the kids are running around
    • Or she could be googling information about cheap and healthy weeknight recipes for children

    If you’re trying to build a web marketing strategy around this buyer persona, you need to know where she is and what she is doing there. Understanding this will not only help you create the right ads and copy, but it will help with your funnel as well.

    Remember that personalization is key with your sales funnel, so the individual needs to think that this funnel was explicitly made for them.

    You hear it all the time on platforms like Click funnels; they talk about funnel hacking. With Systeme.io, we like to call it “customer research.”

    It’s important to know where you find your audience because each platform has a different intent.

    • People on Google are usually there to find information or buy something
    • People on Facebook are there for entertainment
    • People on Youtube are often there for information or entertainment
    • People on Pinterest are there for ideas and inspiration.

    You get the point!

    Also read : How To Use Instagram for Business

    Have The Right Tools At Your Disposal

    marketing strategy
    marketing strategy

    Your startup will perish if you don’t have the right web marketing strategy. But, in addition to strategy, you need the right platform to run your business. In 2020 and beyond, it’s essential that you have a highly functioning and well-converting sales funnel as well as the best landing pages.

    You also need email marketing tools, customization options, a blog, a place to sell your stuff, and automation that take some of the grunt work out of your hands.

    For that, you have two options.
    You can scour the internet to find five or six different marketing platforms and see if they work well together.
    Or, you could get a 14-day free trial of Systeme.io and get everything you need in one place.

    Systeme.io provides easy to use funnel building tools, email marketing, automation, and more. Best of all, you can get started for free and take your business from a startup to wild success in no time.

    Be sure to keep all the points outlined in this article in your mind while you’re building your funnel. Remember,

    • Know what you want to accomplish
    • Understand your audience and create a buyer persona
    • Build your funnel with the four steps in mind
    • Go where your buyers are

  • Email Writing for Awareness Stage

    With customer retention in general, there are a few key ingredients you need for success:

    • A deep understanding of your customer
    • The ability to provide exceptional customer support
    • Loyalty rewards

    Now, these three ingredients aren’t the only thing you’ll need—after all—you still need a product that stands out from the rest. So how can you actually get your product to stand out from the rest?
    Interestingly enough, you can use email to not only tackle all three areas mentioned above, but to also get your product to stand out through continued interaction with customers.

    Even in a heavily crowded market or industry, the companies that reach out consistently are the ones who give their customers top-of-mind awareness of the brand. Retention emails an easy way to remind customers that you exist and provide value to them. They can make all the difference to get your product to stand out from the competition and ultimately close more business.

    How email helps
    How email helps

    Before I get into how to use emails for customer retention, let me explain why email works so well in the first place.

    1. It helps you improve communication with your customers
    2. It’s a cost-effective way to stay in touch
    3. It’s easy to use and can be set up to run on autopilot

    Now, we will see how to write emails for the first stage of SaaS cycle i.e. Awareness.

    Also read:

    Activation or welcome email

    Welcome emails have some of the highest engagement stats of any sequence. It’s the perfect opportunity for you to set the tone of your relationship and establish your brand in a favorable light. First impressions count for a lot! When it comes to customer retention, it’s essential that you start the relationship off on the right foot. This really sets the tone for your new partnership.

    One of the best ways to do just that is by using a Welcome or Activation email. With this, you’re introducing your customer to your brand and giving them that warm welcome they’d receive if they were in person. Plus, you can (and should) also use this important message as a chance to guide your new customer into taking their next step—using your product!

    Example provided by Buffer
    Example provided by Buffer

    This next example also captures the warm and friendly tone you want with these emails:

    Lumosity welcome email
    Lumosity welcome email

    Again, we’re greeted with an eye-catching image and a big welcome message. You also see a message that sounds just as if the person was right in front of us thanks to the phrase “We’re glad you’re with us.” On top of that, you’ll notice that Lumosity also makes use of social proof: “You’ve just joined a global community of 85 million.”

    Farmers Insurance, for example, launched its 15 Seconds of Smart campaign: short, 15-second videos educating their audience on insurance opportunities – while being wildly entertaining. These snackable bits of content were delightful, shareable, and educational all at once.

    Farmers Insurance
    Farmers Insurance

    Creating a conversational and warm welcome email is a must; but you should also consider adding in the very next step you’d like your customers to take. This helps them engage with your brand right away and gives them more guidance on what to do from there. First impressions count. A lot. Therefore, if a subscriber signs up to something, whether it is to receive future blog posts or a series of email tips, it makes sense to thank them and welcome them.

    By doing nothing, you make it difficult to create a strong impression. Whether you use auto-responders or send the emails manually, welcoming new subscribers to your company email list is a great way to build a strong relationship from the beginning. In the email, make sure you introduce yourself and company. You can also provide helpful links to content such as most popular blog posts or white papers, or links to your social media profiles. When to send: Each time you get a new subscriber.

    Relevant read:

    Activation follow up email

    Lumosity follows up their welcome email with another one that explains a little bit more about the product.

    Lumosity follow up email
    Lumosity follow up email

    This time, you see things like:

    1. How the app works?
    2. What areas of the brain will be challenged?
    3. How many games you can play?
    4. And how you can monitor your score

    With this email, they’re helping new customers dive right into everything they have to offer. But they’re doing so in easy-to-digest bite-sized chunks. You’ll notice this in the way they’ve used different colors for each section and only a short 2-3 sentence description. What’s nice about breaking up this email into two parts is that you never overwhelm your new customer. Instead, you offer them just enough info to get them started.Consider breaking up your welcome and next steps emails into two different ones. By doing this, you can keep everything simple without overwhelming your new customers. Example provided by SumAll.

    SumAll
    SumAll

    When SumAll acquired Flutter, a tool that helps businesses grow their Twitter following, one of the first things they did was inform their subscriber list. In doing so, they were able to create new interest in their product offering. So, for prospects that were not sure whether SumAll was the right fit for their business, announcing this kind of news is likely to have a more positive impact.

    You can implement it whenever you have news to share, such as winning an award, changes to product offering or new pricing options, for example, announce this news to your subscriber list. You can either include all of the company news within the email or itself, or link the email to a landing page. When to send: Each time you have news to share.

    Must read:

    Conclusion

    The role of email as a measurable, cost-effective marketing channel is clear. Backed up by both professional opinion and industry statistics, email has an important value for businesses in creating sales, leads and revenue, and retaining customers. So, learn how to engage with customers during awareness stage and apply it to your business. This will help you to grow your business and get loyal customers. What do you think about the article? Please let us know in the comments section.

  • What are different channels to advertise a start-up digitally?

    When you have successfully started up your own business, or have engaged in one, the responsibilities and tasks hung upon your shoulders are huge – especially when it comes to the marketing aspect. Marketing is that part of the business activity that deals with the management of exchange relationships. It is the business process of creating relationships with satisfying customers that leads to increasing sales and increase in profits as well. And advertising comprises of a larger part of marketing. Though, they are sometimes interchangeably used terms, the terminologies go hand in hand in most part of the business decisions.

    A new and upcoming way to advertise your brand or product or services is to do it on the digital platform – i.e. on the internet.

    “It’s hard to find things that won’t sell online.”
    – Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon

    It is called Digital Marketing. Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies and includes use of mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium. And these mediums are often called the channels of digital advertising. Internet provides a startup personnel a vast wealth of opportunities. Hence, it is very important for your brand to establish and maintain a strong and evident online presence to be competitive enough to reach out to targeted audiences.

    Now, the internet provides various marketing tools that are lucrative and worthy enough to focus on while they bring you steps closer to your business targets – but the problem of choice will depend upon an analysis and correct study of these options. Not all of these digital marketing tools are going to be applicable or work for your business.

    In this article, we will share the types of channels that are available on the  internet for you to advertise on and help you in identifying the best tool available to market you brand or product.

    Also Read: Business Ideas For Students

    Social Media

    Social media is a very big platform for brands and companies to advertise about their product on. The shopaholic demographic is generally found on social media the most and hence it becomes attractive for both seller and buyer to interact and get gains from. Customers are actively seeking out brands and deals they like or are interested in and increasing numbers of users take the medium of social media as making their buying decisions.

    The creative examples of social media marketing can be – promoting your brand or deal on stories that are sponsored (on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc.),  on sponsored posts, or on promoted deals especially on Facebook, and many more. Social Media influencers also help the brand a lot, for instance a person with a significant amount of followers or subscribers on any social media platform will bring a lot of attention and customers on site that are desiring to buy your product or service. And through the use of “cookie”, the companies and brands are able to target and focus on building relationships on people who are genuinely interested in your product and will be willing to  make the final purchase.

    By choosing the right platform that benefits your specific business the most should be given priority. And expansion or withdrawals can be managed thereafter.

    Also Read : A Complete Facebook Marketing Strategy

    E-mail Marketing

    If you want to build a direct relationship that benefits both the parties E-mail Marketing is the most effective tool. The users (or say potential customers) have shown interest in your website, app or online ad, and have opted to hear from you by giving you the personal information i.e. their e-mail address. So they are more willing to open those messages to learn and be aware about your products  (or new ones), sales and how to benefit from them. You can make it as  personalized as possible. By the way of triggered autoresponders and segmentation practices you can make the emails as immediately relevant to the  receivers as possible. This significantly increases the chance of immediate conversion and also long-term open rates too.

    The email should preferably be short to read and easy to scan. Give the users reason to click by giving an attractive subject line. You should, again, keep it short but try to offer value, incite urgency, or both in order to increase traffic.

    Also Read: How To Get More Instagram Followers Free?

    Pay-Per-Click Advertising

    Pay-per-click  is an internet advertising method that is used to drive traffic to websites in which an advertiser pays the publisher when the ad is clicked. They typically  include search engines, website owners, or a network or websites. There are also many other paid advertising channels like Pay-Per-Click advertising that deliver highly targeted traffic of potential customers within very short period of time. This method requires the most beneficial placing of the ad –  i.e. the ad placements. As the revenue invested in advertisement should  profitably correlate to the acquisition of customer per unit.

    You can choose to run you PPC ads on the basis of a day, a week or a month depending upon the budget. The effectiveness of a PPC will depend upon how well you choose your keywords that are attractive and grab customer’s attention, as  well as optimizing the visual and contextual information of your ads.

    Also Read: A Complete Guide to Hashtags Marketing

    Content Marketing

    Content lies at the very core of every digital marketing campaign and is one the most important element that works in the advertising field. If your website has good, high-quality, and relevant content, your website will generate significant amount of inbound traffic from all he potential audiences.

    The content so created includes text, graphics, videos, and other related effects people are looking for and are interested in. It should be catchy and informative at the same time. Make sure the so published content is enough to make a potential customer gain trust in your brand and be impressed enough to make the final purchase as well.

    Generally, the management hires content marketers for the same task and job. They provide the company or brand with the relevant experience and work in favor of the enterprise, which is an effective strategy to go for.

    Also Read :
    Digital Marketing Business Ideas | Online Business in 2019
    13 Tips To Make A Video Ad To Pump Up Your Sales

    Display Advertising

    Display advertising is the type of online advertising that comes in various form such as banner ads, rich media and more. Display advertising relies on elements such as images, audio, visuals, videos, animations and logos to communicate an advertising message. Display advertisers frequently target the users with  particular traits to increase the ads’ effect. It can be done through the ways of using “cookies” – which can track whether a user a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user previously visited.

    Display advertising normally works more on the principle of placing display ads on various websites, blogs, forums, and so on. It helps in promoting new products or offers and increase online presence and reach out to customers to help  drive leads and increase brand awareness. This method can track everything from  numbers reached, clicks, action and conversion ratios and hence it is easy to  manage with the given budgets.

    SEO

    Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the thriving, most effective and efficient digital marketing tool. It involves several activities to boost rankings and includes usage of keyword research. It also makes use of both on-page and off-page optimization, linkable asset creation, organic links building and  more.

    “We want to know what consumers are looking for, what their values are, and how can we meet their needs. It’s not just about Big Data; it’s about translating that into the truth.”
    – Gayle Fuguitt, Marketing veteran

    Optimizing SEO in your content will significantly improve your search rank and make it much easier for potential customers to find your website. You can include the keywords from your article and strategically place your title, hashtags, headings and the main content.

    Also Read : How to Create Quality Content that Ranks & bring Quality Traffic

    The aforementioned digital marketing channels will work dramatically well if you have a good digital marketing strategy in place for your brand or business. Each method can be evaluated and gives relevant consideration in the working of final marketing mix. It should be kept aligned with the business objectives and long term goals. Once the marketing channel is chosen, it should be periodically monitored also. The effectiveness in workings of the channels so selected should be altered as per the changing digital trends and business  goals.

  • How to Design Drip Email Campaign?

    An email drip campaign is a series of messages that are sent, or “dripped,” in a predefined order at a predefined interval.  Drip campaigns are commonly used to communicate to new subscribers or someone who made a purchase but didn’t join your email list yet, but you can use them at any time.
    Email drip campaigns are intimidating. They’re complicated, requiring you to create a bunch of content, write a bunch of emails, and then stitch it all together somehow.

    Drip Email Campaign
    Drip Email Campaign

    Now that we know what is drip email campaign, how do you actually map out a successful automated drip campaign? Turns out, it’s not as hard as it seems.

    Know more about drip email campaigns: Drip Email Campaign
    Also read: How to Track Customer Acquisition in SaaS?

    How to Set Up a Drip Campaign?

    Here are eight steps to keep in mind to create your first drip campaign — plus examples of how to target your audience, write your emails, tweak for best results and so on.

    Set up your objectives.

    You need to define your objectives to achieve your expected results. These objectives must be SMART, which is an abbreviation for the words — specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. Let’s break them down below:

    SMART objectives
    SMART objectives
    1. Specific: Be clear about what you want. Do you want to promote your products? Or, do you want to educate consumers with actionable advice? It’s time to plan and decide.
    2. Measurable: Create success metrics for your drip campaign. What is the click-through rate you want to achieve? How will you measure your conversions? By introducing target numbers in your objective, you can clearly define the level of success you want.
    3. Attainable: Are these objectives achievable for everyone in the team?
    4. Realistic: Nothing is impossible, but you have to be a bit realistic when it comes to your time and your resources. Are your objectives attainable based on the number of your subscribers, and the amount of time in your hands? Is the amount of work required for the campaign reasonable based on the number of marketers and designers in your team? While it’s great to be ambitious, you also need to be a bit realistic about your objectives.
    5. Timely: Set a time frame and schedule to make sure that your drip campaigns will stay on track.

    Your objectives should be based on your end goals. Do you feel that your leads only try the free trial and none of them end up buying a subscription? Try an email sequence that contains product tutorials to highlights its value and show users how they can benefit from it.
    Don’t forget to create SMART objectives. A lot of people set big goals only to fall short, because they don’t have a concrete plan to achieve what they want. So, it’s important to clearly define your goals from the start.

    Identify Your Target Audience

    Drip campaigns are all about breaking your subscriber list into subsections, and targeting information to niches of customers. So, the most important piece here is determining which triggers and groups you’re going to use for your drip campaign strategy. But how do you segment your customers? Here are some ways you can get started.

    Segmentation of audience
    Segmentation of audience
    1. Demographics
      Demographics contain basic information like age, gender, location and job. It’s pretty obvious, but failure to use this data may lead to disastrous emails. For instance, let’s say you’re in the business of selling shoes. Without segmenting your emails based on genders, you may send emails promoting high heels to males. This is a disaster and a complete turn-off to customers. No one wants to receive a message that’s obviously not meant for them.
      The good news is that by segmenting customers based on demographics, you never have to face this dilemma. In addition, you also send messages that are tailored to the needs of each customer.
    2. Actions
      You can also segment customers based on their behavior such as purchase, visit frequency, length of subscription and content. With the use of triggers, marketers can send emails based on products bought or the content users interacted with.
      For example:
    • A user subscribes to your company newsletter, and you send them a welcome email via your drip campaign
    • A user makes a purchase, and you automatically send them a receipt with shipping information (plus a few up-sells)
    • A user downloads the trial version of your app, and you send them a series of six instructional emails over the course of the trial, which offer helpful tips on making the most of your app.

    Visualize your end goal

    Step back and think about what action you want qualified leads to take. Ultimately, we want to get on the phone with these top-tier leads to not only try to make a sale, but to also explore possible partnerships and discuss their current challenges. Your action might be a purchase, a download, or a demo; regardless, make sure the desired action is clear.
    By the time users reach the end of the drip campaign, they should have a clear picture of their unique problems, how you can help them solve them, and how exactly you can work together. Ideally, when our customers are ready to buy, they have a good understanding of content marketing and its long-term commitment. Eliminate as many surprises beforehand by working backward from your end goal.

    Determine Frequency of Your Drip Campaign

    Next, think about the frequency of your emails. Let’s say, your drip campaigns is about a course on a specific skill. You can space these emails out for two to three days each — rather than 7 or 14 days apart. This way, your viewers will easily recall what the email is about. The rules of how often you should send an email isn’t set in stone. So, if you’re in doubt, test your results or ask your customers.
    Let’s say, you have an educational drip campaign about your product tutorials. Try to find out your open rates if you send tutorials every two days, five days and so on. Are customers more likely to open your email, if the previous one is still fresh from their minds? Check your analytics to find out.

    Determine Your Email Sequence

    Next, it’s time to determine your email sequence. The sequence of your email campaign should be in sync with your objectives. What do you want your users to achieve by the end of the drip campaign? Will these emails help them achieve it?
    The emails you send should serve as a customer’s path to achieving your objective. As for how many emails you’ll send, you can go with as low as five emails and a maximum of ten emails, but there’s really no limit. Just don’t go overboard! Simply send enough emails to get your message across.

    Create Irresistible Subject Lines

    How do you write an email that gets read? It all begins with an irresistible subject line. Here are some tips:

    • Keep It Short
    • Add a Personal Touch
    • Be witty
    • Use a Call-to-Action

    Select your content and create the campaigns.

    Now that you know whom you’re targeting, you need to generate a message that’s helpful and grabs their attention. What do you want the user to do? Or, what do you want the user to learn? When it comes to selecting content, it all goes back to where your lead’s focus currently resides and how close he/she is to making a decision. For those who aren’t purchase-ready, include blog posts and other content covering a variety of questions and concerns. These readers aren’t ready to jump on a call about budgeting, targeting, and possible solutions — they’re just testing the water, and it might be too cold.
    Based on your answer, write copy that’s clear, actionable, and attractive. Maintain the voice that you’ve built for you brand, but make sure that your message is clear. To move qualified leads closer to a buying decision, focus on content that digs deep. Think whitepapers, case studies, and demos that clearly highlight your understanding of their problems — and how you can be the solution.

    Here are some phrases you can use to create an actionable email:

    • Shop now, Share, Get social, Spread the word

    Combine this with phrases related with time to create a sense of urgency:

    • Only [number] days left, today only, Limited-time, offer ends at [time], Sale ends at [time]

    Automate your emails.

    Once you’ve decided on a strategy, start sending. To do this, you can either implement your own custom drip software or buy an off-the-shelf product that’ll have you up and running in minutes. Once your content is ready, it’s time to let your marketing automation solution take care of the heavy lifting. The content you’ve selected — blog posts, external articles, whitepapers, case studies, etc. — that covers the basics should be delivered at a routine pace.

    Drip Email Tools
    Drip Email Tools

    For those leads at the bottom of the funnel, we utilize content to address questions and objections that might slow down a potential sale. These emails are best delivered via triggers, like link clicks, open rates, or lead qualification. As leads approach the decision-making part of the process, they’ll need answers quicker; match that pace, or you’ll lose their interest.
    Ultimately, developing a drip campaign isn’t a plug-and-play method to maximize sales. Rather, it’s a powerful tool to create prepared customers. Put in the work, and your drip campaign will result in a flood of new business.

    Evaluate and Adjust

    Just because your drip campaign is automated doesn’t mean you can let it run unsupervised. You spent a bunch of time researching user segments, and it’s important to readjust those segments and your strategy based on the results.

    Evaluate, adjust and repeat
    Evaluate, adjust and repeat

    If you aren’t getting as many clickthroughs as you want, try rewriting your calls to action; if you aren’t meeting your conversion rate goals with your sale-closing email, try more educational communications before asking any user to pull the trigger.
    Evaluate, adjust, repeat.

    Conclusion

    Drip email campaigns are of great help when it comes to getting users and popularizing your idea/product. Though, different strategies may work for different companies and products, we have given some basic steps that anyone can follow to create a successful drip campaign. Just follow the steps and tweak the details according to your needs. If you have some other tips, please let us know in the comments section.

  • What is Drip Email Campaign?

    Whether you’ve been using email marketing automation for years, or have just started to dip your toes in, you’ve probably come across the concept of “drip campaigns”. Email drip campaigns are intimidating. They’re complicated, requiring you to create a bunch of content, write a bunch of emails, and then stitch it all together somehow.

    What is an Email Drip Campaign?

    An email drip campaign is a series of messages that are sent, or “dripped,” in a predefined order at a predefined interval. So, for example, if someone joins your email list, they receive Email #1 upon signup, Email #2 three days later, Email #3 five days after they join, and so on.

    Must read: How to validate your SaaS idea before building an MVP?
    Relevant read: How to Track Customer Acquisition in SaaS?

    The primary goal of an email drip marketing campaign is to attract the right subscribers. And send subscribers highly relevant emails that encourage them to commit to your call to action. Even though these are automated emails, they can be personalized with your contacts’ name, company info, customer behavior, and more.
    Automated email drip campaigns have been proven to perform better toward reaching your business objectives, for example:

    1. To effectively nurture your leads,
    2. Communicate regularly with your customers,
    3. Increase sales or
    4. Re-engage lost customers in a scalable way.

    Drip campaigns are commonly used to communicate to new subscribers or someone who made a purchase but didn’t join your email list yet, but you can use them at any time.

    What makes a drip campaign successful?

    To create an effective email drip campaign, first, you need to pinpoint your pain:

    • Do you need more checkouts?
    • Drive back to your website your one-off website visitors?
    • Do you need to increase engagement among your existing subscribers?
    • Or onboard users smoothly so that they set up their accounts and start using your service?

    All of these can be automated via the right drip campaign!
    The secret to creating the perfect drip is to revisit it along the way; feed your insights and results into your existing drips and customize them accordingly.

    Relevant read: Essential Tips for Marketing Your Business to Boost Profitability
    Important read: Challenges Faced by SaaS startups

    Common Types of Drip Campaigns

    A drip email campaign is a primary nurturing/communication channel with your prospects and customers. Let’s look into how most common drip email campaigns are structured.

    Welcoming

    You did a great job at marketing your product, and you’ve gotten a lot of users to subscribe to your newsletters or sign-up to learn more about it. But how do you turn these new users into actual customers? How do you get them to try your product? Why should they be interested on what you have to offer?
    That’s where welcome emails shine — they introduce users to your products and highlight what you have to offer.

    Welcome campaign
    Welcome campaign

    Since the goal of a welcome email campaign is to deliver the first unit of value (aka the ‘Aha’ moment), you can stop this series of emails at any time when user becomes an ‘active user’. At this point, prospects understand your product value proposition and the next step is to teach them how to get maximum value from your product

    GETU's Welcome Email
    GETU’s Welcome Email

    GE Learning Technology (GETU)’s welcome email begins with a clear introduction of its business and benefits outlined in bold, followed by a video that provides a more in-depth explanation of its services.

    User Onboarding

    If welcome drip campaigns introduce your customers to your business, then onboarding campaigns are here to make them stay. They’re useful to software companies who encourage users to try their free trial first.

    User Onboarding
    User Onboarding

    For example, if a user submits a registration form to create an account on LinkedIn, he/she will receive a welcome email. If the user never comes back, he/she will receive a series of welcome emails to encourage them to come back. On the other hand, if a prospect has registered to LinkedIn and started using it but hasn’t completed their profile details, then LinkedIn’s user onboarding emails will be sent. These explain why and how providing more profile information can enrich a user’s LinkedIn experience.

    box's user onboarding email
    box’s user onboarding email

    Cloud storage app Box employs drip campaigns to teach people how to use their product.

    Also read: Bootstrapping SaaS Startups
    Relevant read: Email writing for Engagement stage

    Nurturing Leads

    Some users need a little push, or nurturing — engaging promotions until they’re ready to buy your product. As a result, most businesses nurture their leads by offering emails with links to relevant content such as newsletters and webinars.

    Nurturing Leads
    Nurturing Leads

    Prospects don’t always come through your free trial gate. Downloading a marketing asset, such as a whitepaper, industry research, case study or signing up to a webinar is another way to start a communication process with a prospect.

    Zapier's email
    Zapier’s email

    Zapier sends new users a nurturing drip email to help them brainstorm automation ideas.

    Product Engagement

    Product engagement campaigns are essential to a SaaS company with a freemium business model. Companies that use freemium models need to ensure that customers who aren’t paying for the product right now are engaged and increasingly use the product.

    Product Engagement
    Product Engagement

    The math here is pretty simple: the more often someone engages with your site, the more likely they are to convert into a paying customer. Engagement emails are a type of drip campaign that invite the recipient to return to your site and look around, triggered either by some on-site activity or a general lack of activity.
    Social sites are a great example of how to use activity-based triggers. If someone on Twitter mentions you in a tweet, Twitter can send you an alert-style email, encouraging you to visit Twitter and respond.
    But it doesn’t have to be just happy feelings; guilt can work as well. If you don’t log an activity in fitness app RunKeeper for a while, they’ll send an automated “We miss you!” email. It’s a subtle way to remind you that you should work out, combined with a touch of nostalgia for the app they hope you’ll use while exercising.

    RunKeeper's email
    RunKeeper’s email

    RunKeeper sends users who have not logged a workout in a while a re-engagement drip email.

    Promotional Drip Campaigns

    Promotional emails are used to upsell, promote and inform customers about limited-time promotions, special offers, new products and discounts.
    “You might also like” isn’t just for Netflix bingeing—recommendation engines are a cornerstone of nearly every giant online retailer. The more a company knows about you and your buying habits, the better they can predict what you will and won’t like. With that info, they can send you targeted drip emails that contain products or coupons specific to your purchasing tendencies.

    Jaybird's Promotional Email
    Jaybird’s Promotional Email

    Jaybird’s email which introduces its wireless headphones is one good example.

    Relevant read: How to Set Pricing for Your SaaS Product?
      8 Ways to Toggle SaaS Customer Retention

    Confirmations

    You’ve closed the sale, or better yet, convinced a user to stick with your product for another year with a renewed subscription. But your drip email work isn’t done. You can also use a drip campaign to confirm your user’s purchase renewal—just set up a “thank you” auto-responder that goes out right after they hit the “purchase” button. In that confirmation drip, you could include some links to your product’s newest features to re-engage them with your brand.

    Confirmation email
    Confirmation email

    Fairfield uses drip campaigns to confirm user reservations, and show off some of the hotel amenities.

    It should be a no-brainer to send your users an email receipt after they make a purchase, but you can also leverage that communication with related products and upsells. And with confirmations for things like plane tickets and hotel rooms, send a quick email a day before the event to put any important confirmation codes at the top of the user’s inbox. Then, perhaps, that same drip can send another email a few days later, asking them to review your product or service and offer a coupon for future purchases.

    Conclusion

    In this article, we have seen what is drip email campaign and learnt about different types of drip email campaigns. If used correctly, drip email campaign strategy can be of great value to the marketing and growth of your company. With drip email campaigns, you will be able to get the right subscribers, nurture your leads, increase sales and/or re-engage lost customers.
    So, apply the suitable drip email campaign strategy right now, and get started. Let us know your views in the comment section.

    Also read: How to Design Drip Email Campaign?

  • Email writing for Engagement stage

    For all the advances in technology we’ve witnessed over the last two decades, the business world still runs on email.
    You don’t even need to cherry pick the statistics. Email wins across virtually every metric:

    1. Email marketing drives more conversions than any other marketing channel, including search and social. – Monetate
    2. Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. – McKinsey
    3. Email subscribers are 3 times more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other sources. – QuickSprout
    4. 72% people prefer to receive promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media. – MarketingSherpa
    5. 4.24% of visitors from email marketing buy something as compared to 2.49% of visitors from search engines and 0.59% from social media. – Monetate

    Also read: Must-Read Startup Books For Students
    Relevant read: How to Track Customer Acquisition in SaaS?

    But like with anything worth doing, effective email marketing requires some persistence and attention to detail. You need to know when and what to send and you have to take advantage of every opportunity. It can be especially tough to choose the most important action for new users to take. Often though, there’s one step that’s absolutely necessary for people to ever realize any success in a product or service.
    Now, we will look at some of the emails from which you can learn.

    So, Let’s get started!

    Filepicker.io activation email

    Filepicker, a file management service for apps, has an activation email that starts right after their welcome and encourages new users to upload their first file. That’s the first behavioral conversion goal.

    Filepicker.io email example
    Filepicker.io email example

    As Bethany Stachenfeld who manages online sales and marketing at the company explained: “If users haven’t uploaded a file, then there’s no way that they’re actually using Filepicker.” Once people upload a file, they receive the next email campaign explaining more advanced features.
    The progression of emails is important. Director of Customer Success Joseph Palumbo adds, “The goal of these emails is to have people experience how simple it is to integrate our product and have that first experience set the bar for using the rest of our framework.”

    Also read: Netmeds: India’s Online Pharmacy
    Important read: Challenges Faced by SaaS startups

    SaneBox onboarding email

    SaneBox, an email management tool that works in every inbox, triggers an activation email if you haven’t used a key feature. The subject line — “The most important feature you’re not using – SaneBlackHole” — adds urgency and FOMO to get the most out of the app.

    Sanebox onboarding email
    Sanebox onboarding email

    Giving a heads up to new users that they can now unsubscribe from any email without leaving the inbox — while making sure to target only those people who haven’t used the feature yet — helps activation without annoying people who have already taken this step.

    Also read: Top 10 Youngest Entrepreneurs of India
    Relevant read: How to validate your SaaS idea before building an MVP?

    Dropbox

    Dropbox, a file hosting service, is another SaaS company that has a great email marketing strategy. They have so called “friendly reminder” emails that are simple, cute and personalized. First of all, they have a cute charming header cartoon that quickly draws the reader’s attention. Secondly, for more personalization, they greet recipient by their first name. Finally, the body of the text is straight to the point: it asks the recipient to download the software and reminds about the main benefits they might get.

    Dropbox email example
    Dropbox email example

    Their primary CTA is also used straight to the point: they just ask the reader to “Download Dropbox here”. Though the usual rule of thumb is to make CTAs brighter and more eye-catching, in this case the CTA makes the transition from reading the email to downloading the software more fluid.

    Also read: SimplyGuest – Find the Best Housing Solutions

    Conclusion

    What you can learn: The three main things you need to include in your email are:

    • What: the purpose of the email
    • Why: the benefits of the software
    • How: the way users can get the software

    The success of email marketing is ultimately in the follow up.
    In this article, I’ve tried to cover scenarios in the engagement stage your business will likely face but in an evolving marketplace, there will always be new opportunities for follow up.

    Please comment below your ideas to follow up in the engagement stage.

  • Top 15 Tips for Marketing Startup in 2020

    The whole idea of startup revolves around serving customers with an out-of-the-box solution that solves a problem they face. So, marketing plays an essential role in the entire process. If done right, the startup witnessing overnight success becomes a plausible outcome. On the contrary, an excellent idea unable to reach out to the masses ends on a sour note.

    India may double startup base by 2020. To get you off to a start, here are fifteen Startup marketing ideas worth trying out.

    15 Ways of Marketing Your Startup

    Ways of Marketing a New Startup

    SEO Propels Your Marketing

    Nowadays, the kind of business doesn’t matter but having an internet presence does wonder. So, it’s common to have a website, be it a startup, medium-size business or a large scale organization.

    Search Engine Optimization is essential to get the product or service the required attention. Investing in professional SEO services means reliable results and the probability that your website ends up in the first or second page of the search engine’s results. But you can also do it on your own just by learning a few new techniques and the guidelines.

    If you are serious about your business and want to grow then you should start building quality content. Post those quality content regularly on your website and try to give value as much as possible. This way you will be able to get your SEO success soon.

    A lot of blogs are out there, some with huge traffic and some without such kind of presence. Identify the blogs frequented by the startup’s target audience and reach out to them. Results may not be immediately visible but they will eventually show up.

    If you already have a blog then it will be a great opportunity for you. Try to find some blogs similar to yours and comment genuinely, it will help you to build a relationship with other bloggers and also can give you some quality back-links.

    Public Relations (PR) Strategy

    With a correct PR strategy, you can convey your message to the right audience. A successful PR strategy can bring you a lot of loyal customers.

    While making a PR strategy your first step would be deciding your target audience first. After that make sure you know what your goal and objective are. This will help you to run a successful PR strategy.

    Also read:

    Discounts And Freebies

    “There ain’t no such thing as free products” but you can get one at a discount. Offering exclusive discounts based on demography can entice people into buying your product. Complement it with some sort of freebies and publicity increased many folds.

    The trick here is to organize giveaways using some kind of segregation—the buyers need to feel special as if the discount is specifically tailor-made for them.

    Advertisements

    Use billboards, pamphlets and flyers. Add creative visualizations to make the information an interesting read. Don’t give extended details; it bores the reader. But before that, go through a repeated cycle of design-feedback-review. This should be done before the pamphlets, etc. are distributed. Getting feedback on the prototype allows you to check the missing points that go into making a great printed distribution material.

    Email Marketing

    This method is old but no less than gold. The advent of spam filters has made email marketing a bit difficult. But it still is an effective strategy, to be honest. Create a database of potential buyers, send them quality content regularly.

    You can also send your posts in the form of emails, it will help you not only to re-purpose your old content but also provide value to your audience.

    Recommendations And Referrals

    No matter how attractive or enticing the technical review of the product/service is, people still ask relatives and friends for review. A simple example: before buying a high-end smartphone, you enquire about the same from those who own the same model. The same goes for any product. Focus on ‘word of mouth’ publicity.

    Offer referral commission to the users. This way your old customers will be engaged with you for a long time and even for a lifetime.

    Use Community Events As A Platform

    Use Community Events as a Platform

    Make the best out of flea markets, a local get-together for they offer a pedestal to demonstrate the startup’s product. The event attendance fee is minimal (and even free in some cases), in such events a good crowd’s gather, you can spend the entire day in conversing with them. In case people don’t take notice of your product, leverage the opportunity to enhance your network.

    Industry Partnership

    All startups can’t afford to spend a lot of money on marketing. Partnering with a more established company can provide the required capital and insights. The terms of negotiation possess the biggest challenge; the industry veteran would likely ask for a stake in the startup. In such cases, cons are going to be there for sure along with the pros. The focus should be on the latter outweighing the former.

    Promote the Product as a User

    If you don’t take pride in what you sell, expecting others to react positively is a distant dream. If the founder endorses his product both as a promoter and user, the target audience sees him from a different perspective. It enables the startup to gain traction with the clients, since both evaluate the product as a user.

    Use of Referral Programs

    Another way of successfully launching your startup is to make the customers help you to promote your product. This will make promotions of your brand to a more distant area. Using ‘Brand Ambassador’ programmes can help you to ask your customers to promote your product among people. The more ambassador you have, the more promotion you can have of your product.

    You can approach small YouTubers to be your Brand Ambassador as they already have a fan base. It will be easy for you to grow your brand faster.

    Use of “Beta Version”

    So, what we always crave for, the things we don’t have and exclusive things. Hence, the creation of a beta version will help you get more people engaged in your startup as they will be getting a chance to get an exclusive version of your product. The more sign-ups, more exposure to your company.

    Social Media Promotion

    Facts About Social Media

    Social media is the key to why brands are getting popular and selling out in seconds. So focus on building a great and empowering social media platform for your product. The more popularity in your social media, the more popular you will get in the actual marketing scenario. Also, that will surely lead to an increase in sales.

    So don’t hesitate from creating a strong and attractive social media platform for your company and make a good investment in your social media marketing.

    Also read:

    Charity and Other Such Events

    This sounds a bit weird but this surely works as events like Charity, auction are the hub of a variety of customers which you can target.

    Either sponsor such events or be a part of it, so that your brand is shown in the sponsor list or present yourself there in front of the crowd along with your brand. This will surely help you to grow your brand more. It sounds weird but this can be a Trump card to your success if you can work it.

    Host Contests And Giveaway Offers

    As it says “old is gold “, this trick has been used by biggest to smallest, all kinds of startups because of its efficiency. Host various contests which are going to engage customers focus on your startup.

    Also, do give offers or gifts with your product. This works like honey, as your customers will get stick to you more and you will get more customers also. For a new startup, it is efficient to get some regular customers, so this can be a cue to get some regular customers.

    Also read:

    Conclusion

    The most important marketing suggestion is “you”, the owner. It all depends on how you work and how creative you can be when it comes to marketing and promotion of your startup. So be more creative and come up with innovation, so that helps you make your startup different from others and focus on the customers’ behaviour related to your product.

    Do give value to your customers’ feedback, and focus on making your startup a customer-friendly worthy.