Welcome, and thank you for coming today…we’ve got a great session planned, with a little bit of marketing theory, a whole lot of practical marketing tips. This session is about how you can use email marketing and social media to grow your business or organization.[click to next slide]
THIS SLIDE IS HIDDEN BUT INTENDED TO MAKE IT EASY FOR YOU TO SWITCH AND USE THIS IF YOU ARE SPEAKING TO A PREDOMINANTLY NONPROFIT GROUP…. Welcome, and thank you for coming today…we’ve got a great session planned, with a little bit of marketing theory, a whole lot of practical marketing tips. This session is about how you can use email marketing and social media to grow your business or organization.[click to next slide]
Presenter should introduce themselves. RDDs should mention Constant Contact ALEs would mention their own company and clarify their relationship to Constant Contact.(Ask people in the room if any of them have ever attended a previous seminar. If there are a lot,Clarify that this is new content but that some of the same strategies we have taught in the past still applySo they might see a few familiar strategies or tips along the way. (Then mention the workbook – explain what it is, briefly, and let them know that you will refer to itThroughout the session with short exercises for them to complete. Next ask …)How many people in the room are small businesses or work for a small business?How many are nonprofits ….on purpose (they will laugh) relate to the room that you know it’s been a tough year for some and that the informationCovered in the session should help them start to move the needle.
This slide should give you a chance to quickly introduce the Constant Contact suite of products to your audience.Many will not know we have all of these, so it’s a great and short commercial.
Marketing has changed….maybe you’ve noticed? How many of you use [click to build] Facebook for business? How many are on Linked In? Twitter? Anyone tweetingright now? (remind of twitter handle) [click to build] Who uses Pinterest? Instagram? YouTube?[click to build] And how many have checked your email today? (all hands up) …. [click to next slide]Mobile stat from: research from:email open by platform: https://litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-stats-infographic-june-2012
Look at this stat, just out recently – there are about 6 billion people on the planet and 4.8 billion have a mobile device, A cell phone. [CLICK] only 4.2 billion have a toothbrush. Think about that for a second. [CLICK] It’s important that yourMarketing is mobile-friendly. We know that approximately 38% of people read their email and social media interactionsOn a mobile device. That’s almost 40%. You don’t want those people to miss your message or to have difficulty “getting” the message. So watch for this icon throughout the presentation today as we’ll try to keep mobile top-of-mindAs we go through the strategies and tactics for getting more out of your marketing efforts.Mobile stat from: research from:email open by platform: https://litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-stats-infographic-june-2012
So, as I said before, marketing has changed….Some of the change is obvious, but I want to talk briefly about one of the subtle changes that affectsYou, and your ability to grow your business using all of the new online tools and that is a basicShift in the way you may find and keep customers with today’s business climate. [click to show first triangle on left]Look at this model – it a typical sales funnel, using traditional marketing methods, things like print ads, radio, television, direct mail. This model is all about your reach – reaching out to FIND new customers. it’s bigger at the top, which is where you spend alot your time, your money and your energy in this model. And…it makes sense. Your reach out to as many people as you can, convert a certain percentage into paying customers and keep even fewer of those people – mainly because so much of your time, money and energy went into the reach. It’s a standard, sales, numbers game and it makes sense. We are all familiar with this model – the problem with this traditional funnel is that it’s expensive – those ads cost a lot of money and it’s hard for a small company or organization to compete in this landscape. [click to next triangle]So let’s look at what new marketing tools have done to the funnel – when you begin to use new marketing tools,Like email marketing and facebook, linked in, twitter, events, surveys, etc… you reach to people you already know.On the left, the funnel, it’s all about reaching out to strangers. New marketing is about reaching out to peopleThat already know you… you reach out, on a regular basis, with information and offers that are relevant to yourContacts and it turns out that if you do it right – and after today’s session, you should have a pretty good idea about how to do this – you will actually begin to convert more people than you are reaching to, because of the forward button andSocial share links. You grow your base, your business through repeat business and referrals – at the end of this marketingDay, turns out you keep a lot more of your existing customers so you don’t need as many strangers, and it costs less and takes less time and energy. [click] this is called flipping the funnel. And it’s a fundamental change in the wayMost small business owners think about their marketing – but it works. We see it working every day.Mobile stat from: research from:email open by platform: https://litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-stats-infographic-june-2012
Let’s talk about referral business a minute. Word-of-mouth is all about engagement. It used to be, when we had a good or a bad experience with a company we might tell a friend, or a neighbor [click] maybe over the back fence. And we’ve all heard that old stat that the person you tell will end up telling 11 other people… or 22…or whatever it was last time you heard that.But in our changing world, now, when you tell someone – you’re very often telling them on facebook or linked in or twitterAnd many many more people are hearing about our experiences. And if it’s a good experience, they are clicking to learn more about the company that delivered.
One of the best things I can tell you is that, as a small business or a nonprofit, you actually have an advantage over “big business” in this new era of marketing – it is specific to your use of email and social media marketing. You have an advantage because you can be the face of the company, the person people associate with that business or organization. You can be your authentic self. Best Buy cannot do that. Pepsi cannot do that. Today we’re going to talk about some of the ways you can leverage this advantage and also take some of the mystery out of online marketing strategies and how email and social media can help you grow your business.[click to next slide]
Your new best friends are the forward button on your emails, the share and retweet buttons on social mediaand [click to build] the social share bar – (show a social share bar, up close if possible, on a CTCT email). If you were to scroll to the bottom of this email you’d also see [click to build] buttons allowing readers to follow the business on three different social media channels.Let’s look closer at this example. It looks good, nice layout, graphics, etc…Is marketing simply looking good? Having a pretty email?No, clearly there’s more to it…you want to look good, but colors and pictures and branding alone aren’t what make it “marketing.”[click to next slide]
I want to give you a simple definition, or a framework, for what marketing really is.You already know, generally, what it is – but when I say the word marketing, I mean something very very specific and it’s important that we are on the same page with real marketing. My definition of marketing has three simple parts – you define an audience, so a group of people that you want to target. You reach out to them with a message that is specific to that audience. And you elicit a physical and measurable response. A click, a reply, a call, a purchase, a referral – these are all actions that represent a decision made by a human to react to your message. So let’s put this in a framework that we can work with. Steps to follow to know that you are really marketing.[click to next slide]
We’re going to do this brief exercise to get down on paper a basic framework for real marketing. And everytime you sit down to plan or actually execute your own marketing plans, you can measure it against this simple framework. This basic framework for real marketing has three simple steps.[click] number one, set marketing goals and objectives – seems obvious, right? But you’d be surprised by how often people will execute their marketing without a tangible goal in mind.[click] run campaigns on the channels that matter – we will go over what a campaign is, in simple terms, during today’s session and we’ll also talk about how to figure out what channels matter – channels, meaning email, facebook, twitter, you tube, etc…[click] get measurable results – and again, that word measurable is keySo take a minute to write down these three steps just to know you have it for measuring your marketing going forward.[click to next slide]
And, as it happens, this simple framework will also serve as our agenda for the rest of the session. We will go through these steps and you’ll put down some ideas for your own marketing initiatives that fit into this framework.
Marketing “GOALS” are something that we all have, and they are fairly standard across the board for all businesses or nonprofit organizations because you’re in business to do something, and at the highest level that’s what these are.[click to build] Another way to think about these is that they are the “30,000 foot view” of marketing…very much part of your marketing strategy. But what we’re here to do today is come down a bit, and get more specific. [click to next slide]
What is really more helpful when you’re planning your marketing is to think in terms of OBJECTIVES,which will require you to get much more specific. Look at some examples of objectives you want to set for a specific marketing effort…[click to build] drive donations[click to build] move last season’s inventory[click to build] or fill your seats on a Sunday evening[click to next slide]
You may be able to juggle more than one of objectiveat a time, but for today’s session let’s focus and choose just one…Working with a one objective at a time can make it easier to ensure that you’re getting the most out of the steps we’re going to be outlining later as we discuss campaigns and channels. It also makes it easier for the people you’re targeting to take action and help you actually get the results you want. [click to next slide]
B2B VERSION, WITH FINAL BUILD BEING B2B-FOCUSEDIn short, what we want to do is talk about marketing OBJECTIVES,which will require you to get much more specific. Look at some examples of objectives you want to set for a specific marketing effort…[click to build] drive donations[click to build] fill your seats on a Sunday evening[click to build] or deliver content to tradeshow leadsNotice how these are all much more specific? The more specific you can be with your objective the better…[click to next slide]
B2B VERSION, WITH FINAL BUILD BEING B2B-FOCUSEDSome of you in the audience may find that you’re able to juggle more than one of objectiveat a time, but for today’s session focus in and choose just one…Why just one? Because the focus you enjoy by having just one will make it easier to ensure that you’re getting the most out of the steps we’re going to be outlining later as we discuss campaigns and channels.[click to next slide]
NP VERSION, WITH FINAL BUILD BEING NP-FOCUSEDIn short, what we want to do is talk about marketing OBJECTIVES,which will require you to get much more specific. Look at some examples of objectives you want to set for a specific marketing effort…[click to build] deliver content to tradeshow leads[click to build] fill your seats on a Sunday evening[click to build] or drive donationsNotice how these are all much more specific? The more specific you can be with your objective the better…[click to next slide]
NP VERSION, WITH FINAL BUILD BEING NP-FOCUSEDSome of you in the audience may find that you’re able to juggle more than one of objectiveat a time, but for today’s session focus in and choose just one…Why just one? Because the focus you enjoy by having just one will make it easier to ensure that you’re getting the most out of the steps we’re going to be outlining later as we discuss campaigns and channels.[click to next slide]
Alright…grab your workbook, and let’s put together another piece of the puzzle[click to build] first, write down at least one objective[click to build] Next, answer the three questions that help you make sure it’s a “good” objective…Will achieving this objective help my business grow?Is this objective attainable?How will I measure it or my progress towards it?I’m going to give you a few minutes to do this…and then I’ll ask some of you to share your ideas with the room[give this about a 2 minutes]Do you all have at least one objective written down? (encourage sharing at their table if they are grouped, or ask people to volunteer to share theirs with the whole class,Encourage discussion, responses to their ideas or offer your own input – do not be negative! Support their ideasAnd keep it light)[click to next slide]
So we’ve gone over goals and objectives, you know what you are trying to achieve – so let’s talk about step number 2Run Campaigns on the channels that matter[click to next slide]
First, let’s talk about “campaigns” - -what does that word really mean? Very simply there are two parts to a campaign…first, you [click to build] push out some sort of content (and we’ll talk more about “what content” in a bit) to your followers, supporters, etc.second, you hope to [click to build] “pull” some sort of response from them – you want them to read, forward or share what you sent, show up, call, attend – you want them to take an action of some sortThink about a campaign in terms of push/pull and more importantly do not think about it as just putting anOffer out there and making the sale… in this new marketing world, it’s more like a conversation – which lendsitself to that advantage we talked about that you have over big business. As a small company, you canengage in a conversation that feels and in fact IS much less like a sales gimmick and more like nurturing a relationship.If you’re doing it right, it will seem like that from both sides of that conversation.Let’s look at some examples of campaign types to help you get a better idea…[click to next slide]
There are a lot of different types of campaigns you can run…here are just a few of the more common ones:[click to build] the “Welcome” campaign – this is actually very important…welcoming those people who are new to your list or organization…[click to build] here are some other common types of campaigns…Don’t forget, you can also send “campaigns” that are as simple as a “Thank You for your business” or “Happy New Year.” Sometimes those will get you the greatest level of engagement.There aren’t really any surprises here, I know that you are aware of these types of campaigns, but it canBe helpful to have them listed in front of you while you are planning your own marketing for a freshApproach or maybe adding a piece to an already engaged marketing plan. So let’s go a little deeper intothe basics of “how” – you may have a campaign in mind but sitting in front of a blank page can be intimidatingor – a great excuse to procrastinate … [click to next slide]
This is one of the biggest hurdles that most people have to jump. Luckily, the answer can be very simple. [click] first, and above all else, you write about what you know that they don’t know. You share your knowledge and raise your profile as an expert in your field. Next [click] you write about what you have access to that they don’t have access to – and you have more access than you might think. This can mean that you let them download a special report, give them backstage passes, early registration, reserved or special seating, an extra hour of your time when they pay for two… and give it away when you can. What you are trying to do is build what is called a resource relationship, Where when their need for what you do comes up, YOU are the person that comes to mind. Give it away – your knowledge and your access, when you can.[click] and you don’t have to be prolific, writing original material every time. You just need to be the hub or the point of access. So send links to other sources, know your stuff and they will see you as their resource(If you have a longer session, this is a great time to ask people in the audience what they do for a livingand give them some ideas for content so that you get the room thinking in these terms)(Also if you have a longer session, you can give an example of a business that “gives away the farm” and drives business doing so)[click to next slide]
(ask if anyone in the class wants to get a long email from anyone else in the class. No one will raise their hand.) No one has ever raised their hand. If you are a church, a chamber of commerce or a school, you probably have long emails and we are all okay with getting those. Our children and our businesses rely on you and we want to see activity – we are willing to get a long email from you. (right? Ask the crowd) …we don’t read them, but it’s okay that we see them.So take the pressure to create or write off of yourself. [click] Less is more. Always.There is no rule that says your newsletter needs to have three articles, three pictures and three links. One thing is plenty. There is a Constant Contact customer whose newsletter is called One Thing – he did it to make it easy on himself and it works really well – people can absorb it and he’s not under the gun to come up with a bunch of content to fill it.[click] and don’t forget that almost 40% are reading it on a mobile device…who is going to scroll through fourteen articles?{additional talking points if you have time]Your emails and their social media activities are NOT for telling people everything that they do. That is part of the hole people dig for themselves when they start writing their emails, they try to say everything. That is not what your emails and social media posts are for. That’s what your website is for. Your emails and your social media is about offering one thing at a time and tracking whether or not it moved the needle. Plain and simple.Mobile stat from: research from:email open by platform: https://litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-stats-infographic-june-2012
Here are some examples of what others are doing. These are examples from Constant Contact customerswith great looking campaigns with simple, easy to absorb content and obvious actions to take.(speaker, you can go one by one but it’s more likely that you’ll just click quickly through these …)non-profit, sharing information about themselves that’s in the pressrestaurant sharing their current specialslooks like a non-profit, sharing and event noticeB2B, showcasing the services they haveanother event notice…[click to next slide]
And remember to reuse and repurpose everything – one article can be used many times, on various channels.You might write 5 tips for cleaning out your closet and each tip can be tweeted, once a day for a week… post Before and after pics on pinterest, repost the most popular tip the following week – bring them back.There is a lot of mileage in every piece of content you put out.
Your campaign might include a special offer – I wanted to give you some examples of offers, again – just to kick start your own planning and creativity. [click through these samples, letting people see them as ideas]discounts (what most people think of)e-books or downloadable contentserviceshints + tipsexperiences or eventssupport a causeSpeaker Note: might want mention a couple of specific (local) examples, for example: “Download our free Spring Gardening guide” or “Free Tradeshow Booth consultation” or something like that…[click to next slide]
Pictures are becoming more and more relevant in social and email marketing – so many of us are walking around with a camera in our pockets – this doesn’t have to mean high end production anymore. If you have highly visual content or great photos of products or your events or whatever you are marketing, you will want to check out some of the channels that are geared more toward photos and video. Some of those include Instagram, pinterest, you tube – many consumers are beginning to shop and play on these channels so it may be worth a look to test whether or not what you are marketing would work well on these channels.Notice that we include email here – email is becoming more and more of a “visual medium” as well (including video!)…Instagram is a great storytelling medium – people share pictures of themselves or a product in a context – not just a train, but their son having fun watching trains at the National Heritage Museum. One key here is - KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE – if you own a business that can show off product visually, you can do more with a headline and a photo than the most carefully crafted copy. And if you’re a consultant or service provider? Share your know how. Write a blog post about what you know how to do, pick an image that reinforces it, and pin it, post it, tweet it. Constant Contact did a test with Facebook promotions of webinars and found that when they used an image rather than just s text, they saw a 127% lift in engagement with those posts. It’s worth a try.AND BE SURE TO LINK BACK TO YOUR WEB PAGE OR FACEBOOK PAGE…WHEREVER YOU WANT THEM TO KEEP ENGAGING WITH YOU!!
Here are some interesting stats that help illustrate the value of a picture -- According to Facebook, a post that includes a video sees 100% more engagement than a post alone. A post with a picture sees 120% more engagement AND – if you include a whole photo album, you can expect 180% more engagement.SIDE NOTE IF NEEDEDWe’re all aware that Facebook likes to make changes to how it works…and that applies to the algorithm that they use which determines what posts get delivered to friends and fans. So…be aware of when Facebook mentions changes to their algorithm…and be aware of whether or not you can make adjustments to your approach to optimize the visibility and engagement of your posts.)
Channels include email, social media sites like those represented here, if you want to go into a more traditional area, you might consider radio, tv or print ads, direct mail. If cost is an issue, you’ll get more return on your time, money and energy by going first through email and subsequently through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Each has its own typical audience and decision process. You want to start where you already are, and then begin to move to where your customers and contacts are so that you can leverage the existing network you have on those sites and begin to generate some social visibility along the way.To be clear, email IS part of social media.
When you combine email with social media, the combination will both increase the reach of your email campaigns that enjoy 97% deliverability (it’s actually a even higher with Constant Contact but on average that is a standard rate). And if you’re doing it right, keeping it short, making the action or response obvious and simple and providing access, information and real value then you will grow your business.
Let’s do another planning exercise. Think about the types of campaigns we talked about, and the offers and channels we went over. First, write down what kind of campaign you want to try. Write down what kind of offer you might make and then consider which channel make sense for that kind of campaign and offer.[give this about 3-5 minutes]If you have time, ask a few people to share their ideas and get feedback from the groupDo you all have at least a couple of ideas written down? Great! Now, let’s talk about…[click to next slide]
Now that you have a general idea of what you’re going to try, I want to give you some insight into what works, how to get more people to stop and consider your offer and how to get more physical, measurable response. This is my favorite part of this class. Look at these three words. These three words rule your world as a marketer and as a consumer or business person. Every email or social media post that you get and every one that you send or post falls into one of these three categories. Now. Later. Or Never.Think about this morning when you checked your email. Whether you were aware of it or not, you were sorting your messages into these three categories automatically. Now, later, never.And I apologize now for bringing this to your attention and making it a conscious experience for you now. For the next two or three days, when you go through your email, you will find yourself saying it out loud, “now, later, later, never, never, never” and you’ll want to curse me for making something that was seamless now very obvious to you. It will go away. But it’s important that you know that – you need to know this both as a recipient and as a sender or poster. How do you make sure that you are a now? You don’t want to be never – obviously. And a later, let’s face it, is a well-intentioned never. Right? You flag it or tell yourself, “oh, I’ll come back to that” but 9 times out of 10…do you? (they will usually laugh and say no)There are three fundamental things that factor into whether someone notices and reacts to your campaigns:P[click[ who sent it[click] the subject line, or the headline[click] and your timing – meaning when you sent it or posted it[click to next slide]
So how do you win the battle of priorities and get more people to stop and open your email or to stop and read your facebook post or your tweet or to share your pin on pinterest? Turns out, who the message or offer is from is extremely important. Think about how you sort your email – or if you’re on facebook, think about the newsfeed. Typically when you open up your email – think about it this morning – you start at the top of the list and you go down, sorting by who it’s from.WHO the email or the social media post came from turns out to be the most important part of winning the battle of priorities. You do it based on WHO, so it’s important for you to [click to build] be recognizable…– and whether you’re recognized across the channels you’re using. If you send your emails using your name, but your Facebook page shows up in people’s newsfeeds as your business name, people might not make the connection. We do know that with email, and very often with other social media sites, more people will react to a person’s name than to a business name. Just be sure that you’re consistent with the name you use – and ensure that it’s the one that you’ll be recognized by, so that ultimately your readers and followers will stop and open your email, read your posts – because they know they’re going to get something of value and relevance from you. This is another place where your advantage as a small company kicks in – you can be the face or the name of the company. Now, there are some important considerations that shouldn’t be overlooked, and they relate to something called the [click to build] “CAN-SPAM” act…which is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.One provision of CAN-SPAM is that the “from,” “to,” and “reply to,” names “must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.” Therefore if I signed up for an email from Joe Pizza the from address should be “Joe Pizza” and not “Joe Smith.”That said, using a combination of your name and your company name will solve this issue in many cases. Use your name in the from name on your emails, and include a comma with your company name there as well. [If time permits, you can add these points]One other note, for nonprofits in the room, you are – and sorry to say this – often starting at later. And not because peopleDo not care about your message. That’s not it at all. It is more about the timing of your messages (which we will cover in a little bit) But if you think about it, if people are at work and their focus is supposed to be on their work, and then they get an email About your cause or program, even if they really care about it, they cannot always pull away from their primary responsibilities at the office.
Have you ever gotten an email from a company and clicked on the email to go to their website or to read more about an offer and landed on a page that looked nothing like the company in the email – maybe the colors are all different or the logos don’t match or whatever… and you do that “uh-oh” thing with your mouth and kind of hesitate to go further…You don’t want people to have that reaction to your marketing. It’s important to be consistent, and it also just makes you look good. There are a lot of free tools that make it easy to match the colors in your logo or your website to your campaigns and emails. Here aresome tools that are free for download and can help you ensure that consistency of colors: [click to build]Colorcop, [click to build]Pixeur [click to build] and if you’re on a Mac you can use DigitalColor Meter. These are simple tools that help you capture the exact colors so you can be consistent and avoid that moment when your new client Hesitates and you lose an opportunity.[click to next slide]
Templates make the process of sending emails much easier…while still allowing you to preserve the look and feel of your brand. These are some examples of templates from Constant Contact – because, obviously that’s what I have access to – but whatever system you’re using, make sure they have mobile-friendly templates that are easy to edit, to match colorsAnd to make “your own” with your own logos and photos and links. It doesn’t have to be hard to look professionalAnd sharpl
When you’re up against the Now, Later or Never game, your subject line on an email – or the headline of your social media post, can make a big difference in the response. Here is a simple method for writing more powerful subject and headlines. It’s called the 2-2-2 principle. [click three times to show all three 2’s] Let’s walk through it quickly. The first two is for the 2 seconds you typically have to compel them to pay attention.The second two if for the first two words of your subject line or headline. That’s really all they read before making a decision.And not a decision about whether to read your message, but as to whether or not they will bother to read the rest of the subject line. The third two is for “why does this email or message matter today” Today – that’s the third two. If you can answer that question in your subject line or headline, as close to the first two words as possible, more people will stop and at least open your message.So – how do you do it? How do you write one of these? Is anyone here on my email list? Do any of you get my class invitations? (some will raise their hands) …have you ever noticed that my subject lines sometimes begin with something like “12 seats left for tomorrow” Or “ten seats open tomorrow”? (insert your own tactic here if you don’t use this one) … first, let me tell you that it’s always true. And you should always be honest in your messages as well. But the reason I start with that is because it expresses very quickly why the message matters today. Seats are running out for an upcoming session.Some of the emails I send you start with “some seats left”… ever notice those? That’s when I have a lot of seats left and I don’t want to lie to you, But I want it to be more compelling than saying “57 seats still open for tomorrow”… that’s not compelling. It’s important to point out that you don’t need to go to the “urgency well” all the time, meaning you don’t always have to put a time stamp on it or Say things like “today only” or “by close of business” or like that. It’s more about making it very clear to people that your message is relevant and timely in order to win that now, later or never battle.
Here are some examples of subject lines – {speaker, if you have time, go thru these but if you’re short on time, just tell them that you included this slide for them to refer to for help in building their own subject lines later. List of customers, in order:BolocoBlue PenguinTee FuryFish and BoneJill Singer Graphics
Now let’s take a few minutes to try the 222 principle. Use the space provided in your workbook to write down subject lines or headlines for your next campaign.[give this about 3-5 minutes]If you have time, encourage group discussion of subject lines – ask for vounteers to share…Do you all have at least a couple of ideas written down? Great! Now, let’s talk about…[click to next slide]
The last piece in winning the battle of priorities is timing - When to send is another very common question. Both for how often to send and also when in terms of the time of day and the day of the week. For social media, we recommend a baseline frequency of at least 3-5 times a weekly. It’s what they used to tell us for exercise. There are tools and guidelines for what times have the highest traffic and most response but it really depends on your industry, your audience and what you are trying to get them to do.For email marketing frequency, monthly is the most common but it’s also a good idea to add unexpected messages every once in a while [click to build through the steps for testing]
To determine the best day of the week and time of day for you to send your emails, you can do an ABC test.It’s a simple method to narrow down when you get the best response and then you can adjust accordingly.First, take your list of contacts and divide it into three equal lists. So just take the whole list and break it into thirds.Next, choose three days of the week that you want to test. So – mon, wed, fri? or maybe tues, thurs, sat.(if you’re a B2B you’ll likely want to send during “regular” business hours, but know your audience in case that doesn’t hold true. For all others, it’s all up for testing)So you have three lists, and you want to test on three different days of the week.So you send your email – the same email – to each of your lists. The first group on Monday, the second group gets it Wednesday,And the 3rd group gets it on Friday. And then you measure your results. You can do this as long as you are Using an email marketing service. They tell you who opened, who clicked, what they clicked on, how many times and when.So you look at the stats and you will know which day was best of the three you tested. Now you’re ready for the second part of the process.[click to next slide]
Use the same three groups of people and now you will choose three different times of day you want to test.So, a morning, midday and afternoon or evening. The next time you are ready to send out an email,Send it on your best performing day from the last test. Send the first group their email in the morning,The second group gets it midday and the third group gets it in the afternoon or evening. And look at your stats. You will know which time of day did the best. So now you will know the best day and the best time of that day to send your emails for the best response. Please make sure you are not romanced by a high open rate. Just measuring the open rate will notGive you a clear picture of success. You might have a lot of people open it but very few take theAction you want them to take. Measure the physical, measurable responses
So now you have the best day on which to send and the best time at which to send. Excellent!! But let me caution you… [click to build] DO NOT BE ROMANCED BY A HIGHOPEN RATE – MEASURE ACTIONS!You can get a huge open rate but without actions, it’s not help to your business.
Source for 67%: Jeanne Jennings, Marketing Sherpa: “Preview Panes, Image Blocking and My Pitch to Have Microsoft Outlook Turn Images on by Default,” June 2010This slide is a great one to refer back to after you’ve left the class today, almost like a checklist for your email marketing – it’s just some simple, practical advice for getting better response in your emails. I’ll go through them quickly.[click] many people do not see pictures in their emails, and text links get more clicks than a beautiful button-- probably because of that 67% stat.[click] make sure your logo is left or center, not right – because people often see email in small windows that eclipse the right side, and make sure your company name is in text near the top. If your name is only in a graphic of your logo, all thosePeople with no pictures will not realize the message is from you at first glance.[click] the action you want people to take should be above the scroll line – most people do not scroll, and do not give too many choices, one or two at most. People do not have time to window shop and make decisions in your email. If you want them to take action, reduce the number of choices[click] make sure all of your pictures are clickable, this is easy to do with our tools and test your message on yourself, send it to yourself and if you can, test it on your cell phone or ipad too, just to know it looks good for everyone
One more exercise, this one is about timing your messages – write down three days and times you want to test for your email marketing so that you remember to run that test with your next campaign – and remember to ignore the open rate and pay attention to or measure the actions, clicks, replies, social shares, sales, referrals, etc…this exercise should go fast…
On to step 3 – we’ve set our goals and objectives, we’re ready to run campaigns on the channels that matter and now is the most important piece – get measurable results.
We finally come back to what got us started…this idea that marketing, at its core, is about eliciting a physical and measurable RESPONSE. You want someone to do something…call you, come to your store, donate, Like your Facebook page, etc. We discussed just discussed the different ACTIONS that you want your reader, follower, member to take.As you look back through what we’ve done today, you’ll see that we started by understanding this point first, and throughout the process of building out your plan we were never far away from the idea that the more specific you were with your thinking and the more focused you were on that end result the better able you’d be to evaluate the success of your efforts.[click to next slide]
Just to be very clear – physical, measurable results look like this. They are human. Machines cannot do what you are asking people to do when you’re marketing.[click to next slide]
Email is hard to beat for real marketing value. And it’s very much a part of social media. Email is how you can monetize your social media activities. And it still has the highest delivery and response, much higher than social media.In addition to the actual email, there are a number of tools you can use to expand the reach of your emails and help you build your lists for the future.[click to next slide]
Sharing tools expand your reach… this is an example of Constant Contact’s simple share toolMakes it easy to push your email campaigns, events, surveys and offers out on multiple channels with a few clicks.[click to next slide]
Another way to share – a “Social Share bar” at the top of your emails will make it as easy for your readers to share your message with others, part of that referral engine we talked about earlier. They also make it easy to follow you on the various social networks in a single click. Our emails include a social share bar at the top and we’ve made it very easy to add social icons with links anywhere in your campaign.[click to next slide]
Don’t forget to make it easy for people to join your list…there are three simple tools to help with that.First, in person you can invite people to join your list with a sign up card, a notice on receipts, you can justAsk at the register -- [click to next slide]
Use “Join My Mailing List” tools– links and buttons for this can be added to your website or your Facebook page (even as a tab on your page). And included in the signature or your regular emails, on any website, in pdf documents – almost anywhere And consider naming the publication or marketing the list with a brand like “the CEO Forum” or “the going green club”[click to next slide]
You’ll also find that there are a lot of apps out there that can help you build your lists.Two of them [click to build] are from Constant Contact, which allow you to collect email addresses and other information through a QR code “scan” or a text. (Need to work on the wording here…)We also have an extensive collection of apps that have been created specifically to extend the capabilities of our products…here are just a few that help with the collection of email addresses [click to build]b. [click to next slide]
And just to reiterate, Constant Contact has three products that feature heavily in email and social media marketing,Starting with our flagship Email Marketing tools, Social Campaigns help you make offers on a facebook page and increaselikes and engagement and EventSpot helps manage and promote any kind of event.
This does not have to be hard or time consuming. Automate where you can. These are three tools that I useTo manage my own social media – NutshellMail is a free tool from constant contact that allows you to monitor social media and sends you an email everyday, at the time of your choosing, that tells you everything anyone said to you, around you, about you, all in once place. My favorite part about it is that the email is actionable – meaning that if I see that someone invited me to an event or to be friends, I can click to respond or reply in that email and do it without having to log in to facebook or linked in or whatever the message came from. It’s a time saver.Hootsuite is a scheduling tool – it’s free, unless you want to pay for some premium services, but I schedule out my week’s worth of social media posts and hootsuite manages the postings and also tracks what happened – so I can see what worked and what didn’t… and Google Alerts is a great tool, though I’ve heard a rumor that it might go away – but with a google alert – also free, you can set up alerts for anything – keywords, phrases, and get an email alert if that phrase shows up on a website that is listed on Google – so I have alerts for my name, my company name – my name misspelled – and if someone posts online about me – maybe that I’m speaking at their event, and they happen to misspell my name, google alerts shows me. [click to next slide]
I want to leave you with this final point – you can absolutely do this. It’s not a mystery – you have an advantage. Be exactly who you are. Here are some examples but three quick final tips on this -- Write in conversational copy, just means you write the way you speak, not the way you might write a brochure – let your personality come through.Use pictures of people/animals, we respond to other people and to animals – maybe it’s the eyes, but it’s measurable and this is the essence of engagement. Pull back the curtains now & then, tell your followers or friends something about you.Or your staff. Nothing overly personal – but maybe you’re going to run in a 5K for a charity thatMatters to you, tell us why it matters to you. Maybe you’re also a musician and are going to play a local festival, mention it – you’ll be surprised by how many of your customers are also musicians or are going to that festival – these are the human connections that matter. We can use the word interactive to talk about ATM machines, self-check in at the airport and video games but real interaction is me-to-you, you-to-me interaction. Between people. Practice being human, being authentic, being you in your online marketing and watch your business grow. And you might have some fun with it too.SPEAKER: Remember to leverage your advantage as a small business or a nonprofit.Be human – be yourself. Find your voice. The voice of your organization.Here are three things you can do to make that work.Write in conversational copy. That just means that you write the way that you speak,Not the way you would write a brochure or website articles.It can be formal or it can be more casual, but it should match the tone you wouldTake in a one-on-one meeting with a client.Use pictures of people, or animals if that makes sense.This is where people relate most. Every once in a while, pull back the curtains and share somethingaA little bit more personal, yourself or about your staff. Maybe you are formingA team to run in a 5k – share that, post pictures, tell people why your staffChose that 5k. Make it human.Maybe you play banjo and are playing in a local festival. Share that.Don’t overshare, but let people know who you are.We all know that people do business with people, and we can use the word interactiveAll day long to talk about video games, self checkin at the airport and ATMs but Real interaction or engagement is you-to-me, me-to-you interaction. The back and forthBetween people. This is where relationships grow and where your business will grow.This iswhere you can see the real results from your marketing too. Your marketing is best leveraged by putting it in the hands of peopleThat already like you. They can share it with so many people.And those are warm leads. Our tools will help you build it, send it and track it.
I’ve left some time for questions, please take this time if you haven’t already, to fill out the form I gave you so that I can send you the slide deck from this session. I want your feedback too, so I can continue to improve the value of these sessions.[click] and finally, if you’d like to drop me a line or follow me on Facebook or Twitter, here are my details…I’d love to hear from you and hear how your campaigns are doing!