Don't neglect your unsubscribing process
Getting your email unsubscribe process right is critical to your email marketing success. But, why? Surely concentrating your efforts on subscribers who have decided that they want to leave your list is time wasted. Wouldn't you be better off focusing your efforts on improving emails to those just entering the funnel, rather than those electing to drop out of it?
We've been taking a look at best practices for managing email unsubscribes in a new research report on the State of Email Unsubscribing 2016 which we have published with Alchemy Worx. It reports on how retailers are managing unsubscribes, and then goes on to recommend best practice as well as mistakes to avoid.
There are a number of reasons why you need to get your unsubscribe process right, and it's not just about winning back customers. First of all consider these key points:
Unsubscribing isn't a failure or even a permanent state for your…
How to deal with customer complaints on social
Social media is finally getting a little respect. Companies and organizations of all types and sizes are beginning to realize social for its vast potential as a customer service platform.
We’ve witnessed the awesome power of corporate self-sabotage on social media - BlackBerry tweeting promotional material from an iPhone, Comcast’s infamous stubborn retention rep, and British Airways’ failure to remember that Twitter operates 24/7. Now, companies are learning how to use social customer service platforms to respond to customer issues in a timely, personable, and effective way, and to do so proactively. Here are some tips we’ve compiled to help you build your strategy in dealing with customer issues on social media – and emerge with nothing less than a sterling impression left on…
You won't be able to design a great site without a good understanding of information architecture
The way in which a website is structured is a hugely important factor in determining how people find, understand and engage with content. In the absence of a sound structure, problems related to usability, content management and multiple re-designs can cause problems for both users and webmasters alike.
The process of planning and defining a website’s structure is known as information architecture (or IA for short) and it’s a practice that’s most often associated with user experience. However, an understanding of website structure and how different content elements relate to one another means that IA impacts digital marketing at a wider level and is therefore something many of us can use when strategising and planning.
Defining information architecture
The Information Architecture Institute offers the following definition:
“Information architecture is about helping people…
Examples of how customer reviews can be used for both B2C and B2B companies. Are you using them to your full advantage?
The vast majority of people, including you and I, read customer reviews before buying a product. We place a lot of importance on what others are saying about a product or website based on their previous experiences. So it’s a given that product ratings, reviews, comments and feedback given on social media sites can affect your business massively.
Customer Reviews are a Powerful Sales Tool in B2B Marketing
Considering the influence such user-generated content has on your buyers, it is no surprise that customer reviews are considered as the “new frontier in word-of-mouth marketing,” and perhaps suprisingly this also includes customer reviews for B2B companies. According to TechValidate research, 94 percent of marketing and sales professionals from B2B industry consider customer reviews and ratings ‘as very effective or extremely effective’. Still not…
By
29 Apr 2016
Attention is a currency. We spend it. We earn it. And, sometimes we waste it.
Experience is something special. It’s all the rage at the moment, yet, we often talk about it as is if it’s a thing. But, as we know, deep down, the best things in life aren’t things, they’re experiences. One of things that makes it so hard to make experience a strategic and actionable part of our work is that the word “experience” means so many things to so many different people across so many aspects of the organization.
We continue to think operationally, which prevents us from feeling empathetically, which stops us from acting experientially.
To CMOs or brand managers, experience may be something creative, whether it’s a campaign, a viral video, an online journey, an event, a physical escapade, fantastic packaging,…
The social media from brands you see is only the tip of the iceberg. Over 90% of social is 1:1
A new report from Spredfast shows how massive the disparity is between how much content you see posted by brands on social media and the vast amount of 1:1 social media customer care they are constantly involved in.
They studied the fourth quarter activity and performance of 50 major brands for their 'state of social' study. One of the most interesting finding in the research is how much of big brand's social content is 1:1 interactions rather than broadcasting to the whole followership.
1:1 Vs 1: many
The research examined every tweet from top brands accounts and sub-accounts (e.g. @ebay and @AskEbay), a total of 1.3 million pieces of content. The results show quite how critical social customer care has become.
Overall, 93% of tweets in 2015 were not meant to be seen by…
How to harness the power of user-generated content
User-generated content, whether customer reviews or visual praise for your product, can serve as superior marketing collateral. With this in mind, brands should harness the power of consumers to maximize the impact of social media marketing efforts.
Social media marketing professionals understand the value of attracting customers. Much time, money, and energy is spent on marketing budgets in order to share quality content, hold product sweepstakes, and invest in attractive landing page designs to increase conversions.
While these and similar efforts play a significant role in boosting social media exposure, the actual direct customer ‘voice’ in the form of user-generated content hasn’t been receiving sufficient attention in social media efforts. This is unfortunate, as content - whether in the form of a product review or a customer-uploaded photo - has immense potential for leveraging social media marketing campaigns.
According to a Social Media Link infographic,…
Brands can now display codes which can be scanned by users to start conversations on Facebook Messenger
Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended source: Facebook's blog
Facebook has announced a raft of new features for its Messenger app that promise to be rather interesting for business, as they offer opportunities for integrating messenger with their existing campaigns and utilising it for answering customer's questions. There are three new tools currently announced, which are: Messenger Codes, Messenger Usernames and Messenger Links.
How do they work?
The new codes for Messenger are just scannable codes which once picked up by your phone's camera automatically start a conversation with the brand that put out the code. Businesses could put them on all sorts of materials, be it online, in store or even business cards. It's kind of like QR codes but Facebook is gambling that by…
Measure your brand's growth rate on social against the industry average
That social networks are still growing rapidly should come as no surprise. In 2014 a quarter of the world's population was active on social media, but by 2018 it is predicted a third of the world will be active. That is a massive increase of almost a billion new people in just 4 years.
The term 'fastest growing' can be defined in a number of ways. If you calculate it in percentage terms, then it will be the newer, smaller social networks that come out on top. For example, if the new social network 'Peach' went from having 10,000 to 100,000 followers in a year then it would have grown at 900%. By this measure, it would be faster growing than a more established network which had growth of 10 million users in a year, even though it had…
The results of our survey on Content Marketing in Europe
In recent years, Content Marketing has been rated by marketers as one of the most effective marketing techniques. Indeed, our survey of Smart Insights readers asking about managing digital marketing in Europe has shown that in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 it was rated as THE most important marketing technique in terms of generating incremental online leads or sales in the year ahead. This has been confirmed in our new piece of research on Content Marketing in Europe in collaboration with HubSpot.
This is now the third consecutive year that we have partnered with HubSpot to gather the opinions of professional content marketers about the key trends affecting the industry and the big challenges they face in…
