Using social listing to respond to your customers before they contact you
Let’s put the wonders away for now. Let’s talk business.
How do you know what people say about your company? How do you detect unhappy customers who don’t tell you in your face that your product sucks, but make sure the universe (or, in most cases, Twitter or Facebook) knows about that? Finally, how do you find people interested in the subject relevant to your business in real time and engage them before someone else does?
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to social listening.
What is Social Listening?
Social listening allows you to discover what people are saying online about your brand, product, competitors or any specific topic in real-time. You get instant notifications that allow you to act upon your mentions immediately. It’s super easy.
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20 Jun 2016
How to best use punctuation in email marketing campaigns
Is the smartphone really killing off the period as a punctuation mark for texters? A recent story in the Washington Post says it is.
Where the full stop once marked the end of a sentence, the simple line break now claims that role in texting. The stop itself has evolved into a shorthand symbol that charges an otherwise innocuous sentence with deeper meaning, such as anger. It's less obvious than emoji and takes fewer taps on the keyboard.
That made us think (because we think about email all the time) about subject lines with stops at the end. Do they help or hurt opens, clicks and deliverability? And what about other punctuation marks? Do question marks really drive more traffic? And what’s the deal with exclamation marks?
To get some definitive answers, we turned to Touchstone's universe of virtual subscribers to see what impact punctuation…
The pressure for brands to select the “right” digital agency to deliver projects and campaigns has never been greater. So what steps can you take to avoid a digital partnership disaster?
2015 continues to be a golden era for digital agencies. UK online retail sales eclipsed £100bn in 2014 reflecting the nation’s insatiable appetite for buying online. With digital ad spend increasing by 800% between 2004 and 2014 to £7.2 Billion, brands are responding to consumer demand and investing heavily in their online presence. The rapid growth of online investment and increased availability of advertising platforms means that digital marketing roles have rapidly evolved to be multi-disciplined and complex. Agencies are therefore an attractive option for brands looking to deliver quickly on digital campaigns and projects.
Imagine you’re hiring a member of staff
The process of selecting a digital agency…
Web Hosting 101 for SEO
When people talk about SEO, web hosting seldom comes into the picture. What people forget is that registration and hosting data can affect your search engine rankings in a big way.
In the world of SEO where there are only ten slots that matter in SERPs and thousands of webmasters competing to find favor in the eyes of Google, any competitive advantage you have access to should be quickly taken advantage of.
Optimizing your registration and hosting data is one of the things you can do to improve your search engine rankings. Not all hosting services are created equal. There are some that are good value for money, and there are some that you should actively avoid like the plague.
When looking for a hosting service, you should pay attention to the factors that will affect your SEO.…
Landing pages are a key tool in your CRO arsenal
So, you’ve already invested a considerable amount of time, money and resources on developing a fully-functional and navigable site.
What next?
You plan to set a budget for PPC ads, social media and email marketing in order to drive traffic to your site. Great! But what happens when a visitor clicks on your PPC ads or links on your social media profile? If they land on the company’s homepage, you’ve already failed! Remember, you don’t just need to drive leads to your site; you also need to convert them. This is where landing pages come to your rescue. They help you convert your web traffic into qualified leads.
In case you’re still looking for reasons why you must invest in landing pages, check out these stats:
Companies see a 55% increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15.…
5 essential sections for a great agency proposal template
First things first: a proposal isn’t a pitch. A proposal is usually used as the first stage of a wider pitch process to filter down a field of agencies. I'm focusing here on the long form written proposal.
As an aside, alarm bells should be ringing if the prospect or client only wants a written proposal sending through with no opportunity for you to meet or at least ask questions. So I’ll assume you have requested and secured a meeting or some form of Q&A before you start creating your proposal. That way you have all the facts you need to answer the request and you’ve also started building a relationship.
'Winning is not everything, but the effort to win is.' Zig Ziglar
There'll be times when your proposal isn't written in a competitive context:
you may be the incumbent and have a great client relationship…
Is there a growing disconnect between a brand and its digital marketing strategy?
Failing to adjust and implement a clearly defined digital strategy could be due to the disconnect between a brand, its purpose and the digital tactics used to meet company objectives.
With the brand’s purpose not clearly understood and integrated within the journey through the digital transformation, brands may be finding themselves lost. This leaves their digital operations and tactics isolated, being operated and managed in a silo.
This growing disconnect between the brand and its digital marketing strategy was highlighted in a recent survey by Smart Insights who asked the question:
“Does your organisation have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy?”
For organisations to…
Examples of applying proven techniques to create higher converting landing pages
Your landing page serves as your first impression to your site visitors. When you give them a great first-time experience, then they will want to explore further, even go as far as making purchases, returning and giving you referrals.
Well, the term ‘good landing’ page is relative. Hence, we will get more accurate in our post and talk about a high-converting landing page, which is our definition of a great landing page.
In this post, we will talk about the importance of a landing page giving different statistics as proof while including data-driven tricks for landing page designs in 2016.
In brief, here is what you should expect to find:
Important landing page statistics you should know in 2016
Causes of low landing page conversion rates
Proven ways of boosting your landing page conversion rate
Important Landing Page Statistics You Should Know In…
New trends in the Mobile Internet space are changing the game quickly
Mobile devices and their use in our daily lives are changing the game for developers and marketers alike, and it is happening a lot quicker than we think. The mobile space has been gaining serious interest as it has grown in popularity over the years. We are already seeing Internet giants like Facebook, Google, and Apple investing heavily in the mobile market. They are competing to be the new leaders in the online mobile niche. There is plenty of opportunity for everyone here. As more and more people are becoming more accustomed to using their mobile device to access the Internet throughout their daily lives, it is opening up new doors for companies to spread into and develop new technologies that can be used by them. It is clear that the mobile space is on the verge of exploding…
You can do a lot more with your email address list than just email them
Depending on the size of the business you work for, you might have an email list of hundreds, thousands or millions. You already know your email list is valuable because email marketing is one of the most effective channels in terms of ROI. But an email list isn't just for emailing. You can use it for all kinds of clever targeting techniques, to advertise to your customers at the exact moment they may be considering a purchase. Here are some of the options for utilising your email list for targeting ad placement:
Facebook Custom Audiences
Marketers can match their email addresses with those of Facebook and display ads in the main feed and right rail. This is by far the most mature offering, and many companies are doing it already. Facebook will also generate 'look-a-like' audiences for you…
