Saturday 31 October 2015

3 Fearsome Digital Marketing Tips for Halloween

3 fearsome digital marketing tips for Halloween
The trick-or-treating, mask-wearing, pumpkin-carving celebrations of 31st October are within touching distance.
Here are some simple digital marketing tips for getting into the spirit and winning over your online followers this weekend. No trick, all treat.
Dig out your broomsticks. Fetch the fake fangs. Halloween is just around the corner. Among the the jack-o’-lanterns, fancy dress and excitable kids trick or treating lies the opportunity to capture the imagination of your audience with your online activities. Here are some ideas:

Spookify your social media branding

Google doodles are so popular because they capture a moment in a playful, imaginative and evocative way. Think about what you can do to the visual appearance of your social media channels and emails to get into the spirit of Halloween. That could be as simple as changing the colour theme on your Twitter, finding a suitably spooky image for your background or adding some Halloween puns to your next newsletter.

Run a Halloween-themed competition

Halloween is nothing without pumpkins and fancy dress. Invite your followers to unleash their creative dark side with a competition to find the best jack-o’-lantern or the best costume theme. Your theme can be as poetic or prosaic as you like – go create! You can promote the competition across email and social media, with a well-chosen hashtag to enhance your reach. Boost engagement by whittling down the ten best entries and asking your followers to vote for their favourites.

Don’t forget about the power of visual content

Once you’ve gathered all of that visual content from your competition, put it to good use and create some images and collages to share on each of your channels. Visual content is a big deal on social media. Last year Socialbakers studied 30,000 brand pages on Facebook. Combing through the top 10 percent of each brand’s best performing posts, they found that 87% were photos. Posting a photo on Twitter, meanwhile, can bump retweets by 35 percent.

Over to you…

Exploring a topical theme is a great way to engage your visitors and can give you lots of opportunities to create fresh content.
The trick is to maximise the opportunity and play with Halloween in a way that intersects with your brand, products, services or brand values and that will help you stand out amongst your competitors this weekend!
Happy Halloween!

Friday 30 October 2015

StumbleUpon: The Social Media Underdog [INFOGRAPHIC]

Do you believe in your content? Do you want free traffic from social media? Do you want direct traffic to your website or blog?
If the answer to all of the above three questions were an astounding ‘YES’ then StumbleUpon is your best bet.
In big social media sites like Twitter & Facebook, you are competing for people’s attention. If the users see your updates they still have to click to view your content. In StumbleUpon the users are sent directly to your site. You are not competing for attention or clicks.
Beware, StumbleUpon does not boast the same user volume like the big boys but that should not discourage you from using it. With 30 million active monthly users - a small percentage of traffic is still huge. The social life of a Stumble & Pin can last for years unlike Twitter & Facebook where the attention span only lasts a mere 24 if not 48 hours.

Why Stumble?

  • The social network that delivers the highest traffic is (you guessed it) Facebook but did you know StumbleUpon is the 4th highest traffic driver?
     
  • Getting to the 1st page in Reddit can deliver some knockout traffic but the next day the traffic dries out. Did you know StumbleUpon can deliver 3 times more traffic than Reddit
     
  • StumbleUpon can deliver more traffic than Google+ & LinkedIn combined. Surely, that must be something.
     
  • StumbleUpon can bring in viral traffic like any social media but the overhead here is very less, which is worth the effort. The key to success is people have to like or vote for your content.
     
  • StumbleUpon also has a paid discovery which is super targeted. You can specify gender, age, country, interest or category and device type. The best part of the paid traffic is you can get ongoing free traffic even after the paid campaign is over.
Of course, StumbleUpon may not work very well for everyone; brands and influencers who have a huge Facebook and Twitter following might not need StumbleUpon traffic.
Here is an infographic which shows how to use StumbleUpon created by YourEscapeFrom9to5.com to get the best out of this social media underdog.

stumbleupon-image
Infographic Source: YourEscapeFrom9to5.com

One More Handy Tip

If you are submitting your post or page to StumbleUpon, don’t use the StumbleUpon share button as you will get a default category assigned based on the content which can be a bit of a hit and miss. For example, I had a post on SEO which was classified as Marketing although; this was not way off the mark. I could have gone to StumbleUpon and manually added the page and selected a more accurate category of ‘SEO’. Selecting the right category can make or break your post going viral.

Let’s Stumble, shall we?

StumbleUpon is like a life line especially for new bloggers and new websites – who else delivers free traffic to your door step for such little effort? You can either be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond; StumbleUpon allows you to be a big fish admittedly in a smaller pond but there is plenty of food for the king in the pond. 

4 Seriously Superior Social Media Tools to Manage Your Accounts

Need Social Media Tools? Start Here!

My good friend and colleague, Ian Anderson Grey, wrote an awesome article in cooperation with G2Crowd.
G2Crowd ‘analyzed hundreds of detailed reviews from users of the top Social Media Management software’ and then created this awesome infographic about it. Ian then explained in plain English what it all means and why the top 4 ‘best’ are indeed the best social media management tools.
Here’s the impressive infographic!
The Top 4 Rated Social Media Management Tools of 2015

Infographic brought to you by Seriously Social and G2 Crowd

What Tools Should You Use?

I am in no way, shape or form going to rehash all of the wonderful things Ian explained and touched on in his article. Just go read it here. Each person who manages social media will have a different objective and thus a different need for tools. Depending on your situation, and after reading Ian’s article, I would suggest you try out any or all of these
  • Hootsuite
  • AgoraPulse
  • SproutSocial
  • Sendible
*Full disclosure; I’ve used Hootsuite and I’ve had access to a trial version for both SproutSocial and AgoraPulse. Sendible I’ve never tried.
Why am I sharing with with you then?
I want to give you a few pointers in what to look for when deciding on what tools to use.
About two years ago I wrote about the best social media tool ever

Have you ever paid for a webinar, a conference, a tool or a subscription and you didn’t use it? What good did it do you? No good.
The best social media tool is one you like, understand and use!
Remember this! Don’t let anyone talk you into buying/paying for a tool you don’t understand or don’t need.
the best social media tool is the one you are actually going use

How To Find New Social Media Tools To Use!
(besides trying out the 4 tools pointed out earlier)

  • Ask your peers (“What tool do you use for content curation?”)
  • Sign up for free trials. Even get trials for similar tools and compare for yourself; yet then pick one to use for at least one month.
  • Create a list of social media tools as you heat them being mentioned (use your ‘notes’ app, create a ‘Social Media Tools’ Pinterest board or create a list in List.ly)
  • Follow ‘potential tools’ on Twitter (Put them on a list and check periodically for updates and new features!)
  • Don’t hesitate to upgrade to a paid version if you love a tool. If they are already awesome for free, they are going to rock it even more for the paid version!
  • Check your email! I get offers to try new tools all the time.

What Tools Do I use then?

So I haven’t really told you yet what tools I use, right?

Here is the truth… It changes often.
Ok, I understand you want to know… therefore, here is my most current list of favorite social media management tools.

Management/Scheduling

  • Buffer (paid)
  • Tailwind (paid)
  • Hootsuite
But how about other tools I use to manage my social media accounts? Surely there are other tools I use you ask? There are, so here is the rest of the tools of my trade!

Images/Video

  • Canva for Work (paid)
  • Clipping Magic (paid)
  • PicMonkey (paid)
  • Over
  • iMovie
  • SlideShare

Content Curation

  • Feedly
  • Facebook Trending Topics
  • Twitter Trending Topics
  • Daily (from Buffer)

Account Management

  • DropBox (paid)
  • Crowdfire
  • SocialQuant
  • SocialBro

Additional Tools


Before I go, I want to tell you a quick story to illustrate the importance of starting small, with basic tools. Before you immerse yourself in a bunch of tools it is important to know and understand what type of learner you are and what task you need done. Each tool will look different to everyone depending on if they are a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner as some people love a full dashboard, big buttons and lots of bells and whistles where others get lost when they see those!
In a social media training session about two years ago I had a hard time explaining Hootsuite to my class. This was a group training and my computer was hooked up to a TV so everyone could follow along. This one person was very verbal (read: getting agitated) and explained they just didn’t understand what Hootsuite did, the potential it had and how using it daily could benefit them, and most people in class that day looked confused. After another frustrating 5 minutes, I opened a new tab on my computer and went to Twitter.com to illustrate a point.
Then magic happened!
Turns out, this person has never, ever logged into Twitter and the rest of the class had never really explored Twitter.com either.
They skipped point A & B and they’d gone to C only to get lost! Once we figured that out, we were back in business and I switched to teaching basic Twitter 101.

Tools are only going to be useful and helpful if you understand the basics of social media.
Tools won’t ever be able to replace planning a strategy, tactics and setting up campaigns and tools certainly can’t think for you.
Tools won’t replace common sense, kindness and common courtesy either.
In essence, tools are tools and should never fully replace human interaction on social media.
It isn’t called social media for nothing!

Wednesday 28 October 2015

4 ways brands can tell an authentic story

authentic


People are instinctively drawn to brands that are considered more authentic than their competitors. How can your brand win?

Authentic stories help you build emotional connections with customers. But how can you relate your stories back to the target audience?
Below are four tactics that can help add a layer of authenticity to your content marketing.

Start with a clear purpose

Many writers say that there is really only one rule for good writing: show, don't tell. It means that in order to convince your readers, make sure to demonstrate what you offer with details. But before you add detailed information, you have to think what you want to convey in the story.
Similarly, when you create a story for your brand, you need to start with a clear purpose and then build content around that purpose so readers can imagine and care about your story.
purpose
“The clearer brands are about their purpose, the more they can use that as a filter for decisions and interactions in advertising. If brands do not have a clear agenda, consumers will not know how to evaluate them,” says Brandon Murphy, chief strategy officer at agency 22squared.
Refinery29, a hybrid of content and e-commerce shopping, is a good example in this regard. The company positions itself as a destination for stylish women. Then it develops content around subjects that this demographic cares about: fashion, living, beauty, health and entertainment et cetera.
The site had 15.9 million unique visitors in March of this year, up 9.2 million from the same period a year prior.
refinary29-mission
In 2014, 83 percent of Refinery29’s revenue (approximately more than $50 million) came from native advertising, according to the company. It shows that Refinery29 readers and shoppers really buy into the brand’s purpose.

Encourage consumers to get involved

Once you have a clear purpose, you should study your audience’s behaviors and develop content that benefits the target community.
“When we develop authentic content for our clients, we do lots of research to build cultural footprint to understand what’s happening in their target community and where we can provide value,” says Trevor Guthrie, co-founder of agency Giant Spoon that handles GE’s media strategy and execution.
Guthrie gives an example of GE’s 12-foot brisket smoker in South by Southwest (SXSW) last year. The giant BBQ cooker was designed to demonstrate the connection between GE’s high-tech industrial systems and data analytics in an easy-to-understand way.
Inside the smoker, five sensors constantly measured the temperature, humidity and smoke velocity. These stats showed up in real time on a nearby screen. Attendees could tweet out their experience with the hashtag #BBQqscience.
“How could GE communicate with SXSW attendees? We figured that everyone in Austin knew BBQ,” Guthrie says. “GE researchers and scientists gave their point of view around craft BBQ and we saw authentic conversations happening there.”
Of course, you may not have the budget to build a big eye-catching project like GE. But you can use consumers’ social footprint to promote your products and services. For example, you can ask consumers to submit photos on social, or encourage them to share whatever they are passionate about.
“It doesn’t necessarily need to be a big complicated ad campaign. Sometimes you just need to think ‘what are the reasons people may want to talk about us?’ and then give them the trigger,” 22squared’s Murphy says.

Unleash the power of influencer marketing

In order to connect with consumers more directly, more organically and at scale, you need to make sure your voice is not just yours. One way to do this is influencer marketing.
A May 2015 study by marketing research firm Schlesinger Associates shows that 69 percent of more than 600 marketing professionals said that that their influencer engagement strategy was effective, and 84 percent expected to launch at least one campaign involving an influencer in the next 12 months.
Many major brands have adopted this tactic. In June of this year, Dr Pepper collaborated with social-influencer marketing startup Speakr to launch an influencer marketing campaign across Vine, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Periscope.
The campaign tapped into popular show "Lip Sync Battle" to celebrate #OneofaKindLipSync. Speakr’s social influencers posted on different platforms and invited their followers to join them at the Lip Sync Booth in Times Square.
The campaign generated more than one million social engagements within a week after its debut.

 Other brands like Sour Patch Kids and Nine West also teamed up with influencers to disseminate content to the people who care.
Honesty helps
When you have a clear purpose and build content around that purpose, you need to be transparent about how to live up to your purpose. In other words, it’s fine to admit your weakness and mistakes.
“Most of the time consumers feel more loyal to a brand when the brand is honest about its problems,” Murphy says.
Honesty gives a brand a human touch. Car-rental service Avis’ iconic “We Try Harder” tagline lasted for 50 years before it was replaced by "It's Your Space” in 2012. “We Try Harder” didn’t hide the brand’s number two status at the time.
The campaign was a huge success for Avis, helping the company go from losing $3.2 million to turning a profit of $1.2 million for the first time in 13 years.
avis-we-try-harder
People are instinctively drawn to brands that are considered more authentic than their competitors. In order to stand out, you have to be clear on your purpose and give your audience the ability to tell their own stories about your brand. And, of course, you will get more business with honest marketing.

Tuesday 27 October 2015

Why Machine Learning Will Dominate Video Marketing

machine learning and video marketing

In today’s digital landscape, marketers are increasingly using video to connect with consumers. A whopping 93% of marketers are already using video and 70% of marketers plan to increase their video marketing budgets. With that in mind, it’s already time to think ahead of just using video in marketing efforts, it’s time to think about how to use video more effectively. Now that video creation has become accessible to everyone, through DIY video creation tools, more and more brands are flocking to video. Consumers alike prefer watching video to reading text and are more likely to purchase a product after seeing a demo video. What brands need to attempt to do now is increase video engagement levels.

What is Machine Learning
Machine learning is a hot buzzword that refers to an artificial intelligence (AI) that is similar to data mining in that the computer system searches through data to look for patterns. Where machine learning differs is that it takes these patterns to “learn” and adjust programs accordingly, without the need of human intervention. A great example of machine learning is Facebook’s News Feed. When a user Likes or Comments on a Friend’s wall, the program learns to show the user more of that friend’s content.

How Does Machine Learning Relate to Video
Machine learning can enhance video engagement levels because it can identify what audience responds to what type of content. In essence, machine learning can be used to identify which demographics engage with which type and which part of video content. It also tracks and analyzes video comments and shares, and in the process it learns what drives people to watch this video and which audiences have the highest engagement levels.
Furthermore, machine learning can identify which objects in the video that users respond to more and predict future video watching habits. What people watch can predict what they will watch in the future as well. A great example of this is when Netflix analyzes our viewing habits and offers suggestions on titles they predict we will enjoy.
What This Means for Brands
Machine learning is revolutionizing the way brands market through video. Video content creators and marketers alike can have a new way of understanding what the consumers watches and responds to in videos. They can know what consumers find more appealing and want to watch. Machine learning can identify patterns and create predictions for what consumers will want to watch, which can help marketers get ahead of video trends to capture their consumer’s attention.
Using this type of programmatic analysis is soon going to be vital to any video marketing strategy. It will not be enough that a brand simply uses video; they will be expected to analyze and predict user behavior, anticipating video trends for the future as well.


Source

Monday 26 October 2015

The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing


Social media loves creativityand anyone who plans and implements a marketing campaign for these platforms must understand this. Great content and media must be engaging, compelling, and, yes, creative. If you want to get solid results from your social media marketing, here are some key Do’s and Don’ts.

The Do’s

  1. Focus on Quality not Quantity
Posting on social media should be regular and relatively often. However, given a choice between quality and quantity, always go for quality. You will lose followers if your stuff is dull and boring and has nothing new to excite and engage them. Part of quality is promoting the personality of the business, the owner, and the team. About 80% of the content on social media should build relationships and brand awareness. The other 20% should be directly promotional, offering discounts, free trials, promo codes, even announcing a new product or service.
  1. Build a Community on Each Platform
Your ultimate goal is to build a loyal group of people who are eager to promote your brand by sharing your post. The larger your community, the wider your exposure. And you can continue to cultivate the most loyal and influential members of your community by offering them exclusive discounts that they can share with a few friends. When you keep building your online community, you increase traffic. Increased traffic means increased conversions/sales.  Win-win.
  1. Make Use of the Newer Tools for Interactive User Experiences
O.K., your creative designers. Get online and view some of the new interactive tools for engaging your audience in videos and infographics; use surveys, polls, and quizzes. Give your audience an experience not just information. Check out QzzrPiktoChartCanvaPlaceIt – they are free and super easy to use.
  1. Add images to Twitter Posts
Now that Twitter is allowing images, take advantage of their use by adding some visuals to your teasers for your blogposts, discounts, etc. Recent research shows that this can increase re-tweets by as much as 150%.
  1. Determine Your Level of Understanding
How much do you really know about social media marketing? If you know how to tweet or share something on Facebook but don’t have specific experience with the marketing aspect of social media, you will need to do a lot of reading or alternatively take take quick and effective online training course. There are self-paced online training programs, and if you are a quick learner you should be up and running in no time. Remember, that all the creativity in the world is worth nothing if you don’t know how to use it correctly.
  1. Test Headlines and Images
A/B testing is nothing new. One way to implement this in your marketing campaign is to experiment with two different headlines and/or images on the same blog post. Determine which draws more traffic and place that one on Facebook and Twitter. Doing this will also help you determine the types of headlines and images that will draw better traffic in the future.
  1. Post When Your Content is Likely To Be Seen
Knowing when to post should boost your engagement rates as your content gets in front the most eyeballs out there. Posting on Facebook is best on Thursdays and Fridays, especially between noon and 1 p.m. The broader time frame for any day is between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. Tweets are best posted between 12-1 p.m. and 5-6p.m. of the followers’ time zone. Obviously, if followers are in multiple time zones, re-tweets should occur for those zones as well. B2B tweets do best on weekdays and B2C tweets do better on weekends. For LinkedIn, Tuesday between 10-11 a.m. is best, and avoiding Mondays and Fridays is smart.

The Don’ts

And now to the bads. Here’s a short list of huge no-nos when it comes to executing a winning social media marketing strategy.
  1. Don’t Post Just to Post
If you don’t have a great topic idea, or cannot come up with a creative angle, try these online tools and apps to stimulate your thinking. But if nothing comes to you, just don’t post anything because you have to.
  1. Don’t Engage in Like-Baiting
If you are unfamiliar with this term, it refers to those who craft killer headlines followed by very poor content and low-quality images. You may get a few “likes” but overall, your follower will begin to see this as spam and will un-follow pretty quickly.
  1. Don’t Buy Like and Followers.
This is risky business indeed. You can buy them but you cannot control what they say, and they really don’t care either. This can be damaging to your reputation and performance metrics.
  1. Don’t Ignore Comments of Followers
Try to respond to them quickly. Offering short consultation and customer support (not only to your customers) makes you and your brand look more human, helpful and increase the trust levels with your potential clients.
  1. Don’t Deceive or Exaggerate
Witchery, a clothing company wanted to promote its new line of men’s clothing. It produced a YouTube video of a girl holding up a men’s jacket, imploring the audience to help her find the man whose jacket it was, because she obviously had an interest in him. The video went viral. When viewers discovered that it was just a promotion, they were angry. Witchery reputation was seriously injured. Lesson learned, right?
  1. Don’t Ignore Your Online Reputation
You need to stay abreast of what others are saying about you on social media, so that you can quickly respond to complaints and issues. They will not always show up on your page or feed. “Cotton-On’s,” a company that makes infants’ clothing, was unaware that there was a bit of an uproar on social media about some of the sayings it had imprinted its clothing. By the time it became a TV news item, the damage was done. All the company could do was pull the offensive items and apologize. It was almost too late.

Sunday 25 October 2015

5 Signs Digital Marketing is Replacing Traditional Media Read

Traditional media versus digital marketing

Why would a company remove their office address from a brochure or ask for marketing material to be developed that will never go to print? Why would a marketing piece be written in a way that assumes the reader will only peruse the subheads and perhaps a few bullet points?
These requests are real, so what is prompting companies to dramatically revise the way they are choosing to communicate? The answer is more straightforward than you might think. Taken out of context, these demands may seem a little offbeat, but they actually reflect an important shift towards digital media. As digital marketing slowly subsumes some traditional forms of communication, companies are learning to adapt their marketing material to reach audiences in new ways.
The cues are everywhere. Here are a few we are seeing and believe are 5 signs that digital marketing is replacing traditional media.

1. Office addresses disappear

Companies are doing away with their physical office location(s) on marketing material. Instead, they are asking for three reference pieces of information in documents created in interactive Portable Document Format (PDF), a format that supports features such as hyperlinks and buttons:
  • the company name
  • the company website with a hyperlink
  • the company phone number with a link that will open a phone dialer
The shift is proof that for some businesses, technology is making geographic location irrelevant. Companies can service and communicate with clients all over the world, and they want their literature to transcend references to a physical location.

2. Interactive PDFs

Now more than ever, brochures are created as interactive PDFs which assume readers will view them on their desktop, tablet or mobile device. A high resolution rendering of a document on screen opens up a host of visual options not available in print. For some organizations, printable versions are almost an afterthought, sometimes used only for a conference display table. Rather, the marketing strategy is simply to send brochures that are both visual and interactive and then push for a meeting.

3. Uber thin fonts

In marketing material, there are often font combinations that contrast paragraph text from subheads or headings. For example, you might see all of the subheads in a sans serif font (fonts without little projections at the tips of the letters) and the paragraph text in a complimentary serif font (fonts with the decorative tips at the ends of the letters). The combination gives the piece visual appeal and sets apart important headings.

font combinations used in digital marketing

With digital delivery of marketing material, it is possible to use extremely thin fonts which convey a crisp, sophisticated look. These types of fonts are more challenging to use in print, especially over a dark background. An example of a popular combination we like to use in interactive PDFs is Helvetica Neue UltraLight and Georgia.

4. 24/7 digital marketing requests

The workday is on a global 24-hour clock, and client requests even extend through the weekend. It’s really no surprise. Proofs are exchanged electronically. The cloud helps creative teams work from anywhere. We have reached out to firms in other countries and timezones to help us with our work. Platforms such as Upwork, have freelancers from all over the world that actively bid on projects. The payment portal and user experience are almost effortless, and in some ways easier than traditional billing and payment cycles.
Sometimes clients put work requests in on a Friday evening, and even with several rounds of revisions throughout the weekend, the finished product is ready on Monday. I personally don’t believe digital marketing is meant to fit neatly into Monday to Friday office hours, and why not take advantage of a global talent pool for project work?

5. Less, more impactful content

It’s not a coincidence that platforms like BuzzFeed, a social news and entertainment network, and Snapchat, a social messaging app, have huge user growth. They offer imagery, immediacy and in the case of Snapchat, the ability to post a “snap” that even disappears after it is viewed. They remind us how brief the period of time is that a digital marketer has to capture someone’s attention.
Companies see the same trends and observe clients quickly scanning their marketing materials if the brochure is even read at all. The challenge for content creators in the digital age is to write less frequent, more impactful content. If concepts can be represented visually or interactively, they will more easily catch the reader’s attention for a marketing edge.
There’s no doubt that when it comes to marketing, change is all around us. Companies are thinking more about who they want to reach and how. With a suite of digital tools available, getting a message out has never been easier. Ideating content good enough to rise above the marketing noise and captivate an audience – that’s as hard as ever.


Saturday 24 October 2015

Engage and Hook Your Customers in 3 Easy Steps

How_to_engage_your_customers

So how do you engage and hook your customers into your brand and business?
Well before we can truly answer that question effectively, we need to understand why customers engage.
To which there are two simple reasons…
1. They were made to feel special. They were made to feel the centre of attention and the most important customer in the world.
2. They received something of interest to them at the right time.
So, now we know why customers engage how can we capitalise on that? Well in a recent post, What’s more effective for eCommerce – Email or SMS Marketing? I talked about 3 rules you should follow when marketing to your customers.
Make it personal. Make it relevant. Make it on time.
And by following these simple rules you will be able to engage and hook your customers.
Making it personal
Marketing your business/brand in a personal way can be tricky, you want to get your message seen and read by all of your customers, but how can you do this in a personal way without breaking the bank or working double over time?
This is where mobile marketing can be the answer to all your prayers. The mobile phone is a personal device, so by texting your customers your message you are already a step ahead of content marketing or dropping an email into a customer’s spam folder.
However by using their first name in the text you will be to connect to your customers on a higher level of personalisation. Imagine getting a text message from your favourite brand addressed to you…
“Hi Jake – just to let you know we have the brand new range of Nike trainers in-store today that we think you will love! Drop in and see us or visit us online here www…..”
Making it relevant
Make the content relevant. For example as a male, am I really going to want to know about a new range of dresses being released? So segment your customers into separate contact groups.
Use your sales to influence your messages… For example, Jake has just bought a new pair of basketball trainers…
“Hi Jake – Just to let you know we have a great new selection of basketball clothing in-store, some great tops and shorts – drop in and see us or visit us online www…..”
Making it on time
So Jake is not going to want to know about all your great new basketball gear at 4 in the morning. Every customer is different, but look at what time of day most of your purchases are made and start to send messages in and around that time.
Record your results and see what works
As said earlier, every customer is different. However by testing different offersdifferent opening lines, and different times to send your message – you will soon learn and see what your average customer likes.
Don’t be put off by opt-outs and unsubscribes, you are always going to get them. The people who remain opted in are far more important and the ones you should concentrate on – so start engaging your customers!